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 

[Curtis_Waguespack]

@kerry_w_brown, the questions I had last week turned out not to be relevant, due to limiting factors. This was surprising and disappointing, but things are not completely hopeless yet. My discussion was under NDA so I can not say much, but @Tarek_K is championing this cause. He understands the issues, the problems created by this initiative, and cares about being able to retore the content that is valid and relevant.

I again expressed the need for this situation to be remedied. And expressed the need for more information to be shared publicly on this matter, regardless of the outcomes. Currently, as I understand it, we can only wait to see what those outcomes will be, depending upon on some current investigation into the current situation behind the scenes. 

So at this point we are waiting to see what Tarek can tell on this...hopefully at some point in the near future.

[kerry_w_brown]

I'm seeing this situation more and more.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/net/delete-block-attributes/m-p/13289992/highlight/true#M85504

Thankfully, this time, offsite storage saved the issue.

Regards,

[Curtis_Waguespack]

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@kerry_w_brown wrote:

I'm seeing this situation more and more.

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Yep, it's a mess, here's one that just popped up too:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-forum/threads-no-longer-availlable/m-p/13292253/highlight/tr...

[Tarek_K]

Hi all,

I wanted to give a little more update and first say I understand the irritation and frustration. We are trying to work together to the best of our ability now and in the future, and we will keep on sharing updates when there are elements to share. 

So, what @Tiana_Y shared is still true today. I also want to say I understand and acknowledge the frustration as, retrospectively, things could have been done differently with the elements as they are today compared to when the initial archive started.

Let me start and reiterate looking into the future:

We will still need to archive content on this platform in the future due to the sheer volume - this is the truth, and I guess everyone will agree that not every content needs to be kept for all eternity as it clutters things. It will be essential to find the right way of defining that. Nevertheless, I want to assure you that we want to make this selection more meaningful and relevant to the community, e.g., the code examples and everything with accepted solutions for the future.

I understand this doesn’t help the current status, and the future outlook I gave right now might not ease the frustration some of you feel now, but I want you all to know that we read, listen, and take the comments seriously. I think @Curtis_Waguespack  can also confirm this from his end, as we had a long discussion on this topic. 

Now for the current:

On the redirects mentioned as well in other discussions, I understand that they are not intuitive and can be confusing when coming from a search and ending up on the community only in the forums overlay. Technically, that was the best world possible to start with, as everything else did result in a worse experience—this shouldn’t be a justification. Still, I just wanted to share the facts that archived topics can be redirected one by one to a destination and if this is not provided it would be way more confusing.

Also, as Tiana said, we are currently looking into releasing topics with accepted solutions. However, due to the platform limitations, this is a one-by-one approach, and we are trying to find a way to make this possible in bulk, which isn’t sadly possible as of today. I personally cannot guarantee that this might be possible in the future, but I try to work internally to at least see the options.

Having said that, and to at least give something to hopefully help a bit with: if specific topics with an accepted solution (saved link or remembered title) are known, we can bring them back if shared with us through the link or with just the name of the topic title we can try to search for it. Again, I understand it is less than optimal to ask for something that might not be able to be grasped anymore, but there is a way where I could help and release some topics this way from the archive.

I wanted to share this for the time being, and I hope it helps at least a bit to understand. We will definitely keep sharing updates accordingly.

Wishing you, wherever you are in the world, a good weekend!

[soonhui]

We will still need to archive content on this platform in the future due to the sheer volume - this is the truth,

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So said a company with USD 5.8 Billion in yearly revenue. It's really hard for me to even begin to imagine how this could possibly be true.

@Tarek_K , have you considered just making the content read only? Surely that's a lot cheaper and completely doable right?

[kerry_w_brown]

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@soonhui wrote:

We will still need to archive content on this platform in the future due to the sheer volume - this is the truth,

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So said a company with USD 5.8 Billion in yearly revenue. It's really hard for me to even begin to imagine how this could possibly be true.

@Tarek_K , have you considered just making the content read only? Surely that's a lot cheaper and completely doable right?

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I suggested that too, but nobody bothered to respond.
. . . nor has there been any word on how they intended to "repurpose" information as mentioned in the initial notifications.

I'm afraid that  the sentiment in this link applies.
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/net/regarding-community-content-archiving/m-p/13202420/highlight/true...

Regards,

[soonhui]

@Tiana_Y , @Tarek_K ,

You said that archiving the old posts is necessary because of the forum size, but the speed is still not noticeably faster after the whole archiving exercise. And in the process, we lost valuable information. Autodesk has managed to create a net loss situation for everyone. 

[kerry_w_brown]

I'm reminded of the original notice by @Tiana_Y 

Tiana  wrote:

Hi Everyone, 

To keep our community efficient and up to date, we'll be archiving content older than 10 years. We built a policy around document retention to stay relevant to our users and customers. 

We'll archive outdated content from forums, idea boards, and other community areas across all products and industries. Rest assured, we've set up procedures to preserve important ideas and discussions.

