Old m3forum content, you want it?

[liam821]

When m3forum went down, I grabbed as much saved and cached content as I could find. I always thought I could import it or do something with it someday...

When the site went offline, there were around 498,180 threads, 7,879,623 posts, and 214,710 members. Obviously, I couldn't recover it all, but I do have:

Distinct threads with content 55,606
Distinct posts confirmed by original post IDs 571,187
Actual saved image files 31,599

The content spans post dates from 2000 through 2019. It includes E46, E36, E30 and E9x discussions, classifieds, member journals, technical material, galleries, vehicle-garage pages, reviews, and guides.

Plus another 549,959 post appearances across 29,342 threads in vBulletin’s archive views (text-only). Since the text-only files are just that, text only, I'd have to match the content to figure out overlap. But the tl;dr; I have anywhere from 500k to a million threads in 55-85k posts.

The problem is I have no way of knowing whether archive posts from "m3fanboy69420" are the same "m3fanboy69420" on nam3forum. So I'm a bit hesitant to just match usernames. When I was doing CSLregister I had access to the raw database, so I could match email addresses as well to verify users. I could just import everything under a single user "m3forum" and at the top of each post put a banner "imported from user m3fanboy69420". I could also lock all the threads and posts and have it as read-only content, perhaps?

Obviously, things like classified might not be very useful, although we could all laugh (cry) at 2010 M3 prices.

Thoughts? What do you all think?

[xansabi]

YES!

[siamkazi]

Instead of a merge, how about a sub-site? that way you don't have to match and whatever lives there is available for those to peruse. I'm sure google and other engines will index it so it adds another layer to this place. That content probably has gold in it, and having snapshot of that era is just plain cool.

Appreciate you, so cool you were able to recover that much!

[fattycharged]

This is amazing...don't go through trouble of matching usernames, we'll all know

[9kracing]

Absolutely but like someone said, make a subforum.

And making it read-only wouldn't be a terrible idea

[Sharocks]

I wonder if this captured how many times I got banned.

Please share!

[Nate047]

Definitely do it as a read only archive. Please include all
the E36 content you were able to grab… The E36 forum here and on the other forum are absolute crickets.

[liam821]

I'm hoping to find that one thread about that kid with the M3 that ended up buying a black Porsche 911 turbo I think...was his name Jared? Man, that thread was an absolute gold mine. Or how I got scammed on my first M3... 💀💀💀

Instead of a merge, how about a sub-site? that way you don't have to match and whatever lives there is available for those to peruse. I'm sure google and other engines will index it so it adds another layer to this place. That content probably has gold in it, and having snapshot of that era is just plain cool.

Appreciate you, so cool you were able to recover that much!

You're welcome! Absolutely a sub-section here. I wouldn't try to merge it into the "main forum" - it would just be far too messy. Read-only probably doesn't matter since I wouldn't link posts to a specific user. Another option is to create dozens of users like "username_m3f" - Not sure how many users it would add, but it wouldn't harm anything.

[liam821]

Jared update. I asked chatgpt (no joke) "What was the kids name that owned an e46 m3, he used to post on m3forum before that site went away. I think he ended up buying a porsche 911 turbo. He was the laughing stock of the forum and it was hilarious. He posted on rennlist as well." and wouldn't you know it...

FOUND HIM! 😂 It was jaredomin!

And yes, he was just as legendary as you remember.

His username on Rennlist was jaredomin, and he had a 997 Porsche 911 Turbo after his E46 M3.

Here's the gold:

Jared's Mezger Turbo thread on Rennlist

On page 9, February 2020, M3Forum members actually followed him over to Rennlist to continue roasting him.

Someone linked his old M3Forum build thread, saying:

He's made some progress from only taking photos with his phone's front camera.

Jared replied:

LOL, my old build thread kind of sucked a little.

Then Obioban showed up and linked another classic Jared thread.

[R60BBA]

liam821 m3forum.net was a gold mine. Bringing it back as a read only sub-forum would be great!

[Casa de Mesa]

I wonder if this captured how many times I got banned.

Please share!

LOL!!!!!!

I vote some kind of sub-forum too. The CSL Register you resurrected is amazing. Appreciate you putting in the effort + time to preserve this.

[D-O]

This would be fantastic! Thanks so much for going to all the trouble.

[oceansize]

Rose colored glasses. Most of it was shite, but nonetheless, cool to see the shite.

[TexaZ3]

Definitely worth bringing back as a read-only sub forum. Its a lot of work, though it seems. Grateful for whatever can be made avaialble.

[George Hill]

Definitely bring it back, maybe merge users on a case by case basis? I mean if someone sees their old thread they could just point it out to you and then merge? Best of both worlds with the least amount of work?