AUGI: up in smoke

[Anonymous]

Hey all. Those of you who use AUGI to look over the fence into crazy world of Autodesk -- well you can't do that any more at AUGI. AUGI and their previous ISP have been in some sort of tussle about ownership of the forum databases, and AUGI decided to walk and start over. So a million posts on every Autodesk product made since AUGI started the forum years ago is gone, unless the ISP can be convinced to release them. We don't know if they will.

So say a prayer for the poor folks over at AUGI who are having to rebuild a repository of knowledge -- and for now, you'll have to search on Autodesk's forums for information at discussion.autodesk.com

AUGI was more fun, more open, and had much better content. And perhaps it will again if people decide to stay.

So in case you wondered what happened -- there you are. This happened this past week. No one knew this was coming, so the shock was huge. Search for AUGI on Twitter and you'll get a bit more of the story.

Ain't technology grand?

[Anonymous]

BUMMER!

[Ralph Wessel]

metanoia wrote:
So say a prayer for the poor folks over at AUGI who are having to rebuild a repository of knowledge -- and for now, you'll have to search on Autodesk's forums for information at discussion.autodesk.com

There's a chance they may be able to retrieve the repository from other sources. Google and others have vast archives of all Internet content, and it may be possible to retrieve the content from there.

[vistasp]

No backup database? No mirror somewhere? Ouch!

I've never used AUGI, but I have to say that it would be a tragedy if such a large body of knowledge were to be wasted.

Come to think of it, does AC-Talk have a backup plan?

[Laszlo Nagy]

Could this have anything to do with the fact that Autodesk University was held last week?
Interesting timing on someone's part.

Still, I feel sorry for all the innocent users. AUGI was the forum for every single Autodesk product, not only Revit.

[Laszlo Nagy]

I checked with GS HQ: They are doing a full backup every weekend, are doing incremental backups every weekday and of course they own all the data.
Just another reason to be an ArchiCAD user.

[Anonymous]

AUGI, as a non-profit organization, had a forum database years ago and it wasn't a very active forum - mostly just AutoCAD posts IIRC. A worm hit the server and they lost their database back then. Around the same time a private forum for Revit decided to merge with AUGI just as they were getting a new ISP. Unfortunately it appears that the ISP had their own interests in mind more than AUGI's long-term well being, and while the new ISP got AUGI set up quickly, the long term outlook was perhaps not so bright. The biggest shame is that AUGI didn't punch out sooner.

Autodesk has their own forums, but it's a pretty basic feature set compared to what AUGI had.

[vistasp]

laszlonagy wrote:
I checked with GS HQ: They are doing a full backup every weekend, are doing incremental backups every weekday and of course they own all the data.

Good to hear! These forums are an invaluable resource for all AC users.

[Anonymous]

That is a real tragedy - but I imagine that they will get it back somehow
Our digital existence is very fragile!

[Geoff Briggs]

Sorry to hear about the data loss. It's still out there somewhere. I sure hope you guys can recover it.

When I was dabbling with Revit the AUGI Revit forums were the place to find answers to my many questions, just like these forums are for ArchiCAD users. And just like here the community there was always eager to help both newbie and power user to gitter done, as well as lend a shoulder to cry on when things went south or Big Brother left you cold. I'm sure that won't change, but the loss of all those years of accumulated knowledge would be a real shame.

It appears that AUGI dropped the ball on a couple levels Wes. First back when they signed over the ownership (not just the hosting) of all the user data to a separate entity. If you leave your pants down it's hard to complain when someone's got you by the you-know-whats. But the bigger fail is how they reacted to that. It sounds like this has been coming for a couple years. If so there is no excuse for failing to migrate the knowledge base.

Best of luck.