Why are there almost no threads from before 2005?

[Pokefannn]

So I was searching through the forums for some very old threads, and it seems like there is virtually nothing from the years 2003 and 2004. What happened to these threads?

Edit: According to the Wayback Machine, there should be several thousand of these threads: Bulbagarden Forums - powered by vBulletin

 

[Medusa Gorgon]

@Enzap can you help out with this?

 

[Enzap]

As I understand it a lot of threads and sections were archived away to areas inaccessible to most users if we didn't need them anymore. If you're looking for a specific post/thread I can try to help you find it but I can't make any promises it'll be successful.

 

[Pokefannn]

That makes sense. Just looking through old scans on the Wayback Machine, I can see that the forum categories changed pretty frequently during the first few years.

I'm personally interested in seeing the old threads because they contain a lot of history of the Pokemon fandom. Are the archives simply hidden, or are they absolutely inaccessible to non-staff ?

 

[Enzap]

That makes sense. Just looking through old scans on the Wayback Machine, I can see that the forum categories changed pretty frequently during the first few years.

I'm personally interested in seeing the old threads because they contain a lot of history of the Pokemon fandom. Are the archives simply hidden, or are they absolutely inaccessible to non-staff ?

They're currently hidden away so nobody can see them actually. An admin could theoretically go back and set them to visible, but that would take a lot of time to sort through stuff because there are a LOT of archived sections and it would be a mess to make them all visible again for multiple reasons. Not to mention all of the permissions we'd have to set to make sure they're functional.

Basically we can find things if we absolutely need them, but generally things that go in the archive are forgotten from existence.

 

[Pokefannn]

Aww, that a shame. I remember that back when the Bulbagarden forums were on the old server it was possible to find archived threads if you knew the url. Still, at least they're saved somewhere they can be accessed if absolutely necessary; I was a bit worried that an early server glitch had outright deleted these threads.

Anyways, thanks a lot for answering my questions about Bulbagarden's archival practices. This has been very interesting.

 

[SeanWheeler]

Hmm... I thought maybe it's because that was when Bulbagarden started up?

 

[Enzap]

Hmm... I thought maybe it's because that was when Bulbagarden started up?

The current forums have been public since the beginning of 2003. You can read more about our history here: Bulbagarden forums - Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia