It really is a terrible loss that it was not possible to get the Mobius archive back, but there are at least a few snippets left at various sites.

There are a few ways to reclaim data that has been lost. Many people probably know about this but I thought I could post some links anyway.

1. Google caches all searchable web pages but it seems that they have already purged most of the Mobius posts. I was looking for some of my old posts but they were already gone. In any case, this is a link to get at what ever is left:

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:mhvf.net

Click on "cached" and you'll get the version saved at Google. It's worth moving fast since most of it is likely to be gone in a few more weeks. I assume Google have their own backup but it not likely anyone can get access to it.

2. The Internet Archive has saved some Mobius material, from Jan 2000 to Feb 2004. I was able to re-claim some of my Sitges 2002 report. There are also some columns, posts, etc. Here is the link:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://mhvf.net

You can click away and access the forums and many posts, although the archive is of course very far from complete.

I would love to hear if there are any additional ways of finding archived Mobius material. I'm looking for a few posts of my own that I didn't keep copies of...

The archive.org site probably contains a sizeable portion of the board, it is more a matter of retrieving it.

I'll be happy to locate and post links to interesting postings as I have time... however I would propose we agree on a more or less unified scheme to post these into the new board so as to keep things organised.

There is now a "Vol.1" Thread in this subforum which - amongst other postings - contains the poll results for 2002 and the William Lustig Q&A. Should we perhaps create a separate threads for each topic, i.e. a separate one for each years' polls, for Q&A sessions etc.?

Is there any way to search within the Archive.org pages? For instance, I'm looking for posts on my visit to Something Weird and the Brussels film festival, and they may indeed be archived, but I haven't got a clue how to find them!

I was lucky that an archived version of my own homepage contained a link to some other posts so that I could click through and access them at Archive.org, but there does not seem to be an easy way to search within the archive.

I am afraid there is no way to search the archive.org content - one has to rely on internal links from archived postings or on external ones to retrieve addresses (e.g. several sites linked to the Bill Lustig interview).

I just figured out that if you know the board and number of the post, you can access it directly by just typing in this information at the end of the Archive.org address. For instance, I had an old link on my homepage to my Mike Vraney post, and found the archived version easily. Unfortunately there seem to be very few posts archived from 2004.

Yes, please create separate threads for everything that's recovered -- it will be easier for me to organize that way. If anyone is able to recover reviews or other key posts that they'd like to eventualy restore/repost, just back it up on your own hard drive for now until we're back at permanent digs. No need to repost here because this space will eventually be abandoned.

If I understood the archive.org webpage it takes it six months to sweep across the web and update. There's a bit listed for February 2004 (and before) but there may be more showing up from more recent months in due time. It's a bit hit or miss but something is better than nothing.

You can also look for potentially cached postings using www.alexa.com and Yahoo's search engine. Combinations of a poster's name, mhvf, subject or subjects can be added to help increase chances of finding what you are looking for.

Aha - so maybe in a few months we'll see the more recent posts archived. Sounds promising.