Truncated Posts

I think a lot of people would do that but there is some uncertainty about what happens when the truncation issue is solved. Right now we have truncation and also a lot of the symbols have been replaced with question marks. Nobody can tell the fanfic community if the question mark problem will be resolved. All they are told is if they fix their story themselves, when the truncation issue is solved any edits they made to their truncated posts will disappear and be replaced with the original post…but it still might have the question marks all over it. Many writers don't want to go to the effort of repairing a 50K word story and then, when the truncation issue is solved, have to go back and remove all the question marks that are substituted for quotes or other symbols. I don't know, maybe this question has been answered and I just haven't heard.

I can see going to the effort when you have an ongoing story, but for older stories it is not worth it in my opinion. They are usually buried on page 42 and nobody is going to read them because we don't have a good indexing system.

 

This is why you save your work yourself.

The sad truth is, this issue probably wont be fixed. I'm positive that recovering old fanfic for a Star Wars message board, which is no longer affiliated with IGN, is at the very bottom of IGN's database person's list. Seriously... it's probably best to just move on and save your work someplace other than here, moving forward.

 

My comments were based on the assumption that the work was saved on the author's hard drive and the stories can be repaired by the writer. I was explaining to Space_Wolf's why this very reasonable fix was not being done. If we knew there was zero chance that the truncation issue would be resolved then the writers would probably go to the effort. But if there is a chance that it will be fixed BUT the formatting errors and question marks would remain…then they would have to repair their work for a second time.

I do agree that people should not save their work on this site. There are plenty of back up options to include Google documents, thumb drives, Carbonite, My Book, Skydrive and Dropbox.

 

Carbonite... How fitting.

 

It is a good system. I have it for my computers. It backs everything up automatically. I have used it a few times when my computers had complete hardware crashes. The only bad thing is if your PC crashes and you buy a MAC replacement then you can't reinstall your files to the MAC (the same goes for MAC to PC). You would have to download the files to some other PC and then transfer them to your MAC.

 

So that's what it is. I'd seen the icon, but never did more with it or about it than chuckle at the reference. Thanks for the run down, Ewok_Slayer.

 

Ewok_Slayer I wasn't speaking directly to you. My post wasn't in response to anything you posted. It was addressed to the thread, in general.

 

it was the motherboard that got killed. I'm hoping to buy a housing at some point for the harddrive and see if I can retrieve the files.

I have a feeling this isn't going to be resolved anytime soon

 

That's what happened with my old laptop. The graphics chip went so the HD was still intact. If you go for a housing make sure you get the right type. (Depends on the type of HD that you have).

 

If I remember rightly, it is the danger that any individual amendments, corrections, reload from backups, being over-written by a general recovery fix, that stops anyone from independently fixing their historical posts.

That was the advice I was given, when I started re-coding the image text in my old threads to at least recover some pictures.

 

I had two backups, one on CD and the other on a flash drive. Due to moving and flooding, I lost both. If the fics aren't recoverable here, I'm kinda screwed.

So, mods. Update? Especially since it's been months since Grimby's comment about 'significant developments'?

 

I take it there is no update for this. I have several stories I'd like to recover from this site and move elsewhere, but if it's not gonna be fixed, then I will abandon hope for these stories.

 

I have not noticed the 'your stories have been cut off at a word limit do not panic' banner being up anymore.

 

The lack of reports can only mean one thing....invasion.

 

I removed it not too long ago since we didn't have any information and it had been up for so long.

Grimby has been on reduced time so he probably hasn't had time to look into it further. We haven't had any more information since the last update.

I'm sure you have, but I just like to double check... have you checked the wayback machine? It can be super time consuming to check every save it did, but several people have had luck.

 

mavjade Ahah, thanks for the info. So, back to waiting ...

 

*Jeopardy theme*

 

Definitely. Trebek never leads anyone wrong.

 

Tried it...didn't find a single one of my stories, so this is truly my last shot at recovering them.

 

Let's face it. At this rate, it's never going to become a possibility.

 

*hangs head, sobs forlornly*

 

Save your work on your computer. Relying on a message board to be a personal archive is dumb.

 

Would those more knowledgeable than I care to comment on using a 'cloud' for storage? For instance, 'clouds' are new, and do we know yet whether they a/break down, b/run out of storage space, or c/have formatting or truncation issues?

 

I have heard of cloud issues (being down, for example) in the news. All I'd say is if you go that route keep a backup that you can access in case of problems. (Backup on a USB stick, for example).

 

If I ever did any written work on here, I would email it to myself and save it elsewhere.