42 réponses à ce sujet

[giftfish]

Due to the impending closure of both these forums and the old BSN, the BioWare player community is about to lose access to a wealth of information.

 

So far, preservation efforts seem to be focused on building a new forum community, which is fine. However, my personal, primary concern right now is the preservation of the following:

• Blogs -- Many old blogs contain a huge amount of information about game mechanics, character customization, and more.
• Projects -- There are at least 8340 projects (mods) hosted on BSN. Many of these were never moved to Nexusmods or ModDB and cannot be found anywhere else. Come October, they will cease to exist.
• Specific Forum Posts -- There are a slew of forum posts that act as "project pages", in addition to an abundance of information on game mechanics and modding.

Currently there's a thread on ME3Explorer OT section where we're discussing options as to what can be done. I encourage anyone interested in helping to drop in and participate in the discussion. I'm willing to set up a new forum section on the ThaneMOD forum, a Google Doc, a WordPress, coordinate with Nexusmods, or whatever we determine needs to be done to best preserve this content.

 

BioWare's DAO Toolset & Wiki

I'm going to link to my post in the other thread, b/c this is a major issue that the community needs an answer about. If BW is considering actually *removing* access to this content, it also needs to be preserved.

 

EDIT -- I'm assuming closure of the forums includes blogs and project hosting. If it doesn't, it would be very good for BW to communicate this to the community.

[CreeperLava]

I am running HTTrack to backup the forum.bioware.com website, FYI.

[PapaCharlie9]

I suggest contacting Fexelea. Also, see this thread:

https://forum.biowar...-collaboration/

[giftfish]

I suggest contacting Fexelea. Also, see this thread:

https://forum.biowar...-collaboration/

 

If BW is indeed closing Projects -- which we likely won't have a confirmation on until Monday -- downloads should be placed on a legitimate mod hosting site like Nexusmods. Many of the projects are already hosted there, but many are not. Nexus has also been very good when it comes to allowing uploading of content without original mod author permission under circumstances such as these.

 

If Fexlea has the desire, space, and resources to relocate and host all the blog entries related to game mechanics, character customization, modding, and whatnot, then that's great. I'd still rather see this content moved to something more public, but that it's preserved is my primary concern. Right now the biggest problem I see is that searching for blogs on BSN is glitched; no page numbers appear in the search results, so you are limited to accessing only the top 10 results for any search. There is literally no way to do a manual preservation of blogs due to this.

 

Mostly I wanted to move this information into it's own thread for visibility and discussion; it's getting drowned out in the 75+ pages of the main thread.

[mrjack]

Have you tried contacting Dark0ne directly at the Nexus. He just got done archiving another mod site (FileFront/Gamefront) that got closed down and it was massive compared to the number of BSN projects (100,000+ files). I don't know how he did it it from a technical viewpoint but at the very least he should be able to offer some advice and would almost certainly be pleased to do so.

[Fexelea]

I can host any data needed, and we have a dedicated blog that can be used for the articles. I also want to move the forum content as a lot of good information is here as forum posts

The site I run is a fan site but is well ranked and highly trafficked. We have proprietary software that can assist with many things, although mods is not something I've thought of before.

Please let me know how I can help

[Shades of Night]

This. I think it's very important to know whether or not things other than forum posts themselves will be removed as well. Because I'm not sure that an archive of the forum will also archive things like the projects, and it would be a huge shame to permanently lose these sorts of things.

[giftfish]

 

Have you tried contacting Dark0ne directly at the Nexus. He just got done archiving another mod site (FileFront/Gamefront) that got closed down and it was massive compared to the number of BSN projects (100,000+ files). I don't know how he did it it from a technical viewpoint but at the very least he should be able to offer some advice and would almost certainly be pleased to do so.

Yes, I'm aware of the recent port, and yes, Robin cares a lot about continuity of mod availability when sites go down.

I don't want to waste his time, however, so I was waiting for direct confirmation from BioWare. The DAO Toolset and Wiki are caught up in this mess, as well, so we need to be clearer about what's happening.

[Tarshana]

I've started downloading the mods and uploading them to a dropbox once we can figure this all out. (I'm Tarshana on the Nexus forums). These mods are highly downloaded and people might want them in the future. I think this whole situation is a horrible mess and Bioware was always fan-based before EA merged. Since I can't message the mod authors directly (those who've not ported to Nexus mods or other websites) I'm going to hold onto them  in case anyone wants a copy. 

[mrjack]

  Yes, I'm aware of the recent port, and yes, Robin cares a lot about continuity of mod availability when sites go down.

I don't want to waste his time, however, so I was waiting for direct confirmation from BioWare. The DAO Toolset and Wiki are caught up in this mess, as well, so we need to be clearer about what's happening.

 

Just trying to help if I can. I'm a mod author so this is important to me too but I'm not particularly popular or well-connected and I have no web hosting technical knowledge so I'm not sure what use I'd be.

[Tarshana]

I can host any data needed, and we have a dedicated blog that can be used for the articles. I also want to move the forum content as a lot of good information is here as forum posts

The site I run is a fan site but is well ranked and highly trafficked. We have proprietary software that can assist with many things, although mods is not something I've thought of before.

Please let me know how I can help

 

Fexelea, do you have a section ready for the Tool Kit wiki? I can help by rebuilding the pages on your website so the information isn't lost. 

[giftfish]

So... does anyone have a twitter account where they can tweet BioWare and try to get a response about Projects and the DAO Toolset and Wiki? Really nice that they drop this announcement on a Friday and then completely ignore all relevant questions.

