Ken have you heard of this ?

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Countryside : One Thread

Hi Ken; When the forum is 'unavailable' I look for other greenspun forums to make sure that the server is down vs. the countryside forum has been removed.While surfing other Greenspun forums I saw the following. I do not try to be an alarmist,just do not want to see all of us suddenly homeless 'forumless'.

I've learned the unfortunate news that Greenspun.com, which hosts this bulletin board, will soon cease to exist.We don't know how soon, exactly. I've been in touch with Phil Greenspun, who has offered to transfer this forum onto Photo.Net. When this happens, there will be a few changes, most notably that all users will have to register to continue participating. It's a fairly painless process which you can do right now by going to Photo.Net and becoming a registered user. (If you haven't been to photo.net...it's well worth exploring.) I still don't know all of the technical details of the switchover, but will add to this thread as new information becomes available. Thanks for your patience!

Ken Have you heard anything about this ? If this is going to happen can we get a alternate 'meeting' place agreed upon ? Will someone archive the 'archive' so that we do not lose it? Thanks Tradesman

-- Tradesman (Tradesman@noaddr.com), December 24, 2001

Answers

I just got off the phone with Phillip Greenspun, and he assured me that the site isn't about to just "go away" or anything. Here's the situation as he describes it:

One alternative would be to start our own website that would host the forum separately from Mr. Greenspun's site. I mentioned this to him and he said that he would help us save all of the existing data on the forum and move it over if we decided to go this route.

I will volunteer to help organize this if it comes down to it. I have a call in to Countryside to get their opinion. Hope to hear from someone there on Wednesday. If we want to ensure the survival of the forum as a free knowledge base for homesteaders, I'll submit that this is the way to go.

To do this someone would need to:

I will volunteer to do all of the above, and to pick up the cost of registering the domain name and hosting the site, (though any help with these costs wouldn't be turned down). I believe that the things that I learn here from you all are worth much more than the $35 it costs to register a website.

My goal here is to simply ensure the survival of the forum. What do you think of my proposal?



-- chuck in md (woah@mission4me.com), December 24, 2001.


Chuck, as an active forum participant I would hate to see this forun shut down, and appreciate your efforts on our behalf. But, since this forum is maintained by CS I would like to hear from Ken and/or the CS staff to learn what provision they have in mind for a continuance before we all start making plans on our own.

Happy Holidays

-- Elizabeth (ekfla@aol.com), December 24, 2001.


Pay a small fee.....how about going over and talking to Gary and Pam on the Goatworld.com site. A very active message forum is in mothballs because of an imposed 6$ a year fee. How many of the regulars are going to pay to give advice, none. There are simply way to many free sites to visit. It would be very easy for anyone to simply put up their own Countryside forum at groups.yahoo.com then we could have files, pictures etc. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), December 24, 2001.

The Yahoo clubs is a great idea. It would be free, and works well. The only (slight)drawback is that everyone would have to be registered with Yahoo!. However, I'd venture to say that most folks are already registered.

The other drawback is that we wouldn't be able to move over the previous posts.

I have just completed backing up the entire countryside forum database onto my computer, so if it does go down, we won't lose everything.

-- chuck in md (woah@mission4me.com), December 24, 2001.


You can get one for only 10 dollars at gandi.net. They have excellent service and prices.

-- Owen in KY (Malachi@bardstowncable.net), December 24, 2001.


I am saddened to hear that this may come about. I have to agree with vicki though, the experience we had over at Goat world was that when they decided to go for a pay for forum, well....... it all went "south" as the saying goes.

I personally feel that one of the "positives" of going to pay would be that this would rule out a lot of the recent issues on the forum with the sometimes blatent offensive posts and dissention.

However, on the flip side it will be deter the many folks who use this forum for help and information and sharing of homesteading ideas, etc.

I know there are many forum boards out there that are free and we just have to search a little to find them. Yahoogroups would be one consideration.

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), December 24, 2001.


If the costs are as low as Chuck suggests it wouldn't take much to raise the cash. PBS does on air auctions of donated services or products, a forum web site could as well. Sell a few T shirts or hats! YT Mag had financial trouble and asked for donations of $5 or so. It worked. I'm very new here but like the wide range of topics and all of the contributions so far! We like it but won't pay for it? The free internet is gone but good people can find good answers. I like the auction myself. I'll donate!

