Thank you, @bartv for the update.
I tried searching for some helpful information over at the Discourse forum, but I also noticed you and @pfaffman posting there. It looks like @pfaffman is a regular there as well.
Perhaps some Discourse dev can lend a hand, if one has not stepped forth or been reached out to already?
If the data is still somewhere, perhaps it could still be imported to a subform (Archived Posts) so as to not endanger all other posts?
Also, with a view to the present and to the future: could this forum be made Archive.org friendly?
Archive.org would have been a great fallback option for the old forum, but, for whatever reason (e.g. robots.txt robot exclusion protocol) Archive.org did not seem to capture much of the old forum.
I’m not sure how things are now, between the new Discourse BA forum and Archive.org, but I would encourage all those involved to see if it would be possible to make this new forum Archive.org compatible/friendly so as to avoid any future major topic / post / attachment loss.
Whatever was lost, in addition to some of the Weekend Challenge attachments and posts I listed earlier, might seem statistically insignificant as compared with the other posts which did make it through migration, but I know what stands to be lost (if it cannot be restored) represents literally thousands upon thousands of collective Blender user hours put into those creations.
While I’d hope that would be evident on its own, I say that in hopes of convincing those who can yet decide the fate of these lost posts that any extra effort would be worthwhile and very deeply appreciated.
I know this a complex undertaking, this forum, full of great responsibilities and unexpected challenges. And, for @bartv and those others who help this thing exist and grow I have great gratitude and respect.
We are a community, and we do share in the trust of this enterprise, between the admins and the members/artists.
Remaining open and honest about these things is such a good thing, even as strong emotions and perspectives may, understandably, might flare up. I think it’s just an imperfect indicator of how deeply everyone cares about this undertaking and wishes for it to be successful for everyone involved.
So, once again, I thank @bartv and encourage Bart and others to see if there just might be some way to pull this off, even if it’s to post these lost posts in another subform or static website.
And please look into Archive.org compatibility. What we have and continue to build upon is certainly worth preserving for current and future Blenderheads
Thanks for hearing my concerns, and please know you all have, within and beyond our community, great gratitude and respect.