I'll address it. If I get flamed or shut down, so be it.
First of all, I must once more acknowledge the incredible gift Scot Finnie has provided to BATL over the years. Generosity has limits I know; we cannot expect him to continue spending money on something that no longer interests him. Costs were not discussed much in his announcement but I suspect they are north of $3000 per year. Even if I had that sort of $$$ lying around I don't have the energy to take ownership, and at my age I don't see myself as a long-term solution. You may be a better candidate - who knows?
My experience with selling a forum usually means that the buyer is some sort of sterile forum aggregator like VerticalScope - who then stuff it with advertisements. I'm not saying that will happen with SNF, but that may be the only option he ends up with. He would probably shutter the forum before that happens.
Since discussion of the sale seems to be prohibited over there - the announcement was locked down -  I discuss it here. The announcement has basically killed SNF anyway.
So what to do? Well, Landzdown Forum has been kind enough to host us - and I think BATL will fit in well here. I plan to transfer my contributions here and build for the future. I loved my time on SNF and I think I paid my dues there. But it's better to let Scot close it down when he wants. Nuff said.

Considering that Scot's announcement only has 63 views, of which I know I've read/re-read it at least 3 times and have no doubt the other Scot's members who are here at LzD also read it at least once.  Bottom line, it is not likely that Scot will get any offers for taking it over.  :(

QuoteI plan to transfer my contributions here and build for the future.

Please do!  In fact, everyone is encouraged to review the threads in BATL and post/quote here the topics with important information that you don't want to lose.   

I have nothing to add here.

Quote from: Corrine on December 03, 2021, 03:17:21 PM
Considering that Scot's announcement only has 63 views, of which I know I've read/re-read it at least 3 times and have no doubt the other Scot's members who are here at LzD also read it at least once.  Bottom line, it is not likely that Scot will get any offers for taking it over.  :(

QuoteI plan to transfer my contributions here and build for the future.

Please do!  In fact, everyone is encouraged to review the threads in BATL and post/quote here the topics with important information that you don't want to lose.

Well Scot has promised us an archive.

An archive, yes, but will it be a backup of the posts on Invision Community forum software?

This is a very timely post Ray!

I was on BATL earlier this morning, as there are a few threads on there that I had "bookmarked" as solutions for particularly difficult issues that got resolved for me.  I figured they were safer on an internet forum, where I could "always" access, forever and ever, instead of storing on my local machine.  But once again, I'm outsmarted by the real world.  I can't figure out how to print entire threads, or save the entire thread, so I've been "sharing" specific posts with myself.

Is there a better way?  If we're bringing most of the BATL membership here to LDF, it would be nice to pull forward a lot of the USEFUL knowledge base and "how to" tutorials, to share with future members.  Maybe that's not practical, but it would be ideal.  Anyone have any thoughts/suggestions on the matter?

Simple Machines Forum - the software provider for this board, used to have an Invision Power Board converter that would take IPB forum databases and convert them to SMF compatible databases.

Of course, this can't be done here at Landzdown because it would be too much to dump on their servers. Also, I'm not sure how we would integrate the SNF database into Landzdown seamlessly. However, if Scot does provide us with a database backup for SNF, it's possible that anyone of us could install that database on their own system and have access to the entire SNF history of postings. You wouldn't need to publicly serve it. It could be just for your own use. Note, though, it's going to be a BIG file, even compressed.

Simple Machines Forums software is free and opensource. You could download it and set it up on your own system, then use the converter to make the SNF database back up readable by SMF software on your own systems.

At least, I think this can be done. It's been a long while since I played with Simple Machines Forums software or database backups. Something to investigate, though; particularly for Josh, who probably has a server systems set up in his livingroom. ;)

Quote from: Corrine on December 04, 2021, 02:57:56 AM
An archive, yes, but will it be a backup of the posts on Invision Community forum software?

Yes, it will be IPB. However, see my post above this one.

Quote from: V.T. Eric Layton on December 04, 2021, 04:24:41 PM
At least, I think this can be done. It's been a long while since I played with Simple Machines Forums software or database backups. Something to investigate, though; particularly for Josh, who probably has a server systems set up in his livingroom. ;)

Nah, I have a dedicated room for my multiple computers and two servers ;)

More important than porting over an archive is keeping the institutional memory of SNF alive. I see a number of key figures have already joined us here, and others were already here. I have messaged Erik and encouraged him to register but so far no response.
A lot of forum technical help is in real-time, on-demand. It isn't a Wiki. For example, I really appreciated the help striker and Bruno gave me in 2008 to get WPA wifi going but today those posts would be irrelevant given advances in say Network Manager.

abarbarian will show up, I'm pretty sure.

What we really need around here is some new threads/new topics in this area (BATL). We can't keep replying to the two or three thread here and not posting anything new. Thanks to Ray for starting a couple. MORE, please. :)

I'll post something Linux related the next time I see a post worthy of resharing.

RayMac, thanks for sending me an email notifying me of the change.

Quote from: wa4chq on December 07, 2021, 01:15:40 PM
RayMac, thanks for sending me an email notifying me of the change.

Welcome  :)