Seriously? All the old posts are gone forever?

Is there really no way to see posts from before 2022 now?
The link to the old board format stopped working today. I just used it yesterday.

There is so much info/research time/effort put into those previous posts, by myself and others, on my boards and others.

Am I missing something, or is there no way to access them anymore?

Dreamer

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I noticed that, too. The “old” Fool seems to have been retired. I’ve had some luck viewing old boards using the Wayback Machine but it’s hit or miss and not a viable solution beyond amusement purposes.

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Thank you for posting this. Please bring forth the pitchforks.

The boards suddenly went down 20:00 UTC yesterday while I was still frantically trying to rescue invaluable history. Unless The Motley Fool decides to do the right thing, a lot of the history of e.g. the dot com bubble will be lost. Not to mention the legacy of many fools.

The very first post:

Fast forward 25 years, the silence and lack of discussing important decisions with the community is stunning, and I’m not sure how to interpret this:

image
(https://www.fool.com/community/community-mission/)

I’ve managed to save* quite a lot. Sadly, not nearly enough.


* Disclaimer: Done strictly within MF’s ToS, i.e. hundreds of hours of work.

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There is no worth in establishing relationships and participating in building friendships here. In 2013 or so Motley Fool destroyed a living community of countless fools who knew each other, talked to each other every day.

Now they’re stepping on you, too, as if you are no more than an anthill.

Havr fun with this.

truthisntstupid/notyouagain

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I’ll always believe I was part of something wonderful and that 2009/10/11/12 was sort of the golden age of the Fool.

But the majority of us knew each other only by username. Most of us didn’t know each other outside of the Fool.

But we enjoyed each other’s company. Any hour of the day, including the wee hours of the morning, someone was always there.

Until the Fool pulled the plug on that vibrant online community and we never heard from each other again.

If you have friends here, learn who each other is. Because the Gardners don’t care about you. You and your friends are unimportant to them. Someday it can all disappear with no chance to say goodbye.

truthisntstupid/notyouagain

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I get you are bitter, and perhaps justifiably so…but this is like Millennials and GenXers and Boomers comparing generations. I largely skipped the time period you reference, but was around from 1999-2003 fairly heavily, and then intermittently until about 2016 when I returned regularly.

So all the eras and all the history is important.
Why it can’t remain in a read-only format, or be easily-searchable on these new boards is beyond me.

So my guess is there is a way…just hoping some from TMF will shed some light on how that process now would work?

Dreamer

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“just hoping some from TMF will shed some light on how that process now would work?”

You are assuming that they care.

truthisntstupid/notyouagain

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I noticed I can search for my previous iteration of my username “DreamerDad” but only if I search on Saul’s board. Which, ironically, I am no longer allowed/approved to post on.

Not sure if this link will work for others, but here is example:
https://discussion.fool.com/search?q=dreamerdad

So why can’t I do that for my own board? Did TMF save all of Saul’s old posts, but not other boards?

Dreamer

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TMF may have shuffled or lost some or all of their earlier staff helpers, or volunteers when this new Discourse format was made live. I don’t know if any were paid positions or were all just volunteers… But there seems to be gaps…

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While I get why it’d be a hassle to migrate everything to the new boards, cutting access altogether is beyond me too. Takes minimal resources to keep a static site up and running.

Here’s the closest thing to an explanation that I’ve found. A recent reply to a question asked 28/10:


Another good thread is here (1/11):

And here (9/10):

And here (22/9):

And …

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That is correct. Saul’s board was saved. Every other board is now in the dustbin of history.

I started a thread about that subject here:

–Peter

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That is pretty crappy.
So a bunch of clowns that rode bloated overvalued momentum stocks during a nonsensical bull market get all their historical posts (you know…important stuff…like defending 40-60x P/S ratios and sticking their head in the sand regarding macro and valuations) but the rest of us are chopped liver, eh?

Nevermind that the average clone indulging in that echo chamber is probably down 50%+ YTD, and has erased all of 2021 gains and most of 2020 gains…they need to be the protected poster child of TMF.

Didn’t a TMFer crush everyone in the CAPS thingy because all he did was short stocks?

If my previous board history is gone, I am not sure I see the point in investing my time/effort in building it’s future here.

Dreamer

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Starting to get it yet?

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I am a data packrat. For example, I save a lot of email. Many years ago I started a mailing list for participants in a hobby in my state. Right now my folder on Yahoo mail for older messages on that list has 62,888 messages. I have a similar collection on a 2nd email account. All that despite ALL the messages from day one being archived on the mailing list system itself.

Like I said, I am a data packrat. As such I sympathize with the feelings of those who have lost so much great board history. I understand how you feel.

The thing is, though, that I just about never refer back to any of those old messages on that list. Likewise, I wonder how much anyone referred back to what has been lost here. New folks, who probably needed that great stuff the most, had no way to know it was there. Or how to find it. Or how to pick out the good stuff from the rest, the needles in the haystack.

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I get your analogy, but can’t really agree that a bunch of emails are the same as the thoughts around investment decisions captured in a moment in time, with all the macro hindsight that comes with experience.

