I have a BA in history, which means I have training on how to do research and cite my sources.
Following along with my training, even RPG blogging, I link back to my sources online.
When writing about RPGs, especially “OSR” topics, I found a lot of great ideas, discussion, and all around inspiration on G+.
It occurred to me a couple of days ago that I should see how many things I linked to on G+ and try to copy those things and add the source to my blog posts, so the information is not lost to the mists of time.
I use an extension on my blog that lets me do a search and replace on things across my entire blog. It has an option to do a “dry run” and for the free version show how many instances of a given phrase it finds before it replaces it.
Great . . . .
I searched for the key part of the URL for G+: plus.google.com.
Here are my results for a few of the tables:
- Comments – 2
- Links: 4
- Posts: 867!
Comments
The comments are from the same person and link back to his G+ page. I copied the long text in the about page and the graphic to a google doc. That was easy!
Links
The links are to the Follow Me, And Die! G+ page. OK, I can screenshot it or something and provide a nostalgia page or something.
The other three are to the Metamorphosis Alpha, the Swords & Wizardry, and Tenkar’s Landing G+ community pages. I can use G+ Exporter to grab those and post to a page or site for historical purposes, but that’s a whole other ball of wax.
Posts
The 867 posts are links in 157 actual posts. Counting this post, I now have 780 posts.
I can go into the database and search for the unique links and go from there.
I’ve got some ideas of how I can hack together a crude solution. I’m not the best script coder, but I plan to do my best to copy what’s on the other end of all these links. But first, just in case, I’m going to grab my favorite G+ discussions that stand out in my mind
Unfortunately, trying to preserve this background history of my RPG life during my time on G+ is going to sidetrack me from other things.
Conclusion
Unlike blogs and websites, there is no archive of all of G+. Google is just going to delete it. It would be really cool if Google and The Internet Archive could work out a deal.
If you have a favorite G+ discussion, get it now — if you can find it.
[UPDATE: I just found that if you use the Evernote web clipper and tell it to use the default option of Article, it will save the entire G+ thread. NOTE: It is literal about what is copied. Be sure to unhide all comments with the view x previous comments link, if any.]
