I recently started keeping a copy of my own forum posts (such as this one!) in Obsidian. I realized over the years that I’ve expressed a lot of my thoughts over different online venues throughout the years, many of which have since disappeared. Even ones that still exist, there is a good chance I won’t remember everything I posted. So I started writing all of my posts and replies in Obsidian first. Then I copy and paste the text to post it on the forum. Then I copy a link to the post and put it at the bottom of the note and move the note to a Posts folder.
Now if the forum disappears or I lose track of it, I will have a copy of all of my thoughts in Obsidian. I haven’t seen this talked about much, so I wonder how common of a practice this is?
At least for some articles, this might be a good idea.
But I would rather look for a way to create the entry within Obsidian as the second step, ideally by a Shortcut/KM/StreamDeck “Trick” to get the content, and the link, both together into the Inbox (or a dedicated place) of Obsidian.
I have an Instapaper folder named “Replied.” I just add articles I have replied to in that folder. It’s rare that a reply will have a shelf life of over a couple of months, so then I can just delete the link or, if it seems fitting, archive it to another folder.
I also develop almost everything I send out in Drafts. Amazing how much this allows me to prevent sending out replies loaded with errors or, heaven forbid, ones I shouldn’t be sending in the first place. I usually delete them from Drafts after they are sent or, if you want, you could archive them. I can’t see any point in keeping most of these drafts.
I have a Python script to extract a post’s contents + relevant metadata from its URL and save it to a Markdown file in Obsidian, so you’re certainly not alone. I don’t save most of them but some of mine or other people’s that I’ve found insightful usually get a save.
ooo I’d love to see that script if you are willing to share.
I wish I still had some of my longer posts I made on forums from 20 years ago, if only to see how my thoughts on the subject have changed. One I especially want to locate is on naming of files and file system organization. I know I wrote a long series of posts on the topic when I did a major move back in 2001. I’ve done mini-updates since then but my whole system is undergoing radical change right now and I think it would be interesting to copmpare not only my ides on how I search and locate items but also on the technology I use and what I am changing and the why I am changing. What I remember about the posts is that the more intersting discussions were on the WHY not the HOW so much.
RSS feeds are generally time-limited, for the sake of sanity and the server’s capacity. The goal is to help people “keeping up with the latest”, not to provide a complete historical archive. Basically it’s just an XML dump of the last X entries.
If you click on your name in the upper right, you can go all the way back and see all your topics / replies - but it would take you awhile to do, and you’d have to expand each entry to see the full text.
Normally the Internet is forgetting nothing.
So if you remember enough for Google, there are high chances to find those entries.
I even can find my old Usenet Newsgroup entries, I made some 30-40 years ago…
That only works so long as the data are stuff are still on the internet. In my case locatiosn are gone and the servers offline and not captured int eh wayback machine because they were private forums.