Update on Archiving | Idea Boards and Forums

[Tiana_Y]

Hi All-  

We are excited to share some important updates regarding Archiving and our Idea Boards and Forums that aim to enhance your experience and ensure valuable content remains accessible. Please read the details below to understand how these changes might impact you.

• Idea Boards:  Great news! Our Idea Boards won’t be subject to archival. This means they will not be archived under the current or future policies. However, our product teams will review and process any content that is not feasible and still label ideas by status as ‘archived’. This also means our Product Teams will actively update Idea statuses and move content that is not an idea or simply a very old, archived idea out of the Idea Boards to the correct destinations e.g. product forum for a question. 
• Forums:  We're also making changes to our Forums when it comes to our archiving process. Moving forward Accepted Solutions, along with their parent topics and all related posts, will not be archived as long as they are relevant, e.g. product still exists. This means you could support the community in great way, by making sure when you receive a solution, accept in your thread, or remind original poster of the importance of marking solutions if their questions are answered. We are also looking into whether, with these changes, there is a way to bring certain topics with an accepted solution back from the archive retrospectively. While we can't guarantee the restoration of all archived content due to technical limitations, we are committed to finding the best possible solution to bring the most relevant topics with accepted solutions from the archival. 

We hope that these changes and updates will help us keep content that you as our community find impactful and helpful. Thank you for all of your patience and understanding as we have been navigating the best possible solution to move forward, listening to your feedback and comments.

Thanks a lot!  

Tiana 

[ChrisRS]

@Curtis_Waguespack and @kerry_w_brown 

As far as I can tell, word meanings are now fungible.

In 'accepted solutions,' 'solution' can mean a range of things (e.g., 'here is the answer' to 'it is totally unsolvable'). One of my favorite in-between meanings is 'it is a known issue.'

[kerry_w_brown]

@ChrisRS ,

The best accepted solution I've encountered was

"RTFM"

Regards,

[ChrisRS]

---

@kerry_w_brown wrote:

@ChrisRS ,

The best accepted solution I've encountered was

"RTFM"

Regards,

---

That's Great!

Maybe we can stage a "Solution Silly Synonym Showdown."

Seriously, an "Accepted Solution" retention criteria is very fair, but will retain some low value (RTFM) topics.
It will also retain a lot of similar/duplicate topics. "Filedia = 1" comes to mind in AutoCAD, Toolsets, and Civil 3D.
In all cases there can be a lot of extraneous replies retained. 

Filtering and AI might assist with finding and linking duplicates and removing extraneous replies.

Eyes-On is the only better method that I can see, but I am pretty ignorant in this realm.

---

Several years ago, my young adult children introduced me to "The IT Crowd."

We watched the first episode together:

ChrisRS:  I like the T-shirt.

Kids:        (silence and blank stares)

ChrisRS:  "RTFM!"

Kids:        (continued silence and blank stares)

ChrisRS:  READ THE F***ING MANUAL.

Kids:        (quizical looks)

Kid #2:    Oh .,. I get it! I bet in the olden days, computers had manuals!

ChrisRS: (thinking: Gawd, I'm old, and these guys are going to pick my nursing home.)

ChrisRS:  ...  Just press play.

[kerry_w_brown]

@Tarek_K

Links for restoration : mentioned at theSwamp

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/item?siteID=123112&id=2895706&linkID=2475323 Create 2D drawing from 3D solid model
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/item?siteID=123112&id=2876115&linkID=2475323 Flatten 3D model to 2D

Thanks, in anticipation

added:

Notifications would be appreciated, so I can pass on any progress.

[Tarek_K]

Hi @kerry_w_brown , 

I am trying to find what you are referring to, but the links you show are definitely not threads on the community, and with the naming you provided to it, I cannot clearly identify it for finding it in the archive. Just validating, but you are referring to a topic in the community, not an Autodesk page, right? If yes, can you provide, if you have, the original link to the topic or any other information about it (forum it was in, maybe the concrete thread name, etc.)? That would be helpful.

Just in my search now with the information at hand I cannot find anything related to the link nor the topic title (again, the link looks not like a community URL, to be fair).

[Tarek_K]

Hi all, 

I wanted to update you here as I have more news to share! 🙂 Working internally with the teams and with the platform provider we landed (as I posted in earlier posts here in the thread:

