Migrating content from old forums

After more thinking about this, we don’t actually need to have Discourse handle the redirects.

The migration script can generate a list of past topic/post id, and corresponding id in Discourse (I’ve seen that in other Discourse import scripts.

Based on this, some quite light code on forum.openstreetmap.org could be only handling the redirects to new URL on community.openstreetmap.org, not having to add 1M redirects in discourse itself.

This also avoids to have a old link to “forum” to be redirected first to “community” to get redirected to the new URL by discourse.

When I did the migration from phpBB to Discourse for the french forum, we had not OAuth2 on OSM.org, and no link has been done with OSM accounts at that time. This was not a problem because phpBB was not linked to osm.org accounts.

When OAuth2 became available on osm.org, I added OAuth2 login to our Discourse, and one nice thing is that you can link your existing discourse account with your OSM account afterwards (no need to access email addresses).

It is a possible path, unless we want a mandatory OSM account linked to each Discourse account.

More migration tests seem necessary from my point of view, possibly on a public test setup to have feedback.

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Let’s keep this proposal open for input and feedback until March 29th.

After that date the @forums-governance team will take in consideration all the input and take a decision.

Thanks!

As there might be migration tests necessary to come to an informed decision, I think that a deadline for this topic is not good. (Or at least 1 week is too short)

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  • looking for the answer if a topic has been already discussed would not bring a result here. So Users not aware about the archive start discussions from scratch and potentially try to reinvent an existing wheel.
  • sooner or later someone for sure will challenge to delete the old forum due to security concerns, maintenance cost/knowledge or all of it
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Isn’t that happening most of the time anyway? I mean, looking back at a few years of Overpass related questions, I see very similar questions coming up all the time.

Maybe the poor search on the forum is to blame here, or maybe people just don’t take the time to go through all those old questions, which are even outdated and irrelevant at times. Similar experience with Help OSM, by the way.

Tagging discussions may be different, though. However, there’s so much material out there that you really need to know what to look for. It’s very daunting for newbies trying to find their way through years of history. It’s even worse when there’s no consensus in discussions.

This is why I’m suggesting a static archive. We would generate HTML files for each forum, topic, and page on forum and put them on a hard drive instead of passing it through old/unsupported PHP.

@lkw We can see if there is something missing from the issues and blockers @iandees found in the tests he did a few months back. If you have additional things to test in mind we can create a list and see if there is someone with time to run them.

Yes, please migrate all the content in a new Forum.

Thanks for participating @WST1961

It would be great to get a bit more detail on you feedback, specially on the things that are important for you to solve, so we can better understand how to choose/craft an option that balances pros and cons.

I didn’t do not so much work, but I experienced again and again that suddenly so-called archive forums were lost. In 2022 it is normal for me and many people on the world, that is possible to get old informations. I hate Archive Forums, allways to do a search twice and so on.

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I see, as @iandees commented, there is a commitment to keep any form of archive always online in the future (also because it won’t need any special software because being HTML files).

Also, there are many ways to secure a few “backups” of that archive just in case there is a temporal downtime at some point (archive.org, IPFS copy, github/gitlab pages…)

Would that solve your concerns about it?

Hi everyone! :wave:

I’m quite new to the participating side of osm, after many years on the using side, so I don’t have a (long) history with the old forum and therefore maybe some fresh and hopefully valuable view on the topic…?!

When I read through the forum, I stumbled into the announcement, for the new discourse based place and I first thought “Cool, everything’s better then this dusty old PHP-pile and discourse has some cool modern features!” (I’m still thinking that way!)

When I heard the first “complaints” for migration, I thought “C’mon, no one’s reading the old posts anyway. Let’s ‘just’ put it in read-only and have a fresh and clean start at the new place!”

But when I read the reasoning pro migration, my opinion shifted step by step.

Furthermore I’m wondering about the handling of this discussion:
Why rushing towards a (kind of) point of no return, by populating this instance with new categories?
Why not even testing the migration, as @cquest offered his help?
I think some testing is crucial for any decision making.

Note, that the corresponding script seems at least to be maintained until 2020.

  • You’re lowering the bar for users from the old forum. Software change instead of communication channel change as mentioned above.

Link isn’t working. Could you please say more about these tests?

might! the script includes a translation from bbcode to md.

Not with some proper redirection. But that’s something, someone has to implement, yes.

DB yes, but why is that a problem? Discourse should handle this?!

Not with some proper redirection. see above. And the wording “penalty” is kind of misleading imho.

Tests will give more insight…

best Daniel

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The links points to a previous message on this topic, it’s working here.

I’ve gone through that thread a dozen times, after you have made that statement in a number of different places, not just after you repeated it here. Maybe I’m stupid, but I count exactly 2 (two) people that would prefer not to migrate the content, adding you makes three. I’m running out of fingers here, but I don’t believe that makes a majority in this universe.

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I asked for some feedback a while back what should happen with old forum posts. I don’t know how good the translation turns out to be, maybe give it a try.

https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=837484#p837484

Comments against moving moving content from FluxBB to Discourse in the thread I linked to:

  1. “No need at all. Why littering a fresh install.” - R0bst3r
  2. “I would prefer set the fluxbb to readonly and move to discourse. That way the old stuff is still available.” - Negreheb
  3. “IMO, keeping the content available and links working is important. But migrating existing content into the Discourse install would only be “nice to have”” - Tordanik
  4. “I think it would be mandatory to keep the current Forum and create the new Discourse instance as ‘a new branch’.” - martingggg

Comments for moving content to Discourse:

  1. “I see it as useful to bring forum posts forward into Discourse; not mandatory but just one less thing to check when searching previous subject activity.” - MikeN

Just to reiterate in case I’m not making it clear: My proposal is to archive the existing Forum posts so that they are searchable and existing links into the forum work, not delete them.

  1. is “not against moving”, 4. is keeping the existing system running indefinitely.
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My statement from that old thread should be understood as supporting a migration of existing content. “Nice to have” still means that a migration is preferred, I’m just acknowledging that it might not be possible due to technical blockers or too much effort.

And I pretty much still hold the same opinion. A migration isn’t mandatory, but would be nice. Especially if there are people such as @cquest willing to spend some time exploring the possibility.

To add something to the current consideration of pros and cons instead of just re-treading the old discussion: One argument that I haven’t seen brought up here is that a migration allows us to improve outdated answers and misinformation in old topics in the future. For example, I was able to post a new answer to “How can I delete my account?” this weekend. That question was created 12 years ago and is still the top result on Google for “delete openstreetmap account”. I wouldn’t have been able to do that on a static HTML archive.

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While that is undoutably true, I’m not aware of anybody proposing to keep the content of the help site in any form, so that will simply be gone and in any case OT for this thread.

Yes the divide and conquer approach to forcing things through by swamping everybody with new discussion threads on non-urgent things that are months away, does lead to a significant amount of confusion.

I see… my bad: was expecting another site.
well, then, the conclusion mentioned isn’t a way to go?

I imagine this account problem could be remedied with more access to the database, but that would require approval and supervision from the sysadmins to protect user information.