Is this the oldest ever Countdown related forum topic?

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Edward Byrne
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Is this the oldest ever Countdown related forum topic?

Post by Edward Byrne »

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic ... 5oejm0wJjE

Trawling through the internet yesterday, I stumbled across Countdown threads on a quiz group from 1996. This must surely predate any past countdown forums/threads that we know of. There are a good few more posts in the group about Countdown, and many of the posts are by apterite Nick Deller. Interesting read, and interesting to find online posts about Countdown that are 20 years old.
Gavin Chipper
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Re: Is this the oldest ever Countdown related forum topic?

Post by Gavin Chipper »

Good find.
Guy Barry
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Re: Is this the oldest ever Countdown related forum topic?

Post by Guy Barry »

Edward Byrne wrote:https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic ... 5oejm0wJjE

Trawling through the internet yesterday, I stumbled across Countdown threads on a quiz group from 1996. This must surely predate any past countdown forums/threads that we know of. There are a good few more posts in the group about Countdown, and many of the posts are by apterite Nick Deller. Interesting read, and interesting to find online posts about Countdown that are 20 years old.
Good heavens - that thread was started by me! Very odd to see what I was writing 20 years ago. There may have been threads before that - I started posting to Usenet in 1989, although it was heavily American-dominated in those days. I'll have a root around and see if I can find anything.

EDIT: This thread is a few months older, but there may be stuff from 1995. I'll keep looking.

EDIT[2]: This post (in a discussion about something else) is the oldest I can find at the moment!
Gavin Chipper
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Re: Is this the oldest ever Countdown related forum topic?

Post by Gavin Chipper »

Guy Barry wrote:
Edward Byrne wrote:https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic ... 5oejm0wJjE

Trawling through the internet yesterday, I stumbled across Countdown threads on a quiz group from 1996. This must surely predate any past countdown forums/threads that we know of. There are a good few more posts in the group about Countdown, and many of the posts are by apterite Nick Deller. Interesting read, and interesting to find online posts about Countdown that are 20 years old.
Good heavens - that thread was started by me! Very odd to see what I was writing 20 years ago. There may have been threads before that - I started posting to Usenet in 1989, although it was heavily American-dominated in those days. I'll have a root around and see if I can find anything.

EDIT: This thread is a few months older, but there may be stuff from 1995. I'll keep looking.

EDIT[2]: This post (in a discussion about something else) is the oldest I can find at the moment!
Keith Bennett posted in one of those threads as well - the same Keith Bennett that's on here?
Guy Barry
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Re: Is this the oldest ever Countdown related forum topic?

Post by Guy Barry »

Gavin Chipper wrote: Keith Bennett posted in one of those threads as well - the same Keith Bennett that's on here?
I don't know, but it's amusing to see that he thought Richard Stilgoe was dead 20 years ago! Still very much alive at the age of 73. (Although Spike Milligan and Michael Bentine have both sadly passed away since that thread.)
Conor
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Re: Is this the oldest ever Countdown related forum topic?

Post by Conor »

Gavin Chipper wrote:Good find.
Is the old channel 4 forum topic still hosted somewhere? I think it was archived on gevincountdown, but Yahoo thinks there's something fishy when I log in and my secondary email no longer exists. It might also be an idea to archive the gevincountdown and c4c yahoo boards.
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JimBentley
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Re: Is this the oldest ever Countdown related forum topic?

Post by JimBentley »

Conor wrote:
Gavin Chipper wrote:Good find.
Is the old channel 4 forum topic still hosted somewhere? I think it was archived on gevincountdown, but Yahoo thinks there's something fishy when I log in and my secondary email no longer exists. It might also be an idea to archive the gevincountdown and c4c yahoo boards.
I'm sure Gevin can help with the gevincountdown forum and if necessary, I've got the c4 forum topic somewhere or other and can put it somewhere accessible, I'm sure.
Gavin Chipper
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Re: Is this the oldest ever Countdown related forum topic?

Post by Gavin Chipper »

JimBentley wrote:
Conor wrote:
Gavin Chipper wrote:Good find.
Is the old channel 4 forum topic still hosted somewhere? I think it was archived on gevincountdown, but Yahoo thinks there's something fishy when I log in and my secondary email no longer exists. It might also be an idea to archive the gevincountdown and c4c yahoo boards.
I'm sure Gevin can help with the gevincountdown forum and if necessary, I've got the c4 forum topic somewhere or other and can put it somewhere accessible, I'm sure.
How does one archive the posts of a Yahoo group?
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JimBentley
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Re: Is this the oldest ever Countdown related forum topic?

Post by JimBentley »

Gavin Chipper wrote:How does one archive the posts of a Yahoo group?
I admit I don't really know, but is there no option - available to you as administrator, that is - to download all posts? It wasn't a threaded group, so there'd be no need to retain that information. I recall that one post just followed another, in the format www.yahoo.[group]/1, /2, etc., in which case it could be done pretty easily even if there's no automatic option to do so. Would be a lot to download though.
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Re: Is this the oldest ever Countdown related forum topic?

Post by Conor »

Was thinking a website downloader tool such as https://www.httrack.com/ could be used.
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