How to find old threads
Nov 9 2006 09:55
Right, as many of you may have noticed, when you try to search for old threads you often just get taken to the forums index.
This is because we moved to a new forum structure, and how google searching works where it keeps linking to the old the old version, which no longer exists. It will take a while before the new addresses of those old threads get picked up.
In the mean time, if you are looking for something, here's how you can do it.
Example: lem looking for anti-psychiatry.
We had a thread on this a while ago, searching gives you the URL:
libcom.org/forums/viewtopic.php?
t=2990&start=30&sid=20eb35bcbd43c9a7656863d0af6c0708
This - and any other address with viewtopic.php? is an old version URL, which will just take you to the forums index here.
However finding this can help you locate the old thread.
The title of the link given by the search is "View topic - Anti-psychiatry - libcom.org forums", so the thread title was "Anti-psychiatry". To locate it on the new forums, go to the forum it is most likely to be in - in this case Thought and on the links at the top of the forum index click "Topic". This will sort all threads in the forum in alphabetical order. You can then click through to different pages to find the old thread, looking it up by its title.
Doing this with lem's example shows up on page 6:
http://libcom.org/forums/thought/anti-psychiatry
Hope this helps some people, I'll add this guide in site notes somewhere...
Or alternatively, once you see that it says
You will know the thread title is the middle bit
As John. says.
So then you can hazard a guess at which forum it would have been in, some are quite obvious, so for this you could have just tried using the URL
Remember to use this construction
Always use lower case, and but dashes in between words.
If you get stuck looking for something, post here and maybe we can help you find it!