Chances of old forum links getting repaired?

evanh · 2023-01-22 02:47

Phil's obituary prompted me to have a look at some of my old bookmarks. First one I looked at was the topic on all the Prop1 used for filtering - https://forums.parallax.com/discussion/118111/digital-filter-potpourri

Most of the links found there are dead, primarily because of the forum software being replaced with something newer over the years. And I know there's other collections just like that one. It would be great to have them fixed up, even if only on a case by case basis.

Wuerfel_21 · 2023-01-22 14:26

The http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?129701 type links can be easily converted to http://forums.parallax.com/discussion/129701

I have no idea why that hasn't been done.

Though there's like 3 other formats, too.

Wuerfel_21 · 2023-01-22 14:44

In that list post alone, there are 5 link formats. 3 of them map directly to modern thread IDs. The other 2, idk. I tried comment permalinks, but that doesn't work.

Here's a userscript that auto-fixes the links it can locally (and highlights all the weird ones it can't)

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Parallax Link Fixerator
// @version      0.2
// @author       Wuerfel_21
// @match        *://forums.parallax.com/*
// @run-at document-end
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
    'use strict';

    const links = document.getElementsByTagName('a');

    for (const lnk of links) {
        console.log(`lnk is ${lnk}`);
        var url = lnk.getAttribute("href");
        if (url == null) {
            // dum dum dum dum dum dum dum, du du dum
        } else if (
        url.match(/^https?:\/\/forums\.parallax\.com\/showthread\.php\?(\d+)/) ||
        url.match(/^https?:\/\/forums\.parallax\.com\/showthread\.php\/(\d+)/) ||
        url.match(/^https?:\/\/forums\.parallax\.com\/showthread\.php\?t=(\d+)/) ) {
            console.log("MATCHED THREAD!");
            lnk.setAttribute("href",`https://forums.parallax.com/discussion/${RegExp.$1}/`);
        } else if (
         url.match(/^https?:\/\/forums\.parallax\.com\/showthread\.php\?p=(\d+)/)||
        url.match(/^https?:\/\/forums\.parallax\.com\/forums\/default.aspx\?f=\d+&m=(\d+)/)) {
            console.log("BAD FORMAT!");
            lnk.setAttribute("style","color: red;");
        }
    }

})();

Wuerfel_21 · 2023-01-24 18:25

@VonSzarvas any idea of how to translate the p= kinda URLs?

VonSzarvas · 2023-01-24 18:31

I have a list somewhere that includes every conceivable old url style I could find, plus a bunch of old tags and 'tings. I'll double efforts to hunt it down and share what I have Some of the fixes were direct, some involved lookups, so you won't reasonably be able to handle all of them with userscripts unfortunately.

evanh · 2023-01-25 00:00

How is a "userscript" used?

Wuerfel_21 · 2023-01-25 00:10

https://openuserjs.org/about/Userscript-Beginners-HOWTO

evanh · 2023-01-25 00:19

oh ...

evanh · 2023-01-25 10:43

Ha, most of the links are http://... rather than https://... It wasn't until I replaced Tampermonkey with Greasemonkey whereby it showed case by case errors, so I then understood there was a clear reason for the links still not working for me.

EDIT: Grr, not the HTTP issue I thought it was. The errors are for the "?p=" types, which you've marked as bad format.

VonSzarvas · 2023-01-25 12:48

Does this tool convert the p= links ?

http://www.phipi.com/forum/convert.html

evanh · 2023-01-25 13:59

It doesn't work for anything I tried. Always gives an empty string as solution.

Electrodude · 2023-01-25 22:29

@VonSzarvas said:
Does this tool convert the p= links ?

http://www.phipi.com/forum/convert.html

Phil's (R.I.P.) website will inevitably go down sooner or later. Does anyone have any leads as to how we might be able to get the Perl source of this and some of the other useful tools on his site?

TomKatt · 2023-02-27 13:09

I'm so glad to have found this thread - I thought I was going nuts!

