So, the first stage is to clean up the main site of Massassi. This means a complete scrap of the current site code and design. Jon`C's offered to pick up the client portion of this so he has something for his portfolio, so I'm going to be responsible with the backend ("the hard part" :P).

My first question to you all is:

How much do you all value the CONTENT of the editors corner?

The new design will have a revamped comments, mod area, and news system that all uses one singular user database (the forum's), so in high interest of ditching that old user DB and cruft, I'd like to start it on a new clean slate. I will not be deleting any levels/mods/textures/guides/etc. Ever.

The proposed solutions to the issue of moving to a much better, efficient, and usable system are as follows:

1. Wipe it all.
2. Start a new system, but leave the old one at a hidden URL for read-only viewing.
3. Don't do it at all.

Vote up top and give your opinions, folks. Note that I reserve the right to veto all of you for any reason, especially if you're stupid about this and not taking it seriously.

Edit: I'm keeping the level comments using a claiming and marking system. Now I just want to know about the Editor's Corner.

Wipe. A clean start is a clean start.

I think if you wipe comments on the levels, it'll only hurt. The levels haven't changed in the years since they've been released, so it's not like the comments are old or outdated, they are still perfectly valid. If I thought a map was good 5 years ago, I doubt I would say it was bad now. I might say better things have been released since then, but it wouldn't change the quality of the map.

If you're keeping the levels, keep the comments they are often a good indication of whether a level is worth downloading.

For EC start fresh but keep the old entries available for viewing.

Couchman: don't misunderstand the reason we're doing this. We're doing this to move away from being locked into the old system as much as possible. There's no realistic way to merge the level comments as they are now with the new system, otherwise I would. So in light of that, I think it's better to delete it all. Especially since a vast majority of levels have 0-1 comments, and few people read them all.

I guess they could be archived. Or not, I never read most of them (except for TODOA/DM).

Assuming they're in a database it's incredibly easy. Even if they're not a couple of preg_match()'s on the pages could easily extract the comments.

And do what with the user data associated with said comments?

I'de say if there is a large amount of comments (we can randomly agree on an amount) then you should keep them, or at least the most well written ones. If there arent many comments on that map or if they are just not read-worthy then I wouldn't care if they were gone. I'de keep all major reviews too.

Then again, it isn't my website, just saying what I think would be best.

That means I won't be able to re-read my defense of my fantastic level from 2002 about how duel levels are supposed to be small.

http://www.massassi.net/levels/files/2177.shtml

The reviews system is completely different (and often forgotten :P) page. I'll likely just copy that over for now and throw it into some static pages, because there's not much there and it'll never be touched again.

And I don't think anyone wants to be the one responsible for going through the levels deciding what comments are worth keeping.

Well I don't think that really matters. I'd just take name/comment/date and apply that to levels in the new system.

It most certainly matters. It will create conflicts with anyone in the new system with the same name.

Just take it as text, don't associate it with an account or create an "Old Account" flag that isn't used by the login system.

...which would still create a conflict when people look at the pages and go "I didn't write that".

Then mark it on the page in some way. Label it "Archived Comments" or something, I just think that not including the comments is a bit of a cop out.

I used to read a lot of the comments for SP maps and I remember finding them helpful, but then again you can really just look at the rating and how MANY comments there were to determine if they were worthwhile

Yay for opinions, eh?

Keeping this move as simplistic as possible is never a cop out.

I think you should ditch the EC but I think it's in everyone's best interests to keep the level comments/ratings. If you move everything over to a new file db and lose all the info about them you're doing a great disservice to the community. What you could do, if you're intent on moving everything over to a vbulletin db *cry* is to output/save static versions of every page and link them from your new level pages (they're all essentially static anyway).

I don't understand what's so hard about writing an importer script to pull in all the comments. If you want a unified user database (good idea) you should just have a way for us to claim/link our accounts. Or if that is too much trouble, import all the users from the level db system into the vb system but translate their name from, for example, "Brian" to "Unregistered_Brian" or something.

I think the ratings are valuable, too.

Please make sure you backup everything (including the db) to a separate disk before you undertake this, in case anything goes wrong.

If you're so set on a course of action already, why the hell did you make a poll?

Everything's already backed up to Amazon S3. It's not going anywhere. (And yes I checked the backup, it is valid)

The forums might be moved over later as well, and moving the vB user table wouldn't be difficult (the user table is actually sensible), but I don't want to touch the forums just yet as it is the entire life of this site currently.

The ratings won't be going anywhere (except removing the ridiculous individual tracking of every vote), but I will be implementing a much more fair algorithm for it using current votes.

Again, moving the current db into a hidden old URL was one of the options and I'm really not against doing that if people really value that information.

Some of the comments on there are hilarious.. please do not remove them.

If needed, I could always add them to jkdf2.net since I am an admin there.

What?

I'm having a serious debate about it, is that alright? I'm not outright rejecting anything, even if it may sound like it. Get serious or get out.

Wipe it, but migrate the comments to the new system.

No offense, but what are you wiping if you're migrating it?

I think I get it though guys, I'll look into converting all of the comments over somehow. I figured based on how little the level comments system actually is used in recent years that no one would really care anymore (There has only been 130 comments made in the past 2 1/2 years, for instance).

I'll likely do the same thing I was going to do with levels, where people could claim them via email or manually. The rest will be displayed in a dimmed area at the top, to differentiate them from the rest of the new comments.

What about the EC guys? Anyone else really care about anything there enough to keep it at all? I am not migrating anything there as it has absolutely no place in the new system (it has nowhere to migrate to), so it would only live on in some old folder for viewing).

Definitely. Just don't identify a user by their name, use a unique ID instead.

Uh, no offense taken? If your wiping the old PHP files off, migrate the database comments from one database to the new database, assuming this is how you are doing it...

I'm more curious for the ones who say don't change anything:

Do you seriously not want me to touch the main site at all? Perhaps I should remake this thread into round 2 and explain more thoroughly.