[Scribe, etc] Witt XI is shut down.

[GV]

13897 threads, 169575 posts, and 15 years and ten months - No Wittenberg lasted as long or was as stable.  In terms of stability, of course, this new Witt so far has been stellar.

This is the first Wittenberg change since reunision.  It is the first Kingdom-Witt change since Ben left in 2005.  And it is the first Witt change with people leading the way who, in part, never knew Ben Madison or received direction from him - or at least his blessing - to make that change.

It is also the first Witt change that has been what would might call a 'production'.  In times past, a Witt change was instant: the Ziu was changed over immediately.  The courts were changed over.  Everything was changed over in one stroke.  This time 'round, it took us four months to get things switched over, and I salute everyone who made this thing work as smoothly as they have.

For me, the change to this new Witt was mandated, if for no other reason, due to the lack of ProBoards offering a robust and native archive functionality.  AD and Lüc have done yoeman's work on that issue, but even they were not able to get everything archived.  The only approach is a brute-force one, and that process continues.

Secondly, there was the aspect of ProBoards being a free service which could be yanked offline on a whim at any time.  Yes, ProBoards continues to be rock-stable, but in 2004, who could have foreseen the eventual demise of the stable and brilliant Blizzard Entertainment at the hands of its corporate parent, ActiVision?

By bringing the code for Witt in-house, we to an extent control our destiny.  The backup system for Witt is not as easy to deal with on Lüc's end as we would like, but it allows for native archival functionality.  And if we need to switch hosting provider, we can.  We are not handcuffed to ProBoards or any other company.

It was with heavy heart, however, I read just a bit ago what I believe to be the last post ever on Wittenberg XI:

https://talossa.proboards.com/thread/13897/goodbye?page=1&scrollTo=169575

It is the only post on this thread, and when one realizes just how much Talossan history lives there, it's pretty remarkable: three-eighths of Kingdom history on that forum.

Archiving Witt XI continues.  I have archived up to thread 10,000 in my first pass-through with an HTML single-file add-on for Firefox.  I hope to get this pass-through done by 4 April, it being the last day of what will be a twenty-one coronavirus-avoiding home-stay for me.

Again, I salue Pete H. for setting up talossa.proboards.com, AD for helping to keep it going, and everyone who ever worked on that forum.  Witt is dead.  Long live Witt.

GV, Scribe, etc.