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Now that Aardvark is shutting down, how do I download my questions and answers before they go away completely?

I've written a script to do this, but it only works when the site is working properly. Right now, vark.com states:

Aardvark is down for routine maintenance right now. Check back in a few minutes!

I'm concerned that "few minutes" is "forever".

MORE EDIT: I just realized that I used vark.com largely through IM and email, so digging through my chat logs and email should help. Not ideal, but do-able.

EDIT: Thanks, other Barry. I tried googling 'site:vark.com "barry c"' but got only 80 results:

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Avark.com+%22barry+c.%22

but I know I have at least 1014 questions:

http://wordpress.barrycarter.info/index.php/category/vark/

so the google results are extremely incomplete.

blog.vark.com's last paragraph states: 

p.s.  In the spirit of data liberation, we want to make sure that any 
of you Aardvark users who would like to retrieve your past data from 
the service can do so.  Right now of course you can log in and 
manually copy anything you'd like to keep.  Or if you prefer, you can 
email us at support@vark.com and we'll send you a bulk dump of your 
data (please allow time for us to process these).  After September 30, 
there will be no way to retrieve your data, as shortly after that we 
will delete everything permanently.

so this might be difficult (google owns vark.com, and it looks like they're in the process of nuking vark.com's cached data as well).

I haven't tried archive.org yet, but seeing my own questions required logging in and I don't think archive.org's cache will suffice.

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This annoyed me. They said to email them about archives of my activity, but I did so multiple times and was ignored. Aardvark was a very poorly handled shutdown. – dgw Feb 27 '12 at 4:33

closed as too localized by Barry♦ Feb 27 '12 at 14:47

This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet. For help making this question more broadly applicable, see the FAQ.

1 Answer

up vote 8 down vote accepted

If the site is down (or down for routine maintenance) and Aardvark isn't going to allow you download your data then I would guess one way, albeit laborious, would be to trawl through the cached results from Google.

I have presumed you have used the same name as you have used here.

Enter the search term site:vark.com barrycarter

Google Cache

Hover over the double arrows and click the cached link. You can then save a copy of the page.

Another option would be to use the Internet Wayback Machine but again this would be pretty time consuming too.

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