I initially felt apprehension when I heard about the rewrite project. My experience with redesigns and migrations is that they can have the discouraging side effect of breaking years-old stable links and losing history. The gain—in new technologies, improved URL design, or what have you—was diminished by a break in continuity.
I was therefore gladdened when I tried an old-style forum link:
https://tasvideos.mistflux.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=508259#508259
and saw that it redirected to the same post in the new forum, down to the HTML anchor!
https://tasvideos.mistflux.net/Forum/Topics/22808?CurrentPage=1&Highlight=508259#508259
This is, honestly, tremendous. It gives me confidence in the developers and their attention to detail. It was this experience that made me feel the rewrite project was worth some of my time and attention.
This site is not only a place for ongoing contemporary discussion and the development of new speedruns. Its history is one of its greatest assets. At a time when much of speedrunning history is falling into the black hole of Discord or random Google docs, where it is bound to disappear in a few years, TASVideos serves as an example of how to do things right. Think of those Summoning Salt videos that cite forum posts from a decade or more ago, and how those vital historical links might have been lost if not for careful stewardship. I see the preservation of past history as one of the main responsibilities of the site as it proceeds into the future. After all,
cool URIs don't change 😎.
I appreciate the effort that has gone into the rewrite. It is good to feel that what I contribute today will not be lost tomorrow. You have my support!