Feb
25th
2016
Fimfarchive 20160225 released! · 3:48pm Feb 25th, 2016
Eleventh release with 130376 stories.
The complete archive.
Name: fimfarchive-20160225.zip
Size: 3.9 GB
Torrent: Takiri, Torcache
Direct: Sweden
Magnet: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:558ab9ad2acb5b5c808737eea548e3e04256d5a6
MD5: a2f8039368f644facc713bcfedbecc70
The xdelta3 patch.
Name: fimfarchive-20151125-to-20160225.xdelta3
Size: 0.4 GB
Torrent: Takiri, Torcache
Direct: Sweden
Magnet: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:834620626e594a3268f7708afae0ef51ba368752
MD5: 2e8acf6ef8b9c29f191215a4a9a4beaf
No changes except for new and updated stories.
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Fimfarchive · 709 views
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Oh, wow, already the next update! Now I have to think about if I should download this too already or not.
If I do, I would have to manually pick out the new fics that were added since the last update, so that I don't have a ton of fics twice, because if I download this and delete the older one, I might lose a fic that was deleted or rewritten since the last update, but I don't exactly have time right now.
And if I don't download it right now, I have it on my back later. Hmm.....
I also have another question here:
How do you proceed exactly if a fic got new chapters since the last update? Do you only download the new chapter that got added or do you download the fic completely again, with all the old chapters, and revisions that were eventually made to them, too?
Thanks for these! :)
3776724
Unless something changed stories that have been deleted from the site since the last archive are retained. I've used previous archives to find stories people are looking for that have been deleted more than once.
3776810
You're welcome!
3776724
3776793
3776885
Posted is correct. Deleted stories are kept in the archive. This is done by restoring them from the previous Fimfarchive version in case they are deleted. So, even if a story has been deleted from Fimfiction you'll still be able to find it in the latest version of Fimfarchive. I recommend you just keep the latest version if you don't want to store multiple copies.
The entire story is updated in case any part of it has changed. This means that if a chapter has been removed from Fimfiction, then that chapter will be removed from Fimfarchive as well. However, if all chapters have been removed, then the story will be treated as if it had been deleted, and will therefore be restored from the previous version of Fimfarchive.
This is all a bit of a trade-off. The archive would have been much larger than it is now if I had kept all changes. It would also have been very difficult to make certain changes without doubling the size of the archive. Had I just fetched chapters individually, then there would be issues when authors decide to restructure stories (such as with Tutelary Spirits).
That said, I do keep all old releases available for anyone who might want them. Everything I do related to Fimfarchive has both on- and off-site backups. That obviously won't help you if anything were to happen to me, but I hope it helps you make a decision about what to keep and what not to keep.
There is another option if you really want to store all Fimfarchive releases but save some of the space that that would require. That option would be to learn, use, and keep the xdelta3 patches I release when possible. The patches currently aren't reversible, but you could store a few "base" releases and then all patches which could be used to update those. This is pretty complicated unless you really know what you're doing though.
3776978
Hmm, yeah, that's what I feared.
Means, for multi-chapter stories, I would have still to check if there are any who got one or more chapters deleted or rewritten by the author, by comparing the latest two versions of the archives, and then manually pick out those fics from the second-to-last version of the archive before deleting it in favor of the new one to still have the deleted chapters or those chapters that got rewritten in their original form.
Which would probably be a gigantic amount of work every three months.
Does whatever technique you use to create the archives allow to create two archives at the same time, one with all the fics and one with only the multi-chapter fics that got chapters deleted/altered?
That would make it easier to look through such stories and to compare them.
3776990
Yes, that's not something a human could do. It must be done by a computer program.
Not without a significant amount of work on my part. It's not something I'm willing to do since I want to focus on other aspects of the archive. There are always trade-offs to these things, and I think I've found a decent enough middle-ground when it comes to edits.
If you're serious about finding edits like these, then your best bet would be to learn a programming language such as Python. Sorry I can't be more help here, but this really is a task best suited for a custom computer program.
3777286
Is this a challenge?
I've done other crazy things in the past. Currently, I'm resorting almost 900 fics in my Season 5 bookshelf so that all of them are in the order they were published on the site, all while I'm hindered by a heavy and very annoying bug of the bookshelves and my slowly dying and constantly freezing computer. It's the 5th day now I'm sitting at it and I still don't really see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Already had two or three nervous breakdowns, but I'm still pulling through.
I might be insane enough to do this.
Well then. Maybe you can do that once you have those other aspects out of the way. It would certainly improve the archival process and make it even better.
And until then, I'm already happy that you're doing that in the first place.