Compuserve

I was often free-flagged on CIS and many other services so surfing was free. For the kids out there, in today's dollars CompuServe was about $20 an hour.

Perl parser to separate individual forum posts. I have about 400 megs of messages, on the order of 525,000 messages. I split each post into its own XML file, tagging the pieces (from, to, subject, etc.)

I've left the hard part of constructing the web software to make it all readable and searchable.

#: 126608 S0/Sysop's Corner 29-Oct-95 00:20:12 Sb: #126546-#Problem Uploading Files Fm: Betty Clay 76702,337 To: Shawn/Silent Paw 74777,2602 (X) This would be caused by the entire forum running out of blocks in the library. Steve handles that, and I'm sure he has noticed and requested more by now. It is quite likely that we won't get them before Monday, though. Sometimes there's no one around to handle the request on weekends. Like this message, some sections were "sysop" and perhaps should be considered non-public. My transcripts also have stuff from before and after the forum posts. Who knows, maybe someone would find interesting the "What's new this week" intro menu you'd see at login. Or better yet, the file libraries. Each section had a "data library". Each file showed a filename, timestamp and size, uploader PPN and name, and title line and keywords and a paragraph of description. I have some listings of the file areas. I may also have the original files I downloaded. All that could be linked into a new web version, too. Maybe there are some text-based public live group chats (conferences), too. So how could you organize all that into a web database and interface?

It would also make sense for me to improve my parser to separate out each email I sent or received. I'd be eager to release the public forum posts but I also don't want to release my private emails.

Am I going to trust my parser to have never made a mistake? Or do I need to read a half-million posts to confirm it didn't?

I have to believe that other people saved transcripts of CompuServe forums if not other services, too. Ideally there could be a way to add everyone's messages to the reconstruction. Indeed, google ' "Sb:" "Fm:" "To:" sysop cis ' and you'll see other bits and pieces of CompuServe transcripts. https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Sb%3A%22+%22Fm%3A%22+%22To%3A%22+sysop+c… I don't know what it was like inside CIS back then, but I can't help but wonder if any magtape archives left the building. I asked an Amiga forum owner if he saved anything... he said "no" but maybe other forum owners did. As an aside, keep in mind that the people running CIS forums held a contract with CIS and they were paid. For many, it was their sole income. Some ran several forums and made quite a bit of money at it. I was very surprised to learn the web-based http://forums.compuserve.com/ existed until three-four years ago. - John