English Chess Forum

I'm sure it has been discussed here before, but could someone either point me to the old discussions or say something here about what happened to all the material that was on the old ECF website before it changed a while back? I'm asking because there were reports going back at least as far as 2005 on several events I played in, and I had a collection of links to those reports which now don't work. Is that material still there somewhere, or has it gone forever?

You could try

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.bcf.org.uk/ and then

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www ... ess.org.uk

Good hunting!

John Upham wrote:You could try

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.bcf.org.uk/

Great site - I've found some other chess archives I was looking for!

I believe that in the last couple of years the ECF website has undergone two changes of host. Moreover there were major IT problems at the ECF Office during the summer and autumn of 2009.

As a result of these upheavals it would appear that the old archive has been lost.

Sometimes I've been able to find things on the excellent site mentioned by John Upham. Sometimes I've found that a google cache is still extant. All too frequently, however, I've drawn a blank.

One recent example is the Minutes of the April 2007 ECF Council Meeting. That was the meeting at which the possible introduction of twice-yearly grading lists was last discussed, so when Adam Raoof recently suggested the idea afresh I sought to look these minutes up. They certainly used to be on the ECF website, but I can't find them online anywhere now.

Is there a need for having a specific archive section, where minutes of all these meetings are stored?

David Sedgwick wrote:Sometimes I've been able to find things on the excellent site mentioned by John Upham... All too frequently, however, I've drawn a blank. One recent example is the Minutes of the April 2007 ECF Council Meeting. That was the meeting at which the possible introduction of twice-yearly grading lists was last discussed, so when Adam Raoof recently suggested the idea afresh I sought to look these minutes up. They certainly used to be on the ECF website, but I can't find them online anywhere now.

I was going to say, “They’re in my filing cabinet.” But I’ve just found them on the current ECF website, in the obvious place under The English Chess Federation | ECF Council & Board. There’s nothing earlier than 2005, unfortunately.

Alex Holowczak wrote:Is there a need for having a specific archive section, where minutes of all these meetings are stored?

Yes.

Richard Haddrell wrote:

David Sedgwick wrote:Sometimes I've been able to find things on the excellent site mentioned by John Upham... All too frequently, however, I've drawn a blank. One recent example is the Minutes of the April 2007 ECF Council Meeting. That was the meeting at which the possible introduction of twice-yearly grading lists was last discussed, so when Adam Raoof recently suggested the idea afresh I sought to look these minutes up. They certainly used to be on the ECF website, but I can't find them online anywhere now.

I was going to say, “They’re in my filing cabinet.” But I’ve just found them on the current ECF website, in the obvious place under The English Chess Federation | ECF Council & Board. There’s nothing earlier than 2005, unfortunately.

The page which Richard mentions contains links to the minutes of all ECF Council Meetings since the ECF came into being in its present form in 2005. One of the documents to be found there is the Minutes of the April 2007 Meeting, a document which I said above was not available online anywhere.

Either I'm losing my marbles, which is entirely possible, or the archive of past minutes has been created or substantially expanded since I last looked at the web page a couple of months ago.

It's amusing to see, in those same April 2007 Minutes, a note proudly announcing the creation of this Forum, which the ECF proceeded to disown a mere eighteen months later.

David Sedgwick wrote

Either I'm losing my marbles, which is entirely possible, or the archive of past minutes has been created or substantially expanded since I last looked at the web page a couple of months ago.

Some time ago I suggested to the webmaster that he should include on his to do list the migration of the more recent Council minutes from the old website to the new. I welcome the fact that this suggestion has been actioned.

David Sedgwick wrote: Either I'm losing my marbles, which is entirely possible, or the archive of past minutes has been created or substantially expanded since I last looked at the web page a couple of months ago.

THe two possibilities are not, of course, mutually exclusive.

Alex McFarlane wrote:

David Sedgwick wrote: Either I'm losing my marbles, which is entirely possible, or the archive of past minutes has been created or substantially expanded since I last looked at the web page a couple of months ago.

The two possibilities are not, of course, mutually exclusive.

Indeed not, Alex.

John Philpott has confirmed the accuracy of the second possibility.

As to the first, I have a vague feeling that I was supposed to be writing a letter or recommendation about you. Unfortunately I cannot now remember why or about what.

Thanks for the replies on this topic. I'm not sure if the pages I'm looking for are archived by web.archive.org or not. Is there an easy way to search within the archives of a particular domain?

David Sedgwick said: "As a result of these upheavals it would appear that the old archive has been lost."

Is it possible to set things up so this doesn't happen again in future? i.e. Ensure continuity between different organisations and different boards within the same organisation? It is worrying to think that even if the history is still there somewhere offline, that the history of the online presence can be lost so easily.

David Sedgwick wrote

As a result of these upheavals it would appear that the old archive has been lost.

The fact that information cannot be found online does not necessarily mean that it does not still exist on a computer in the ECF Office. Has anybody thought of asking the webmaster?

John Philpott wrote:The fact that information cannot be found online does not necessarily mean that it does not still exist on a computer in the ECF Office. Has anybody thought of asking the webmaster?

And what about filing cabinets in the ECF Office? They've got a scanner!

John Philpott wrote:David Sedgwick wrote

As a result of these upheavals it would appear that the old archive has been lost.

The fact that information cannot be found online does not necessarily mean that it does not still exist on a computer in the ECF Office. Has anybody thought of asking the webmaster?

I thought about that, but wanted to check here first to get some of the backstory.

On the ECF homepage I see the office e-mail address and a few links for the webmaster (but not a dedicated link). There is a link to the webmaster in the entry for "The ECF Yearbook 2011" and one on the right-hand sidebar behind "here" for the updating of e-mail addresses. There also appears to be a very small smiley after the phone number at the bottom of the page!

Anyway, I'll try and get together a list of old pages I'm interested in and I will e-mail them in.