-- amulet@istar.ca (amulet@istar.ca), December 24, 2001.

Well whatever countryside and or the majority decide please let us all know. I"ve only been practising this way of life for a couple of years and I've got tooo much to learn to lose you all now. Everyone here has learned and helped, and I'd like to say a big THANK YOU to EVERYONE for this experience. Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year to all.

Carol

-- Carol K (ck7951@bluefrognet.net), December 24, 2001.


Maybe Dave could check with someone at TB2K to look into piggybacking on their site? They used to be a part of Lusenet but are on a better system now. It is a site you have to register at but it's free.

-- Susan (smtroxel@socket.net), December 24, 2001.

I would really hate to see the greenspun boards go away and particularly CS and BTS. One reason I like Greenspun is the almost total absence of commercialism, ie pop ups, banner adds, and those annoying persistant pop ups that won't go away. I like its simplicity too. Its very user friendly and I've neen enjoying it for years but if it goes away I don't think there's much wrong with the yahoo boards and I think they're pretty flexible.

I don't have a problem at all with registration either. I think to register you have to give a valid e-mail address so it would help to keep the trolls at a minimum too.

I forget your name but hats off to the guy who volunteered to do the setup and to copy the archives for continued use. Thats a generous offer.

-- john (natlivent@pcpros.net), December 24, 2001.



TB2k uses vbulletin. CS would probably attract more trolls if linked up with them. I'd think Yahoo clubs would be better, and quicker process posting and reading messages. It's a shame someone can't take over and maintain Lusenet, it's well written and a nice clean layout.

-- Dave (something@somewhere.com), December 24, 2001.

I agree 100% with John!!

-- Marcia (HrMr@webtv.net), December 24, 2001.

A forum I visit almost daily on yahoo [AWEA] has too many distracting adds....pop ups or what ever you call them.....and it's gotten worse lately!!........So going the yahoo route has its shortfalls!...

I sure do like this "format"......plain & simple......K.I.S.S.

My $ .02

-- Jim-mi (hartalteng@voyager.net), December 24, 2001.


Dave Belanger is aware of the potential problem and is considering options, perhaps even rehosting it through the Countryside site. As noted, every option has advantages and disadvantages.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), December 25, 2001.

Ken: I'm wondering, maybe greenspun would sell, rent, or donate the software and archives to CS if they're gonna close up shop anyway. That way it'd be a seamless transition when the time came.

-- john (natlivent@pcpros.net), December 25, 2001.


Is there any way to insure that the forum set-up stays the same (ie, where you can scroll down through the answers)? On a few other forums that I peeped in on in my early computer days, you had to click on each answer, which gets old and slow really fast.

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), December 25, 2001.

What kind of a cost would be involved in setting up our own site and hireing someone to maintain it? A couple bucks a month from each of us would add up to pay for equipment and personnel, I would pay just to have access to this forum without popups or trolls; free lunches are rare.

-- mitch hearn (moopups@citlink.net), December 25, 2001.

I use www.christianwebhosting.com for my church's web site. 19.95 to register domain name and 9.95 a month. i could maybe help with the site, although i don't know a lot about that stuff. i do understand ftp, server setup's and such. i have ~20GB of space if you need storage for a little while, or could maybe burn some stuff to cd-r. set it up on a linux server :) please.

-- steve (stevetamara@mindspring.com), December 25, 2001.

Unless someone is willing to pay and make the effort to maintain a site, like someone said earlier, there ain't no free lunch. I would also suggest the Yahoo egroups. The ads are annoying, but they keep it FREE. I don't mind registration, those sites make it possible for the webmaster to boot the trolls, and more difficult for people to post anonymously. On the Yahoo groups you can take the option of getting an email digest, sends you the last 25 messages in one email. And yes, it is more difficult to follow individual threads. But if LUSENET goes down, at least it's another free option.

PS....Is someone making note of all the email addresses of the posters on here, would it be possible to notify us in the event that LUSENET does go down and a new site is opened? Or can you give us an email for someone to contact?

-Chelsea

-- Chelsea (rmbehr@istar.ca), December 26, 2001.


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