In tidying our links, and noting how many good sites have risen and died in the internet's relatively short existence, including some quite large forums, I got to musing about 'what will survive'. Otto's folded a few forums (fora? Fori? Never sure) into 2F with some old members reappearing, but with the rise of more mainstream soshul meeja I wonder how things will eventually pan out. I'm entertained by Twatter, but as a serious tool it's maybe best as a link feed and immediate info exchange. Friendface is annoying, but does provide shiny pictures and the ability to follow projects. What they lack, though, is a worthwhile search system or any archival value at all. Posts put on them disappear almost completely into the ether unless you assiduously bookmark stuff (few do). I suppose that's part of the attraction, deliberate in their design even, as ephemeral rants and raves fade away, but I don't think it serves a subject such as ours very well. It's all about a useful search system. Stuff not just shared, but easily accessible for a long time with no expiration date. There shouldn't be a time limit on knowledge. Dunno. Rambling. But I do wonder what actual use the internet will be when people's main interactions with it are on systems with no interest in preservation. Also wonder with data storage getting cheaper and more massive in terms of hardware if eventually it'll be easy to find repositories to pour dead or abandoned sites into to preserve things permanently A gloomy but hopeful thought.
The recent Photobucket change and some other things made me realize the impermanence of stuff online. Before I got interested in WW2 this was something I hadn't thought about a lot. Another online forum which I use is www.rpg.net which has been around since... Some time in the late 90s. How have they managed to keep going? In terms of people being willing to run the forums, it's volunteers, but they recruit new moderators from the forum community as others step down. I would like to dream of some sort of collective site, something searchable, where everyone can have their own section to write up their research and post everything and which has the storage for image hosting and backups. Maybe the capacity to hand things over to a new person if someone wants to abandon what they have been doing. (Something like Wikipedia except the pages would be "owned" project pages) I have kind of wandered from forums per se. But I totally agree with you about the nature of social media. It's fine for looking at photos but not for sustained discussion or to have any stored history. With websites and fora. If it's just one person running the site or the forum it's easy for that to just go away. Account terminated, site removed, gone. Except for archive.org but that doesn't maintain images. Am I making any sense?
May an oldie make comment on the above ? Writing as someone who first discovered the joys of the internet when he retired in 1985, I was sufficiently interested to do a year's Open University on the Fundamentals of Computing (using the computing language of Pascal). My first PC was an Amstrad and when I was later to buy a new PC I asked for a list of all the programs that i could use on it, I was offered a single A4 sheet of paper and told "That's it" !!! If this site were to fold, for any reason, I confess that would lose a large chunk of my life and so my one plea to Adam/Otto is as follows. Ramble on whenever and however you like but never under-estimate the wonderful service you both provide and for which I, and I am sure many others, are truly grateful. Ron
Honestly, we survive by the generosity of Otto, propped up by the last couple of years' donations. We're probably more secure than most because of that particular Canado-Chicagoan's sheer bloody-minded devotion to preserving 'data', but I do sometimes wonder about permanence. Ron, you and the other WW2-era chaps' comments on here would be the greatest loss. Even things like the odd argument and totally off-topic discussion are something I don't think historians have ever had access to in the same way. 'What did X think about Y 75 years post-event?' - here, read it, this is what some thought. Not just thinking of the ultimate fading of websites, though. As much about the facile dominance of a few social media sites (while not forgetting we're a kind of social media ourselves). I'd possibly be a lot more content if you could search Facebook, Twitter etc. In more detail for the good stuff (which several here create/curate), but that does seem to be counter to their core business. Probably over-thinking it, but I do wonder about which format will 'win', if there is a winner. Should more states, government and university libraries etc. be preserving websites in the same way they have newspaper's etc.? Who pays for that? Maybe c.50,000 Gigabytes of data laid down per second. How do you sort the wheat from chaff in that... Every Day Big Data Statistics – 2.5 Quintillion Bytes of Data Created Daily
Well I (possibly sadly) only belong to this forum and no other nor on any social media type communication stream. Many dead forums have a spurt of interest then the members either find what they want or it does not have the legs to survive and information drys up.The forum could also be one stringed and of limited interest. The main criteria is to have a broad base of experts (anoraks) in which we have here in abundance on this forum plus some level heads in the admin team to tidy and input control if required.Also members not to be worried about asking a question and for forum members to be supportive even if a simple question is asked.Keep the interest varied. Whilst we continue to attract new members we also have many long termers which gives a good mix and the new members turn into long termers et al. So we will always be here with the best WW2 content on the planet. As per another thread get your research on here and make sure you back it up and maintain it. Keep posting keep asking. Keep those servers running. Onwards and upwards Regads Clive
There will always be a place for a forum such as this. I don't seem to contribute much anymore but I visit most days. I conducted a tour around Dunkirk in August and as is my want I went slightly off-piste for some of it. The only way I was able to do that was mainly due to what is contained in the 1940 section right here. I can't answer which format will win but I started buying Vinyl again this year, the lesson being that the perceived outmoded soon becomes cool again. Keep going please, as you were. JB
As an administrator/moderator of another discussion forum of very similar size to this one, one that has been online since 2001, I would council one thing: constantly look to widen involvement and devolve responsibility for the running of the board; the moment that the forum's survival becomes dependent on the goodwill/good health/free time/financial security of one person or tight group, the board and the collective knowledge it houses are potentially at risk. Although on this other board our main admin has remained the same since inception, it is the careful cultivation of and consultation with senior members that has allowed the moderation team to evolve as 'real life' has taken its toll and once-familiar faces have dropped out from view. If you always have a choice of reliable and respected figures to call upon, you'll likely be fine, and the way to ensure that is to involve them--formally and informally--in the running of the site and the countless decisions, big and little, that that entails. Apologies if I'm stating the obvious.
Very well put, Charley. That is exactly what I meant too. If you can set things up so the administration does not fall on a single person, then should one person no longer have time to maintain the forum, the others can carry on, and continuity can be maintained. (This is making me think about becoming a supporter of the forum, fwiw.)
A non-condescending addendum: I can't say how much it happens here as I'm relatively junior member who can only claim expertise in one narrow subject, but as a moderator elsewhere I very often consult senior members who are not moderators to ask their opinions on all kinds of issues: technical stuff, rule changes, topic categorisations and promotional work--even how to deal with troublesome members. This is helpful from the 'consensual policing' standpoint, but it also means that they feel comfortable sending unsolicited suggestions and standing in for me when I'm on holiday or sick. If one of our three moderators were hit by a bus tomorrow (God forbid), I'm confident that we'd have at least half a dozen good-quality candidates to step up and take over. From all my interactions here, I think the moderators do an excellent job. Apart from housekeeping and flipping switches, it's about setting the tone (perhaps especially important around an event that killed millions), and in my opinion the tone here is entirely appropriate.
