This page is for discussing the contents of the The California Aggie page.
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About to go to bed otherwise I'd do this myself: Looks like the aggie website is different again. They broke all the old links (I'm pretty sure) — ack! That's a lot of links for us to fix. I don't think they have old articles up on the site, so we may not even be able to fix the links. Maybe we should start linking to archive.org, if possible?
Anyway, we need to revise the website section to indicate that they're now using Creative Media again, and archive the College Publisher section. Maybe a "website" header? SoliSys -> Creative Media -> College Publisher -> Creative Media.
media.www.californiaaggie.com is entirely gone. Before going through the wiki (again), anybody know (somebody attached to the Aggie) if there are any plans on fixing the links? As far as I can determine, there are actually no archives available at all right now! The search, calendar and FAQ are all non-working or empty. Presumably other things are broken, and I'm guessing that there's a bunch of stuff coming... hopefully including the past archives, even if they are at a different url.
If only they had gone with a nice, flexible solution from a developer who knew Davis and was destined for greatness...
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I tend to bring up this issue every Media Board meeting. The latest word I've heard is that the current chief editor and company want to get their old issues sent to them in electronic form from College Publisher, but it doesn't seem like this has been a high priority for them. I might be suprised by how far they have come with that plan, but based on what I've seen over the past few months from them the only way that the archives would be put up in the short term future would be if someone with tech savy showed up down there (in the Aggie Lair) and volunteered to upload the Aggie's files themselves (if anyone can do that, it would be much appreciated by me). Who knows, tho... —JoseBleckman
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In what electronic form does the Aggie have its files now? Individual stories, or a whole issue with layout? Actual files or something in a database? I think no matter how they get it out there, even just sticking files as they are on an anonymous ftp server or web server with auto-indexing would be much better than whats available now, although the urls might still not be permanent. —NickSchmalenberger
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I would also like to second Nick's request for some more technical information on how the data currently exists, and what we need to convert it into. If Joe or anyone else can provide such info, we might be one step closer to getting the migration completed. - Paul Amnuaypayoat
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The archives exist in two ways, from what I've gathered. They are in digital form on the College Publisher server and in paper form at the CalAggie office. The California Aggie is working with College Publisher to obtain the transfer of the digital copies to their server. As most of you know there are still a lot of features missing from the new site, so more work on the website is a higher priority than the quick transfer of archived stories. The archives are available oldschool style at the Library and the office. —AndrewBianchi
I am not sure if the archives are coming back (although College Publisher claims they will send the files). However, I can say with certainty that if they do come back, all of the links will still be bad. So would it be worth it to go through and remove broken links, or should they just be left until online archives exist again, whenever that may be? —JeremyOgul
A friend at the Aggie tells me the archives will not be coming back. Keeping the links up on the wiki is misleading - the files are not there anymore. I vote to take them down. —OscarSabino
Anybody know if they are at the Internet Archive? I can do a couple searches, I mean has anybody tried looking up several and found a high hit or miss ratio. If they are goners (which seems rather strange, as archives are one of the key facets of a newspaper), then the alternative would be to run through the old links and turn them into archive links. —jw
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This is actually a big clusterfuck, essentially caused by our good friend Daniel Stone. Frustrated with our friend Philip Neustrom's slow progress in building the Aggie's new website (which was probably because PN was getting paid about $20 a week), he moved the whole website off to College Publisher (a division of y2m networks) and signed a two-year contract. Said contract says that CP gets to own the database. The Aggie leaves CP at the first opportunity, but all of the content posted over the last two years they won't let the Aggie have. So the options are pretty much suing CP or reposting the entire thing from Word files. The Aggie doesn't have the money to hire an archivist, since they're running a $50k annual deficit (thanks to Stone, Vo, Fuller, Hamilton, and Kennedy). I actually have an okay relationship with the current EiC, so I'll send him an email and ask him what's up. There should be a few archives before 2005 actually on there. —BrentLaabs
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For what it's worth, I'm not having much success on the few Wayback Machine searches I've done. —Evan 'JabberWokky' Edwards
