Sciencemadness Discussion Board

The Hive back online at Erowid

Lilienthal - 23-9-2015 at 03:51

We have just launched The Hive Archive, the original and complete mirror of the Hive forum at Erowid under https://the-hive.archive.erowid.org.

The Hive was an influential web forum discussing the chemistry of mind-altering compounds that was started in 1997 and attracted a vibrant international community of more than 8,500 active users until it went offline by the end of 2004 at about half a million posts. The forum was taken offline in 2004 when the hosting company was sold and the admins would no longer have direct physical access to the server. There were several attempts to bring the forum back online over the years, with plans on using elaborate network tunneling and proxy schemes to hide the server, but in the meantime the persons behind the board had moved on and were busy with new projects and careers.

The archive is a mirror of the forum from November 15, 2004, the day the server had to be taken offline due to hosting issues. As an archive, the board is read-only and it is not possible to log in. All private information has been removed, including passwords, email addresses, private messages, non-public forums, orphan file uploads and cached images. All automatically expired Couch posts have been restored and early messages have been imported. The forum is running the original and fully functional software that has been updated for current environments. The board's content has been converted to UTF-8 so that Cyrillic texts now display correctly without any tweaks. Further details and some background can be found under https://archive.erowid.org.

solo - 23-9-2015 at 10:31



......thank you very much for your hand in this , it's been a long time coming, any chance the Hive initiating again?....solo

szuko03 - 23-9-2015 at 10:41

Reading old message boards brings me back to a time when people posting on them typed differently. Is it just me or is the general speech contained in those posts worded "more intelligent feel" almost, maybe its just me.

But this is really awesome. Glad to erowid is still active in the community it fostered. Thank you so much for the continued efforts!

[Edited on 23-9-2015 by szuko03]

macckone - 23-9-2015 at 10:43

Any chance of a data dump of the 'public' information being available?
As either text or html?

S.C. Wack - 23-9-2015 at 12:34

(Rated as: excellent)

Quote: Originally posted by Lilienthal  
We have just launched The Hive Archive, the original and complete mirror of the Hive forum at Erowid under https://the-hive.archive.erowid.org.

The Hive was an influential web forum discussing the chemistry of mind-altering compounds that was started in 1997 and attracted a vibrant international community of more than 8,500 active users until it went offline by the end of 2004 at about half a million posts. The forum was taken offline in 2004 when the hosting company was sold and the admins would no longer have direct physical access to the server. There were several attempts to bring the forum back online over the years, with plans on using elaborate network tunneling and proxy schemes to hide the server, but in the meantime the persons behind the board had moved on and were busy with new projects and careers.

The archive is a mirror of the forum from November 15, 2004, the day the server had to be taken offline due to hosting issues. As an archive, the board is read-only and it is not possible to log in. All private information has been removed, including passwords, email addresses, private messages, non-public forums, orphan file uploads and cached images. All automatically expired Couch posts have been restored and early messages have been imported. The forum is running the original and fully functional software that has been updated for current environments. The board's content has been converted to UTF-8 so that Cyrillic texts now display correctly without any tweaks. Further details and some background can be found under https://archive.erowid.org.

careysub - 23-9-2015 at 13:10

I showed my appreciation for this work by making a donation on Erowid website. I encourage others to do the same.

zed - 23-9-2015 at 13:26

Much of best "Hive" content, was not the chemistry itself. Great dialog. Some of the stories told, would easily rival episodes of "Breaking Bad".

I think I'll just go and see what this new offering is.

I'm back. It's the original gossip. Sweet!

Less sweet....I used to tell people how to do some things, that nobody really needs to know how to do. Oh, well.

[Edited on 23-9-2015 by zed]

aga - 23-9-2015 at 14:06

'Need' to do things has never been what internet discussions were about.

Polverone - 23-9-2015 at 19:18

This is excellent news. Any chance of getting a full database dump? I don't really want to tax the server by spidering it.

macckone - 23-9-2015 at 20:11

Quote: Originally posted by Polverone  
This is excellent news. Any chance of getting a full database dump? I don't really want to tax the server by spidering it.

I had the same question.
If there isn't perhaps we can make a spidering arrangement and share the results with interested parties which is probably going to include 'The Vespiary' and some of the other boards.

Lilienthal - 24-9-2015 at 01:33

Please wait with crawling, we are thinking about a complete download package plus we are currently making the board easier to crawl, e.g. by implementing static links and non-redundant links for crawlers. Please check https://archive.erowid.org for announcements.

macckone - 24-9-2015 at 19:22

Quote: Originally posted by Lilienthal  
Please wait with crawling, we are thinking about a complete download package plus we are currently making the board easier to crawl, e.g. by implementing static links and non-redundant links for crawlers. Please check https://archive.erowid.org for announcements.

This is excellent news.
This is a great resource.