Salon Table Talk

Salon Table Talk
URL	http://tabletalk.salon.com/[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]
Status	Closing
Archiving status	In progress...
Archiving type	Unknown
IRC channel	#archiveteam-bs (on hackint)

(more will be filled in later)

There are 2973 discussions on the site.

Discussion ids

Number of discussions	Topic file
112	attic.Books%20Attic.html.ids
25	attic.Computers%20and%20Gadgets%20Attic.html.ids
43	attic.Health%20Attic.html.ids
39	attic.House%20and%20Garden%20Attic.html.ids
115	attic.Imagination%20Attic.html.ids
81	attic.Issues%20and%20News%20Attic.html.ids
46	attic.Mind%20and%20Spirit%20Attic.html.ids
147	attic.Mothers%20Attic.html.ids
80	attic.Movies%20Attic.html.ids
63	attic.Music%20Attic.html.ids
65	attic.Politics%20Attic.html.ids
140	attic.Private%20Life%20Attic.html.ids
49	attic.Salon%20Central%20Attic.html.ids
30	attic.Sports%20Attic.html.ids
64	attic.Television%20Attic.html.ids
63	topic.Books.html.ids
29	topic.Business%20and%20Work%20Life.html.ids
166	topic.Families%20Who%20Think.html.ids
31	topic.Gadgets.html.ids
98	topic.Health.html.ids
57	topic.Home%20and%20Away.html.ids
141	topic.House%20and%20Garden.html.ids
137	topic.Imagination.html.ids
150	topic.Issues%20and%20News.html.ids
55	topic.Mind%20and%20Spirit.html.ids
85	topic.Movies.html.ids
59	topic.Music.html.ids
100	topic.Politics.html.ids
192	topic.Private%20Life.html.ids
51	topic.Salon%20Central.html.ids
44	topic.Sports.html.ids
168	topic.Television.html.ids
8	topic.Welcome.html.ids
240	topic.White%20House.html.ids

Scripts, list of discussion ids

The git depository contains scripts and lists of discussion ids.

You should be able to run ./dld-all.sh FILE_WITH_DISCUSSION_IDS to start a download. From time to time you will be blocked by tabletalk. The script will then exit. Start it again after some time and it will pick up where it stopped.

Site structure

Topics

The discussions on the site are grouped in a number of topics. These topics are listed on the tabletalk front page: Books, Family Life etc.

URLs:
http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx/Books/
http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx/Families%20Who%20Think/
etc.

(Note: the URL of the topic is not always the same as the topic's title, see Families%20Who%20Think vs. Family Life.)

Each of the topic pages has a full list of the discussions in that topic.

Most topics have archived discussions, which are moved to an 'attic'. The list of topics in the attic can be found via the attic link on the topic page. For example:

http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx/Books/Books%20Attic/

The attic page has, like the topic page, a list of the discussions.

Discussions

A discussion has a starting post (which appears on each page) and a list of messages. A discussion has a discussion id, a sequence of letters and digits. The messages are paginated: 50 messages per page. The index of the next message is given in the URL, starting at index 0 for the first message.

Simple URLs to get the messages of a discussion:

http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx/.[DISCUSSION ID]/[MSG INDEX]

E.g.
http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx/.eea08df/0
http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx/.eea08df/50
http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx/.eea08df/100
http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx/.eea08df/...

These URLs do work, but the URLs that are linked from the tabletalk pages look slightly different.

http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx?14@@.eea08df/0

http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx?14@@.eea08df/1160

The last page of the discussion can be recognized by grepping for the LAST link. If this link is not on the page, you have found the end of the discussion.