I used to hang here back in the day under the handle Agent420. As things sometimes go I needed to put the Prop on the shelf for a while. Coming back here, I was originally pretty depressed to find so many resources scattered to the winds... The GitHub thing is a good idea from a public sharing POV, but nowhere as easy to use as the old Obex. Searching the forums often returns very little of threads I definitely recall being there, and even if I'm lucky enough to find a thread the links are typically dead. I did not realize there were some options to "decode" these links.

I'm not a web guru, but I find it difficult to believe things like this cannot be done automatically? Even links on from the Parallax store don't work correctly - I was looking for resources on the 28087 Oled module and the link for the Spin demo is dead on the shop page. I 'think' I found it on GitHub, but the GitHub links aren't organized that well IMO and downloading the files can sometimes be very frustrating.

It may not be the case, but coming back I get the sense that the world has moved on past the P1 and everything is P2 oriented now. Which is too bad, because the P1 is just as useful today as it was when it came out. Not every project needs an $80 controller module.

These forums are a wealth of knowledge on the P1 and efforts ought to be made to ensure they remain accessible. There are code examples posted from users in these forums that can teach more than any reference material available elsewhere.

Wuerfel_21 · 2023-02-27 13:18

@TomKatt said:
Searching the forums often returns very little of threads I definitely recall being there, and even if I'm lucky enough to find a thread the links are typically dead. I did not realize there were some options to "decode" these links.

Do not use the forum search bar. It does not work properly (this has been a known issue for a while and is apparently non-trivial to fix with the current software?). Instead, use your favorite search engine with site:forums.parallax.com and you will get much better results.

TomKatt · 2023-02-27 13:22

Thanks!

I've seen other forums where that is exactly how they handle search functionality... Even if the search code cannot easily be revised, it ought to be easy enough to have the search bar create a Google site search like that automatically...

Wuerfel_21 · 2023-02-27 13:46

I just created a search prefix in Vivaldi to that extent. But here's a userscript that turns the forum search box into a google search, just because I can:

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Parallax Search Fixerator
// @version      0.2
// @author       Wuerfel_21
// @match        *://forums.parallax.com/*
// @run-at document-end
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
    'use strict';

    const searchboxes = document.getElementsByClassName('SearchBox');

    for (const box of searchboxes) {
        const form = box.children[0];
        form.setAttribute("action","https://www.google.com/search");
        const input = form.children[0].children["Search"].setAttribute("name","q");
        form.insertAdjacentHTML('beforeend','<input name="as_sitesearch" value="forums.parallax.com" readonly hidden></input>');
    }

})();

EDIT: Lmao the searchbox you see when viewport is narrow is not the same searchbox you see when it is wide. This is not how responsive design is supposed to work...

VonSzarvas · 2023-02-27 14:07

@TomKatt said:

These forums are a wealth of knowledge on the P1 and efforts ought to be made to ensure they remain accessible.

Some hot news on that topic, is that a project has just started to bring back together all the scattered resources and to provide a fit-for-purpose interface for anyone to contribute, maintain and search for libraries, docs, tools & code/projects. It will encompass at least both P1 and P2, and will hopefully include community tools/resources too. More details will appear soon, and no doubt be discussed at an upcoming P2LF too (perhaps the one after next).

TomKatt · 2023-02-27 14:37

@VonSzarvas said:

Some hot news on that topic, is that a project has just started to bring back together all the scattered resources and to provide a fit-for-purpose interface for anyone to contribute, maintain and search for libraries, docs, tools & code/projects. It will encompass at least both P1 and P2, and will hopefully include community tools/resources too. More details will appear soon, and no doubt be discussed at an upcoming P2LF too (perhaps the one after next).

That sounds great! All the information in the world is useless if you can't easily access what you're looking for.

VonSzarvas · 2023-02-27 14:40

Exactly! We need a "fit-for-purpose" solution ASAP.

idbruce · 2023-02-28 10:27

I never understood the problem of broken links due to upgrades. As long as the archives actually exist, there is not a single doubt in my mind that I can resolve all the problems, after all it is just a matter of file locations and the manipulation of text. Why can't someone resolve this? There is only one conclusion that I can come up with.

TomKatt · 2023-03-03 13:48

@idbruce said:
There is only one conclusion that I can come up with.

The whole Dr. Jim / mallred thing never happened. And you'll never prove it if you can't find it.

Chances of old forum links getting repaired?

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