 The  key sentences of this statement on intent are :

• We built a policy around document retention to stay relevant to our users and customers. 
• Rest assured, we've set up procedures to preserve important ideas and discussions.

I'm left guessing how and why these intentions have not been realised,

. . .  in fact, the current messages expressed in ' future-tense' are indicating that these original statements that are in the 'past tense'  are different to the actual situation at that time.

Why ??

[Brock_Olly]

The reason for archiving is storage space I'm guessing?

What if, instead of archiving, you remove the images/attachments/... but leave the raw text, and lock the post.
This way most information, code, etc remains accesible.

Text uses very little storage space..

[pendean]

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@Brock_Olly wrote:

...you remove the images/attachments/... but leave the raw text, and lock the post....

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No personal offense meant, but that idea is very half-baked at best. Hope that never happens.

[Curtis_Waguespack]

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@Brock_Olly wrote:

The reason for archiving is storage space I'm guessing?

@Brock_Olly, storage space wasn't really the concern, or at least not the primary one from my understanding. It was mentioned in one of the product development office hours recordings that it was more about search engine optimization and that the goal was to remove old posts so that when a user searched for something they wouldn't encounter a stack of old posts to comb through. Example: "AutoCAD + OSNAP" might return a post from August of 200O referencing AutoCAD 2000i. Maybe in this particular example this approach was ok, but I think we've all recognized that the approach taken was far too heavy handed, and removed too much relevant content in many areas. 

[kerry_w_brown]

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@Curtis_Waguespack wrote:

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@Brock_Olly wrote:

The reason for archiving is storage space I'm guessing?

@Brock_Olly, storage space wasn't really the concern, or at least not the primary one from my understanding. It was mentioned in one of the product development office hours recordings that it was more about search engine optimization and that the goal was to remove old posts so that when a user searched for something they wouldn't encounter a stack of old posts to comb through. Example: "AutoCAD + OSNAP" might return a post from August of 200O referencing AutoCAD 2000i. Maybe in this particular example this approach was ok, but I think we've all recognized that the approach taken was far too heavy handed, and removed too much relevant content in many areas. 

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[quote]    more about search engine optimization and that the goal was to remove old posts so that when a user searched for something they wouldn't encounter a stack of old posts to comb through.

I'm pretty sure that could be done with a well designed filter system.

Regards,

[kerry_w_brown]

words . . . 

 

 

Regards,

[Curtis_Waguespack]

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@kerry_w_brown wrote:

words . . . 

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🙄 pshaw.... by your own screen shots, we see those are very old words... get with the times man!  😉

Just to clarify a little, as Tarek has demonstrated at this link the content is not truly deleted. There is still hope that still relevant content can be "unarchived" but that is not where were are at the moment... for "reasons". 

If you happen to run across links to content that has been 'delete-chived', maybe post them here for visibility.  

[kerry_w_brown]

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@Curtis_Waguespack wrote:

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@kerry_w_brown wrote:

words . . . 

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🙄pshaw.... by your own screen shots, we see those are very old words... get with the times man!  😉

< . . . >

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Well, I am very old, so expect old words :=)

. . . and thankfully some words have not been 'archived' 

[quote from my english master in 60's ] "words have meaning, you semiliterate youth"

[Tarek_K]

Hi all,

I am referring here to @Curtis_Waguespack as he shared already a lot of the reasoning. To add to this so there are no wrong theories going around: 

• The volume matters in regard to SEO findability as Curtis lined out
• The volume you could argue of the internet is in theory huge when it comes to storage, but there are also elements to it like; backup time and durations; working search elements in regard to the amount of content, etc
• Content that is clearly old (as Curtis referred to as well) where, at some point, a decision needs to be made. 
• Also, technically - just because content gets set to read only vs being able to respond to doesn't solve the elements mentioned above that usually an archival process does.
• Archiving is not equal deleting; as also Curtis said - if there is a link you have bookmarked or which is having an accepted solution in the past and want to get it restored, feel free to share. 

Nevertheless, to give an update on the current:

• The intent still is to bring back topics with accepted solutions and if feasible developer specific content
• We are looking internally and with the vendor how to accomplish this best from the archive whereas I don't have any clear path to share yet; but once I can, I will definitely do. 

Hope that helps a bit! If there are further questions, just let me know! Once I have a confirmed pathway moving forward I will share

[Curtis_Waguespack]

@Tarek_K , can you please restore this archived link? Thanks!

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-programming-ilogic/using-linq-with-inventor-ilogic/td-p/5136...

[ChrisMitchell01]

Done (I used this as an opportunity to learn how to unarchive topics)

[Curtis_Waguespack]

Thanks Chris!

Here's another link someone brought to my attention:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-forum/automatic-update-of-model-revision-number/td-p/3058714

[kerry_w_brown]

@Tarek_K 

Candidate for restoration : Linked from a recent solution.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/net/table-flow-direction/td-p/2852314

Regards,