Why were some investments more successful than others? Was it because they were under the radar (NVDA exploding in DC space, or TTD in nascent CTV space) or the macro backdrop at the time. Why did some fail for the same reasons. Was it luck, was it skill…what were the common denominators for the good and the bad investments.

You often get reminded of some stocks that were too far ahead of its time and/or suffered perhaps an unwarranted beatdown and now their time has come for a 2nd look.

You were able to sort by author, by thread, by recs, by board.

I have teenage and soon-to-be college aged kids. I first starting writing a lot on TMF around age 26 in 1999…clueless about my 401k or these suretrade, etrade, and ameritrade accounts, and growth of the internet. I spent 2/3rds of my time on the road for about 18-month stretch…hotels get boring and message boards were an outlet. Seeing old board posts was like coming across a video interview of yourself 20 years ago, and one in which you never watched since first taping it. Like a photo album made of words.

My approach changed with my work/business and new family responsibilities. So did my writings.

When my work 401k allowed for stock investment, after years of focusing on work/business, I suddenly found myself returning in 2015 and catching a wave. I questioned valuations all along the way. I had good ideas and bad ideas.

And everything above can be said of reading the thoughts of other posters, too.

That is why I found the old messages useful.

Dreamer

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I used to do it maybe once a month or so. I would be writing a reply, remember an earlier post with a link to a relevant story in it, track it down (I was pretty good remembering a couple of unique search terms from the post) and then having a better handle on the current reply.

Not something that will change the course of history, but it was a convenience, at least for me.

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Well, I’m “new folks” and things I’ve read and found is of immense value. It’s akin to the written account of the oral history of the modern stock market and simply cannot be compared to an email folder. There’s no substitute for it. Ragingbull is gone, AOL is gone, Yahoo is gone. The old boards is/was all that’s left.


Let me quote Wikipedia on the dot-com bubble for example:

Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Composite stock market index rose 400%, only to fall 78% from its peak by October 2002, giving up all its gains during the bubble. During the dot-com crash, many online shopping companies, such as Pets.com, Webvan, and Boo.com, as well as several communication companies, such as Worldcom, NorthPoint Communications, and Global Crossing, failed and shut down. Some companies that survived, such as Amazon, lost large portions of their market capitalization, with Cisco Systems alone losing 80% of its stock value.

Wanna know how investors reasoned and argued about Cisco’s valuation? It’s all there. Or how about Worldcom? It’s there. There’s even a board named “Worldcom Survivors”. The debate and skepticism about Amazon is there, a board that apparently got so heated that it resulted in the creation of a separate board:

Date: 7/16/1998
Gang,

If you’d like to continue the discussion of censorship, please do so here. I’ll be reading and take all suggestions into consideration. Unfortunately, the Amazon board is not the place for it.
[…]

AOL, Excite@home :scream: , Enron, Echelon, eToys.com, stamps.com, … All there. People’s beliefs and predictions about the present and the future. All there.


There’s also much more than things related to the stock market. @LifeOfDreamer has like a life story on those boards. I’d say a better analogy than a bunch of emails would be shutting down Facebook and wiping all data.

I guess this comes down to where one’s coming from. Some have invested a lot and have things there they care about, others haven’t. I feel we shouldn’t generalize or make assumptions how people value what’s on those boards.

-Raylight

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Celera (CRA) and the quest for the genome!
Lernout and Hauspie (LHSP) fraud in speech tech!
The Gorilla Game - an eerily familiar momentum-based trading approach that has a kinship (imo) to modern Saul board approach.

All this was detailed, hailed, lambasted, debated…now lost.

I wasn’t on TMF as much during 2007-2009 while GFC was unfurling, but I imagine just as many great lessons to glean during that period, and also just a history book into the mindsight of investors (and people in general) going thru that period.

Dreamer

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Seems like just about everyone talked about gorillas during that period. I really wondered until I found out why. The Gorilla Game board is really interesting. Reading a bit there right now. Here’s a helpful 22 year old reply from @Goofyhoofy for anyone with gorilla FOMO:

{{Where is this Gorilla board everyone keeps talking about. I haven’t been able to find it. (I feel like I’m being left out of the loop).}}

http://boards.fool.com/Messages.asp?id=1360002000000000

If you lose this link, at any time in the future you can just scroll to the bottom of any Fool posting board and type “Gorilla” in the “board” box (see it down there? in between “ticker” and “author”?), and you will be given a list of “close but no cigar” boards. As it turns out “Gorilla Game” board is the first choice.

(Source: https://boards.fool.com/gorrilla-board-12125360.aspx?sort=whole)

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It would have been interesting to compare the old Gorilla Game board to Saul’s board once this recession cycle is over. What are the similarities to then and now? This is really the first time Saul’s board participants have had to deal with a declining market, and I suspect we’re not done yet.

But, of course, that doesn’t matter because apparently history doesn’t matter at TMF any more. So instead of learning from it, we are going to repeat it.

As to personal finance, I regret that I did not copy off a few significant posts, such as the harpsichord post. But then again, the guy who posted that is dead so he doesn’t matter any more. Right TMF?

–Peter

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