Archiving the forum after shutdown - petition

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Hello all,

A lot of people have spent considerable time and mental labor putting together all the knowledge present in the forum (across so many years). It would seem to me very unfair and disadvantageous to both those people and the Church as a whole to wipe it all off like that with a simple decision and a click of a button. While I am not contesting the closure of the forum as an active place for discussions, I urge the owners to at least make it accessible in read-only format for reference. Do we need to petition for this?

Regards,
 
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My personal opinion is no. While I acknowledge the time and intellectual investment made, the truth is that none of us have written anything so profound that it needs preserved for any length of time.
 
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To you it may be so but to many others it’s a significant loss. Many have labored with their soul, heart and mind and have given a lot of their time in helping people here and potentially many others in the future who may pass by it similarly during their journey… only to see it go down the drain like that? I would go to Google and type in any question related to the faith and the first thing I get is a list of threads and replies referred to from this very forum containing lots of insight and official referrals. Rather than helping in preserving and strengthening the community (the Church) by keeping this fragile lantern lit in this dark age we are in, we are only giving way for more darkness to creep in and abide.
 
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Why not archive the forum, and then anyone can still search it and read it as they please, better for all, don’t you think?
 
We can add a permanent disclaimer noting that the information within is not official or definitive etc. Regarding those who would rather have their stuff deleted, the owners can easily oblige their request I guess. It is simple.
 
That internet way back machine certainly works on one forum I was in that shut down.

I hope people remember that as a possible option.

I am not sure how well it works with a gigantic forum like this.
 
Why not archive the forum, and then anyone can still search it and read it as they please, better for all, don’t you think?
There are a few grains of wheat hidden in a staggering amount of chaff and, to continue the agricultural metaphor, blended with a lot of manure. There is no practical way to sort and cleanse it, which is the only way I think it could be kept as a Catholic resource.
 
You are binding the wheat with the tares in bundles and burning them all together. Are you sure this is what Christ would do? There shouldn’t be an urge to filter and cleanse the content here based on the criterion of ‘error/non-error’, simply because CAF is not held as an official Catholic resource. We can make sure this gets stated in a banner on every page during archive navigation.
 
While I appreciate the wish to archive the forum as a resource, doing that and making it available would likely cost CA significant money. Which is no doubt one reason why they aren’t doing that.
 
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To you it may be so but to many others it’s a significant loss. Many have labored with their soul, heart and mind and have given a lot of their time in helping people here and potentially many others in the future who may pass by it similarly during their journey… only to see it go down the drain like that?
The approach I always took when I responded to a person here on CAF, was that my response is for this person. I would often take special care or add qualifiers about how other situations might have to consider [XYZ], just in case other persons in the future read my words… but from my perspective the labor of my soul, heart, mind, and time, was always worth it for the sake of that one individual. If Christ would have died for just that one person (and he would have), my ‘work’ can be seen by just that one person. I don’t need anything I’ve written saved for posterity.

As others have noted, some content will continue to exist on the Way Back Machine. Otherwise, there are many reliable resources for Catholics to consult when they have questions in future: Catholic.com, the Catechism, their own local priest, the writings of the saints, other specialty websites.

I’m reminded of the Artist from C.S. Lewis’s book, ‘The Great Divorce’, who can’t stop focusing on whether his work will be remembered. It’s important to learn (healthy) detachment.

What matters is that other people will continue to receive God’s help on their journey to Him. We can continue to pray for that in future, and continue to help those people God puts in our path, each day in future. CAF closing doesn’t mean that anyone we’ve helped in the past, wasn’t helped. Now is the time to help different people in the future, by a different way.
 
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You are binding the wheat with the tares in bundles and burning them all together. Are you sure this is what Christ would do? There shouldn’t be an urge to filter and cleanse the content here based on the criterion of ‘error/non-error’, simply because CAF is not held as an official Catholic resource.
I’m confused. If you don’t think CAF is worthy to stand as an official Catholic resource, I can’t see the value in leaving it up for strangers to stumble across (and possibly be misled by, not just properly guided by). The only reason I can see for that is the vanity of we posters, who like the idea of our ‘work’ (as you put it) staying up and not being deleted. And surely indulging our own vanity isn’t what Christ would do.

Personally, I’m in the camp of being happy the site won’t be archived, so I wouldn’t sign a petition to the contrary.

If you have several posts though that you consider carefully researched and written, that seemed to help a lot of people, and you wouldn’t want to have to ‘duplicate’ that work in future if you come across another person who can benefit from it – why not save those posts yourself? Maybe go to your profile and sort by your ‘most liked’ comments (if that’s an indicator of what the community found helpful), and save those comments to your personal computer. Then you can email that content (hopefully with personalizing edits) to individuals you meet who need those answers in future, without having to re-research the question.
 
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Maybe go to your profile and sort by your ‘most liked’ comments (if that’s an indicator of what the community found helpful), and save those comments to your personal computer.
I tried this and I was astonished to see that my most-liked posts were silly, worthless posts like jokes or memes posted to otherwise serious threads. I guess people click the heart on these because they are unexpected/incongruous.

On the other hand, my posts that I thought were my very best got few likes, often none at all. It is a useful exercise in humility and detachment.
 
I think also of St. Thomas Aquinas, who said “All I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me.”

I’m not in the same league, but I think I too have written so much straw. Writing it was beneficial to me though. 🙂
 
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Then there is Stephen King, famous author, who wrote a book called On Writing, in which he said that an author needs to write a million words (literally, not figuratively) in order to become any good at writing. He said that the author might as well never publish the first million words, may as well throw them away, but they must be written anyway.

So here’s to those first million words! 🍻
 
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Hmm, personally I would love the contents of the forum archived. I recently stumbled upon this forum. And how happy I was when I did. Words can’t quantify how I have been blessed with the contents from this forum, especially from the spirituality section. So ever eager to learn more, only to hear that the forum will be shutting down and worse, the contents no matter how rich, have to go down the drain… Well for me, it would be really sad. But what do I know!
 
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