Classic/Old Style, Redirection, Locking.

[John Robinson]

To facilitate transition to a 100% database-driven website, articles posted prior to Sept 5th, 2001 will be locked and will not be able to receive further commentary. This will be effective sometime next week, I will attempt to give 7 days of notice (via the posting program) prior to locking them completely. This will allow active discussions on these older threads to be continued to new threads.

As a consequence, I have removed the "Old Style" link from articles posted since Sept 5th, 2001. "Old Style" (/forum/) URLs for such articles will now redirect to the new /focus/ URL.

After the locking, the old /forum/ articles will exist in a read-only state. I will attempt to automatically redirect replies to these old articles to a new thread, allowing discussion of old articles to continue.

[Constitution Day]

Funny, my wife says the same about me sometimes.

[B Knotts]

That must be why they're now out of business!

Perhaps...but that does not explain why Miller is still in business.

[ppaul]

.....the brewery closed down in July 1999. The World's Largest Six-Pack has been painted white

Too bad. It was one of those kitschy pieces of authentic Americana that are fading all too quickly from existence. I remember many an Old Style brewery tour. Great place to take out-of-town guests. The end of the tour was the highlight - the authentic old-world style brewery pub, with free ice-cold glasses full of all the G. Heileman beers for sampling - a guaranteed late afternoon buzz.

[rickmoe]

I'm 51. I think that explains it.

[Askel5]

As long as we can get to them ... =)

Thanks for the bump to Silly's oh-so-silly thread, Cool Guy ... had no idea the pager window existed.

I feel like some old geezer who rode a horse into Free Republic and now is learning how to use their own personal starship to navigate the site.

[John Robinson]

I was planning to announce this fact when the archives search came back up; but since you asked...

Many of those were silently reactivated a few days ago. There are still about 40-50,000 articles that have some form of "la times, angeles times, wa post" in them, and they are unavailable until they can be further reviewed. We'll probably take volunteers to review 20-50 at a time for possible copyrighted material. The reason they were pulled in the first place is because of possible LA Times/Wash Post content.

[McGruff]

Let's Roll! and thanks for all you do!

[SarahW]

How will the loss of the "old style" button affect the ability to see all posts in a thread at one time?

I dislike having to jump between packs of 50 posts. Will we be able to set the number of posts we would like to view? Will we have an option allowing us to see all posts at one time in a longer thread?

[timestax]

I guess they got too big...Will losse a lot of Freepers, but I guess that is the plan, Oh well.

[timestax]

lose

[timestax]

Oh well, I guess we got TOO BIG..like the best restaurant in town that is so good, you can't get in !

It sure will be boring....

[lonestar]

Enjoying it more, too, I bet.

[rickmoe]

You know it buddy!!!

[Born to Conserve]

Why don't you convert your days to 26 hours, and then with the extra two hours a day you would have time to write a program that would convert the old data to the new format. . . ?

[annalex]

The West is Top and Last.

[Zviadist]

YIKES!!!!!! NO more "old style"??? It can't be true! I hate new style; I hated New Coke; I hate "new and improved". Do we have to have New Coke at FR?

Oh well, I am a reactionary. What can you expect.

[RonDog]

With the "New Style" format, will there be any way to see a FULL LIST of all the screen names in a MEGA-"ping list" - beyond the first 97 characters - as there was with the "Old Style?"

[American Preservative]

Great question, RonDog! Mega-Ping-List-Old-Style bump! : )