Hello. I have a couple of questions in regards to the United-TI archives that are hosted here. First off, United-TI had an attachment system. This allowed pictures to be attached to posts and zips as well. Many of the projects there used this system to show off screenshots or include zips of the projects in post. I was wondering if Cemetech had a similar system at all, and if so if it could be applied to the UTI archives. The second question that i had was "Is there a link to the UTI archives on the forums or main site somewhere?" The only way I've been able to locate it was to follow the link in the News article, and it seems there should be a more obvious and accessible way to reach the link (forgive me if there is and I am missing it.). Thanks.

-Art

You can find the archives under "Tools" or "Projects"

We do not have an attachment system nor have any plans to introduce one. We encourage all programs to be uploaded to our Archives and then from there you can link to them.

As far as photos and other attachments, image bucket and other image sharing sites work well. Myself, I use a private album on Facebook to host the images I embed online. However, we also have a Photo system that you can utilize.

Aye, those would be the best places. You can also find it under http://www.unitedti.org, for what it's worth. ComicIDIOT succinctly stated the reason we don't have an attachment system: the file archives works for better organization of programs and betas, and we don't feel it's a value-added service to the Cemetech community to host smaller files that they won't be able to personally curate.

Doesn't address the original concern (as I read it) that any existing attachments are now inaccessible.

As a dabbling digital preservationist, not having any attachment system concerns me, as it sets you up for catastrophic link rot after a while, if/when external hosts delete content or disappear altogether (see also: MegaUpload). With a local collection, it would be much easier to maintain availability of content even if the forum were to take on some entirely now form.

Your perspective makes sense to me, but dependence on third parties for things like screenshots and highly relevant images is concerning, as it's impossible to ensure that the full flow of a thread remains available. I am in favor of an attachment system, but used sparingly.

I understood two issues from the OP: (1) Why doesn't Cemetech have an attachment system? and (2) How do you easily access the archived United TI forum? I didn't read it as wondering how you access the archived United TI attachments. I have the old UTI file archives sitting on my hard drive, and with the original authors' permissions, hope to spend a day sorting some of the unique projects into the Cemetech archives. I hear your concerns about external hosting for screenshots, though.

I did not realize that the UTI archives were listed under "tools". Thanks, that makes thing simpler. The other issue I was mentioning was that none of the attachments that exitsted on UTI's old board were there, (screen shots of projects, zips of projects, betas etc.) and thus some of the content was lacking and looked rather barren.

Indeed, I feel that it's an issue to not have the old UTI attachments available. We should set something up so people can see the old ones, because there are game downloads, screenshots, concept pics, etc. stored in the attachments. Losing those could lose the entire point of a thread. Perhaps we could set something up that moves the images and attachments to another server, or just merge them into the Archives, like Archives > UnitedTI > Math and Science > <Thread title/Topic ID>, and then have all the attachments from that topic there.

Part of the difficulty is that I have a copy of the UTI file archives, but not of the attachments. I need to try to get the attachments from NetWizz and/or AlienCC, but I didn't hear back from them the last time I brought up the attachments.

Ahh, I see. That would be a problem indeed. D: Thanks for clarifying.

Not a problem, and you have given me the impetus to pursue this once again. I will update you when I hear back.