I can now announce that literally all of the AAHL (12762 messages by my count) and AAHL2 (1854 messages at this time) have been secured.? I have them, they are safe and it's just a matter of getting them into a format that usable--which is easier said than done. Every conceivable method of getting them from Yahoo before they were deleted proved to be extremely problematic. Neither Glenn nor I ever found the perfect way of getting them. So while we don't, technically, have a clean copy of them all, we do still have the opportunity to create one. It's taking and is going to take a lot of work. I've already put a lot into it and I will keep trudging. I at least have it all imported into Thunderbird now but it's still pretty messy. I'm working on ways of getting the database released at least, some sort of way for us to start browsing it as a group. I'm also working on how best to divide up the work load and bring other people in if anyone wants to help with this extremely tedious but necessary work. This is the non glamour part of archives, folks! (Is there a glamour part? ;-)

I also have some tricks up my sleeve programming what are known as parsers that may aid in this task but I don't know exactly yet if that's going to work out for this particular project. When the database gets messy, it gets really mess and in rather nonsensical ways.

The ultimate goal is to present a clean copy of the entire history that's readuly available as well as? searchable.

As far as AA History Buffs goes, I don't think anybody has a full copy of those messages because of the circumstances by which Nancy lost her administrative access to it originally. In fact, the very first messages of AA History Lovers are mainly reposts by her of content that she included in messages to History Buffs originally. So I think even she knew we weren't going to get full access to that group back.

Unless somebody magically comes forward who happens to somehow have a copy of those original AAHB messages (there were only 639 members at its peak including myself and I couldn't even get all the messages), I'm not sure if? we're ever going to get them all back. But at least we do have everything from AAHL/AAHL2 from the beginning in 2002 up until now.

Best,

Thom