• All old topics with accepted solutions are unarchived
• All API-related boards will be fully unarchived
  • 3ds Max Programming (https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-programming/bd-p/area-b35)
  • Visual LISP, AutoLISP and General Customization (https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/visual-lisp-autolisp-and-general/bd-p/130)
  • VBA (https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/vba/bd-p/33)
  • .NET (https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/net/bd-p/152)
  • ObjectARX (https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/objectarx/bd-p/34)
  • AutoCAD Architecture Customization (https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-architecture/bd-p/54)
  • AutoCAD Map 3D Developer (https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-map-3d-developer/bd-p/84)
  • Civil 3D Customization (https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/civil-3d-customization/bd-p/190)
  • Fusion API and Scripts (https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-api-and-scripts/bd-p/22)
  • Inventor Programming - iLogic, Macros, AddIns & Apprentice (https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-programming-ilogic/bd-p/120)
  • Maya Programming (https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/maya-programming/bd-p/area-b50)
  • Navisworks API (https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/navisworks-api/bd-p/600)
  • Revit API Forum (https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-api-forum/bd-p/160)
  • Vault Customization (https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/vault-customization/bd-p/301)
    
    

The timeline for this process will start in mid-March, and if everything runs smoothly, this unarchiving should be completed by roughly the end of March. I also want to share that this is quite a complex script to run, so please allow a bit of a grace period in case the unarchiving starts a bit later or runs a bit longer. 

Also, this does not mean we are not archiving outdated content anymore; we still want and need to keep the community clean and sort of not required content, but we will take a way different approach from the learnings of the first time, evaluating topics without solutions if they would be subject to archive for the content in the annual scope and see what we can conserve or safely put to the archive. 

I just wanted to share this update before the weekend hits! 

Hoping everyone has a great Friday and a good weekend ahead! 

[ChrisRS]

This is good news. I appreciate that you championed this issue, @Tarek_K.

Question:

Will this "Solutions accepted" and "API-related board" protection policy apply for the upcoming 2025 archive process?
My impression is that this policy will apply going forward. If so, it would be nice to have that stated explicitly.

Observation:

It is important that replies be marked "Solution accepted" when appropriate.

The Original Poster (OP) can accept solutions. SOmetins OP does not do so. 

In that case, Community Moderators and Expert Elite (EE) members can accept solutions. I suggest that EEs be proactive in accepting solutions.
For typical users, A PM to the OP or a community manager, or an @ mention to the OP and/or community manger suggesting that a reply be accepted as a solution are serviceable approaches. I am open to other suggestions. 

I appreciate that you included the anticipated timeline. Your request for "a bit of grace period" for this complex process is prudent and entirely reasonable. 

Thank you for your efforts and for communicating this.

[kerry_w_brown]

@Tarek_K 

I'll ask for  those links to be verified. Thanks.

added: https://www.theswamp.org/index.php?topic=60023.msg623621#msg623621

Thank you for the update and the schedule.

I assume the first item, ie >

• All old topics with accepted solutions are unarchived

is for the general product and information areas.

In the early days for the .NET Forum there were a lot of threads that were not marked "Solution accepted" .

I agree with @ChrisRS 's comments.

The marking of some threads in the last 10 years of posts may be necessary to retain usefull information.

Does the .NET Forum have a Community manager ??

Regards,

[SephR]

Can't the entire archive just be served read-only on a separate server, with instructions for search engines to not index it? (robots.txt, 'noindex' meta tags, etc...)

That way NO data is lost, and yet you get your SEO benefit.

There is a lot of obscure and nuanced information from the past 25 years that is still VERY relevant... not to mention the "community history" aspect that seems to be completely ignored in this conversation. Scrubbing the personal history of this long-standing community from the web is unfortunate.

[Curtis_Waguespack]

@Tarek_K @ChrisMitchell01 , I ran into this dead link just now, please restore when you have a chance

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor/ct-p/70/redirect_from_archived_page/true

[Tarek_K]

Hi all,

I wanted to give everyone a heads-up. The unarchiving script is running, and it has already unarchived the biggest chunk as I lined out in my post further above. Nevertheless, the script ran into an issue, especially on the VBA forum, which is looked into why there and also the rest unarchived accordingly.

Overall, you should have seen a lot of the old topics being back as discussed, planned, and lined out. If there is any weird behavior regarding old topics coming back, let me know - but overall, the unarchiving should be fully completed soon (once the script issue has been dealt with). 

Hope that gives at least a bit of good news for everyone following this thread today. 

[ChrisRS]

Thank you for the update, @Tarek_K.

I do not use or following and of the coding forums, so I have not noticed any change.

This update let's folks like me, who would not notice, know that there is actual progress.

[Curtis_Waguespack]

@Tarek_K when you have a chance can provide an update on this? 

note too that the link in your post that I’m replaying to here, redirects back toTiana_Y’s opening post.

I assume something was changed with recent updates and that is not the correct behavior. In any case, because of this I could not determine what you intended to point to when you said “… as I lined out in my post further above” 

[Tarek_K]

Hi @Curtis_Waguespack ,

I asked, and this is still with the vendor, who is looking into that, and there is no resolution till right now sadly. This is just my take but maybe this is even good while the migration is going on to not mix and mess something there, but I see and would have hoped the element to be easier to sort out. If I hear any progress I will update for sure - so thanks for checking in inbetween. 

This is weird, as I used the right link which was referencing to this one.