There must be better ways, but one (at least until ET removes the print format option, perhaps on the grounds that it is too useful) would be to click on the "print" format at upper right of page, then file -> save as -> web page to maintain the formatting. Or as plain text if you don't care about that. You could also use something like wget to mirror threads or an entire site - but that may violate the ET TOS, and there may be some measures in place to inhibit doing that you'd have to work around.
ET management did make a statement about the missing attachments... http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=127469 Mark
There are many things that I could list but the most noticeable thing is how ET allows its viewers to 'grill' a new sponsor. If a new sponsor has something of substances to offer they wouldn't mind the grill because that would just enhance their reputation and class. Sure some sponsors will disappear as soon as they see some tough questions but you don't want them anyway.
I would recommend you put a menu item called Announcement on your home page (maybe after the Contact Us) which takes the reader to the latest communication from you to the reading public. They should not have to search for some hidden thread in a hidden forum to get the latest feedback from ET.
There hasn't been any thread of any consequence on ET in the past 6 months. All the threads of any value are continuations of prior threads. Even the entertainment value is mostly gone. It's the same teenager posting the same bs everyday. Real traders have stopped participating, it's all teenagers mouthing off their paper trades after school is out. Most of the relevant content is before 2006. Once all those threads are deleted, ET will be a shadow of the Yahoo message boards.
Does that mean you'll bring back the attachments <b>and the 3 year+ old posts</b>, or will you be leaving some of the vandalism unrepaired? And Baron, seriously now, please; The next time you get these kinds of urges, you need to know that <b>you're not alone</b>, and <b>there is help available!</b> Here are some of the helpful resources I've found for you: http://www.helpguide.org/mental/self_injury.htm http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/self-injury/DS00775 <i>"The webmaster who self-injures may not recognize the connection, but this act usually occurs after an overwhelming or distressing experience and is a result of not having learned how to identify or express difficult feelings in a healthy way. Self-harm serves a function for the person who does it. If you can figure out what function the self-injury is serving then you can learn other ways to get those needs met which will reduce your desire to hurt your website."</i>
This is sheer stupidity. At most, in my experience, only about 5% of posts if that have any value. So, to delete posts based on age is pure stupidity as many of these older posts have great value. I think you exaggerate the importance of change over time. Most fundamentals of trading remain the same over time. These actions will decrease the value and content of ET.
Just a thought... I'm not sure why Baron wanted to delete old threads/posts in the first place. It could have been to free up disk space, or maybe just to remove some of the clutter from the site (an admirable reason, IMO). If things are to be thinned out at some point, the challenge is to be able to thin the worthless garbage (as others have stated, this is ~90%+ of the posts, and this is being very conservative), while keeping the good stuff. Certainly, this is a task that is impossible task for any individual to do, since they don't know how all other readers use the site. A solution, IMO, is to introduce a rating system on ET. This has been suggested many times in the past, and maybe the time for this has finally come. ET users could rate the various posts ("Was this post helpful for you?"), as well as possibly rating the various posters/threads (although by rating posts alone, the value of the threads and posters could likely be determined. In the future, with this new feature, Baron would be able to easily delete worthless threads, which would be threads that the ET community found useless, with few if any 'useful posts'. This might help cleanup, for example, the 100+ "Black Monday" and chit chat threads that have no historical value, will keeping the threads deemed valuable to the ET community. I also think that this sort of community feedback would incrementally increase the overall quality of posts on ET, as posters would take a little extra time and effort with some of their posts, hoping to create something of value to their fellow reader (knowing that they'd see feeback on how it was received). This would be particularly true, if the system was designed to give an overall feedback 'score' to quality of posts from individual members (similar to how EBay has a publically posted feedback ranking for all users). This kind of feeback would also help the newer members of the community better determine which members are worth special attention and which are just full of hot air.