Is there a backup plan in case XDA shuts down?

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Hendrix7

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Nov 18, 2023
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The history of the Internet is unfortunately littered with websites shutting down with little to no notice, taking decades of volunteer contributions with them. Burned down like the library of Alexandria.

Examples include NixCraft in 2015, Yahoo Answers in 2021, Club MyCE in 2022, and forum.bodybuilding.com in 2024. This is not limited to online forums. Social networks such as Google Plus, video platforms such as VidMe, URL shortening services such as goo.gl, MySpace blogs in 2013, and many more shut down, often times with little notice.

Sources for Club MyCE: Reddit, Confused Bird, VideoHelp.

When NixCraft shut down, they left behind this unapologetic notice:

nixcraft shutdown notice.png




My question would be, if the XDA Forum ever plans to shut down, how long in advance will there be a notice?

Will there be a read-only period before shutting down entirely so people have time to save relevant stuff from the "burning building"?

Will a text dump of all user contributions be released like Wikipedia and Stack Overflow do? Text compresses very well, so all text contributions probably fit within a few gigabytes.

I for one hope none of this will become necessary of course, but these are things that need to be considered preemptively, not when it is too late. We should leave something behind for the world.
 
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Mr Carter

Mr Carter

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Firstly it means I'd have to find a new job to match this current £150k a year salary, which, in itself, would cause problems 🙄

In all seriousness though, notice would certainly be given but, unless it happens, we wouldn't know how much would be given or even what steps would be in place. We've been here for over 20 years though and there's been numerous owners within that timeframe and we're still here.
In terms of members finding out, I'd assume it'd be a similar approach as when big changes have come to XDA over the years. It would be mentioned internally first (to all the forum staff) and then that information pushed out to all members at a given time via forum posts and via the Portal. It wouldn't just be an overnight thing where you try to login one day and the whole site has simply gone
 
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    Mr Carter
    Mr Carter
    Firstly it means I'd have to find a new job to match this current £150k a year salary, which, in itself, would cause problems 🙄

    In all seriousness though, notice would certainly be given but, unless it happens, we wouldn't know how much would be given or even what steps would be in place. We've been here for over 20 years though and there's been numerous owners within that timeframe and we're still here.
    In terms of members finding out, I'd assume it'd be a similar approach as when big changes have come to XDA over the years. It would be mentioned internally first (to all the forum staff) and then that information pushed out to all members at a given time via forum posts and via the Portal. It wouldn't just be an overnight thing where you try to login one day and the whole site has simply gone
    View
    2
    H
    Hendrix7
    EllieCat said:
    Have you heard of the Wayback machine?
    Click to expand...
    Click to collapse
    It's not searchable by text and by far doesn't have full coverage of all posts. You can only get to a page if you have the URL. And it's not even guaranteed to stay. It has been under attack in recent times.

    View
    1
    H
    Hendrix7
    The history of the Internet is unfortunately littered with websites shutting down with little to no notice, taking decades of volunteer contributions with them. Burned down like the library of Alexandria.

    Examples include NixCraft in 2015, Yahoo Answers in 2021, Club MyCE in 2022, and forum.bodybuilding.com in 2024. This is not limited to online forums. Social networks such as Google Plus, video platforms such as VidMe, URL shortening services such as goo.gl, MySpace blogs in 2013, and many more shut down, often times with little notice.

    Sources for Club MyCE: Reddit, Confused Bird, VideoHelp.

    When NixCraft shut down, they left behind this unapologetic notice:

    nixcraft shutdown notice.png




    My question would be, if the XDA Forum ever plans to shut down, how long in advance will there be a notice?

    Will there be a read-only period before shutting down entirely so people have time to save relevant stuff from the "burning building"?

    Will a text dump of all user contributions be released like Wikipedia and Stack Overflow do? Text compresses very well, so all text contributions probably fit within a few gigabytes.

    I for one hope none of this will become necessary of course, but these are things that need to be considered preemptively, not when it is too late. We should leave something behind for the world.
    View

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