The Lemon Fool

Anyone here happen to remember, or know, in which section of the old The Motley Fool site the Premium Bonds board was located?

XFool wrote:Anyone here happen to remember, or know, in which section of the old The Motley Fool site the Premium Bonds board was located?

It was in the 'Managing Your Finances' section. Here's an archived copy of the board...

https://web.archive.org/web/20161108192 ... 51350.aspx

Breelander wrote:It was in the 'Managing Your Finances' section.

Thanks Breelander! I thought it was but, when I looked at the main Finances board via The Way Back Machine, it listed entries for: Annuities & Drawdown to Money Saving Tips. The 'Show Me More' button was a live link but clicking on it failed. How did you get your link?

Umm. Sadly it doesn't really work does it? You can navigate one minute, the next you can't. And strangely I cannot seem to back out of any particular post once in it. Don't know if there is a Cookie issue or something like that. Or different pages recorded at different times therefore links not really making sense. Or simply pages not recorded.

XFool wrote:Umm. Sadly it doesn't really work does it? You can navigate one minute, the next you can't. And strangely I cannot seem to back out of any particular post once in it. Don't know if there is a Cookie issue or something like that. Or different pages recorded at different times therefore links not really making sense. Or simply pages not recorded.

Nothing to do with cookies. Pages were served from a back-end database, the entire Fool back catalogue was not thoroughly crawled by archive.org so inevitably only a small fraction of the posts are available; reaching the actual posts in archive.org is hit-and-miss. I believe a TMF user crawled the site with their own custom code, but can't recall who it was...

GS

XFool wrote: How did you get your link?

I started from boards.fool.co.uk in Nov. 2016...
https://web.archive.org/web/20161108191 ... ool.co.uk/

clicked Manage Your Finances, then the 'show me more>' link...
https://web.archive.org/web/20161108193 ... &sort=name

GoSeigen wrote:

XFool wrote:Umm. Sadly it doesn't really work does it? You can navigate one minute, the next you can't. And strangely I cannot seem to back out of any particular post once in it. Don't know if there is a Cookie issue or something like that. Or different pages recorded at different times therefore links not really making sense. Or simply pages not recorded.

Nothing to do with cookies. Pages were served from a back-end database, the entire Fool back catalogue was not thoroughly crawled by archive.org so inevitably only a small fraction of the posts are available; reaching the actual posts in archive.org is hit-and-miss. I believe a TMF user crawled the site with their own custom code, but can't recall who it was...

GS

I scraped (after checking the legal implications), HYP Practical, HYP Share Strategies, Investing for Income, Investment Strategies and Investment Trusts and Unit Trusts. Happy to pass them on to anyone who might be interested and who would use them in a manner considered 'fair use'.

RC

Breelander wrote:

XFool wrote: How did you get your link?

I started from boards.fool.co.uk in Nov. 2016...
https://web.archive.org/web/20161108191 ... ool.co.uk/

clicked Manage Your Finances, then the 'show me more>' link...
https://web.archive.org/web/20161108193 ... &sort=name

Oh. It was the 'Show Me More' link that failed for me. Though it did work on other archived boards. I could go to say 'Tax', via the link on the top 'Manage Your Finances' boards menu, so suspected 'Premium Bonds' was hiding somewhere. Perhaps it depends on which sample date is chosen?

GoSeigen wrote:Pages were served from a back-end database, the entire Fool back catalogue was not thoroughly crawled by archive.org so inevitably only a small fraction of the posts are available; reaching the actual posts in archive.org is hit-and-miss.

The more time that passes, the less relevance such an archive has anyway. Things change over time and old advice may not hold up so well.

At some point its main utility will be as a record of what was thought at the time. Historical sources, if you will. Frankly I am much more interested in what is being discussed here and now, rather than there and then.

That said, why didn't TMF just leaves the Boards up there? I don't think we really know what their reasons were for aborting. I suspect that the costs of running them exceeded the incremental revenue they were getting from people stumbling across them and then buying TMF products and services.

Lootman wrote:That said, why didn't TMF just leaves the Boards up there? I don't think we really know what their reasons were for aborting. I suspect that the costs of running them exceeded the incremental revenue they were getting from people stumbling across them and then buying TMF products and services.

Indeed, what left me dumbfounded is that a site focussed on investment was blind to the value of its own asset: namely, a thriving community.

If they'd asked me, I'd have advised them to seek to sell the boards as an ongoing concern to someone who thought they could make a go of it, and probably look for an ongoing relationship of mutual endorsement. Just posting on TMF itself would doubtless have reached a fair few potential buyers!

Of course that wouldn't necessarily be good for the community if new owners were under more pressure than lemonfool to monetise the asset, but on the other hand new owners wouldn't want to alienate their community. So rather than nasty things like excessive advertising, they might put more into seeking synergies with other sites and resources that complement the boards (without of course being in direct competition).

I suspect TMF tried all the wrong things in pursuit of monetising their boards in lead-up to the closure.

Breelander wrote:
I started from boards.fool.co.uk in Nov. 2016...
https://web.archive.org/web/20161108191 ... ool.co.uk/

When I heard that TMF was closing I emailed someone at Archive.org and asked them to try and save a copy, I got a response on 2016-11-08 that they were "going to try". I didnt hear from them again but it seems that's the date when a lot of the snapshots were saved.

Good job archive.org

Lanark wrote:When I heard that TMF was closing I emailed someone at Archive.org and asked them to try and save a copy...

When I heard that TMF was closing I archived as many as possible of the pages were important to me. You can do that yourself, for any page not yet archived the Wayback Machine says:

archive.org wrote:Hrm.
The Wayback Machine has not archived that URL.

This page is available on the web!
Help make the Wayback Machine more complete!
Save this url in the Wayback Machine

Yes but that only works for one page at a time, a sisyphean task for 18 years of posts.