[Tarshana]

I have an old account, I'll send them a tweet 

[alschemid]

So... does anyone have a twitter account where they can tweet BioWare and try to get a response about Projects and the DAO Toolset and Wiki? Really nice that they drop this announcement on a Friday and then completely ignore all relevant questions.

I have asked on facebook, but got no answer, I doubt I will ever get one. But someone asked about the N7 HQ and another asked about the DA Keep both are stored on the social.bioware.com and Bioware said that they have no official plans to make changes to N7HQ.

[Shades of Night]

I have asked on facebook, but got no answer, I doubt I will ever get one. But someone asked about the N7 HQ and another asked about the DA Keep both are stored on the social.bioware.com and Bioware said that they have no official plans to make changes to N7HQ.

I believe they also made a reply on these forums saying that the Keep would be remaining, too (it was in one of the Social Groups, no idea which one).

 

Now if only we could get information on the BSN projects, blogs and toolset wiki.

[giftfish]

I believe they also made a reply on these forums saying that the Keep would be remaining, too (it was in one of the Social Groups, no idea which one).

Now if only we could get information on the BSN projects, blogs and toolset wiki.

Do you have a link to this post?

[Shades of Night]

Ah! Finally found it, it was in Feedback and Suggestions: https://forum.biowar...loses-for-good/

[giftfish]

Ah! Finally found it, it was in Feedback and Suggestions: https://forum.biowar...loses-for-good/

 

Ah, thanks for the link.

 

It's  great and everything that they're keeping it, but the Keep is a completely separate site. I'm not at all familiar with it, but it's not connected in any way to the old BSN (or this new forum) URL-wise.

 

In other words, the fact that it's "safe" doesn't have any bearing on the DAO Toolset/wiki, or Projects/Blogs pages. We still need an answer about this content.

[Fexelea]

Fexelea, do you have a section ready for the Tool Kit wiki? I can help by rebuilding the pages on your website so the information isn't lost. 

 

I can set up a wiki subdomain and import content if we know that this is going down (don't want to create duplicates for the sake of it)

 

Has anyone gotten confirmation? If so, I'll start immediately

[BioWareMod06]

This thread has been locked. Please refer to this thread when discussing the forum closure or forum alternatives: https://forum.biowar...ommunityforums/

 

Thank you.

[Conal Pierse]

I am reopening this topic, as it is different in purpose from other threads about the closure, and could not be discussed elsewhere without significantly impacting communication efforts.

So long as it remains on topic, this can remain open.

 

We are looking into what we can do to assist with archiving, though I have no further details at this time.

[Tarshana]

Thank you for reopening the lines of communication!

 

We need to know how to prepare if Bioware is closing down the Project part of the Legacy BSN website. If you are, we would like permission to host these mods with Nexus mods (where many of the project creators have moved their mods). There are a handful of modders that I cannot get a hold of because messaging does not work on the Legacy BSN. We don't want to lose these mods and projects because they're a part of our gaming history Bioware created an empire with DA:O, let us continue to preserve its history. We appreciate your consideration in this manner. 

Edit: Also , what are the plans for the registered game content? I bought DA:O years ago before the Origin platform so any time I've re-downloaded DA:O I've had to go to the BSN project site to download the registered game content.

[CreeperLava]

Thank you for reopening the lines of communication!

 

We need to know how to prepare if Bioware is closing down the Project part of the Legacy BSN website. If you are, we would like permission to host these mods with Nexus mods (where many of the project creators have moved their mods). There are a handful of modders that I cannot get a hold of because messaging does not work on the Legacy BSN. We don't want to lose these mods and projects because they're a part of our gaming history Bioware created an empire with DA:O, let us continue to preserve its history. We appreciate your consideration in this manner. 

Edit: Also , what are the plans for the registered game content? I bought DA:O years ago before the Origin platform so any time I've re-downloaded DA:O I've had to go to the BSN project site to download the registered game content.

Seconded. Having BioWare's cooperation would greatly help. Please keep us up to date regarding your stance on this .

[giftfish]

I am reopening this topic, as it is different in purpose from other threads about the closure, and could not be discussed elsewhere without significantly impacting communication efforts.
So long as it remains on topic, this can remain open.

We are looking into what we can do to assist with archiving, though I have no further details at this time.

 

I appreciate you re-opening the topic. I also hope you can appreciate the time-sensitive nature of the situation BioWare has put it's customers in. BioWare created this time table, not us. We're only asking for additional details so we have full understanding of what's about to happen.

To be clear, we are not *only* asking what's going to happen with hosted Blogs and Projects. We are asking what's going to happen with BioWare's own DAO Toolset and Wiki, as well as with the DLC and Game Patch downloads that pre-date Origin (and are not available on Origin) and are hosted on Legacy BSN. Is BioWare's goal to close the entire Legacy BSN site?

The DLC and Game Patch downloads is vital to users retaining functionality of their games. In addition, many folks still actively use the DAO Toolset and wiki, and download mods from Legacy BSN.

No disrespect intended, but "No futher details at this time" simply isn't good enough. The questions we're asking of BioWare should have been anticipated prior to this announcement and made clear as part of the announcement.

[Shades of Night]

Okay I'm pretty sure we need to archive the Blogs and BSN Projects.

 

I just took a look at the BSN Projects because I was considering trying to pop them into the Wayback Machine if I could to save the written information on each project, but... The bit where you have to select a language first before getting to the site? That's all it'll save. Which means it may also be a problem for anyone trying to archive those pages unless their archiving utility can specifically get around it.