It’s official 

RIP

Posted by: @brasco

↑

It’s official 

RIP

 E69EFFCF-1F30-482F-9C29-46C36730D2C2.jpeg

Brasco!!!  I just went there and yep.  Hard to swallow.  😢 

@brasco Just saw that. My gut actually sank when I saw it.

Here's hoping all those posts are archived.

I think a lot of us have been feeling sick to our stomachs over it. I know I have.

I just wish there had been some clarity about what exactly would be "archived". It wasn't mentioned in the original announcement...only later on when we asked if it would happen was there mention made of the word. But...what will that even translate into? A frozen site where you can navigate posts and read them without adding to them? That seems not to be the case already. It's just....gone. If it was being frozen and everyone was being shut out...that could have happened today, right? But the message boards are now gone. Or closed off from the public.

Look, I'm not saying all the day-to-day chitchats were necessarily important to save...but the discoveries, the rare photos, the behind-the-scenes info...that stuff. Every year there were new things being learned. It would take time to go through threads and pick it all out, but surely it'd be worth the effort and there would have been fans willing. No?

I have a sinking feeling it's all just...over. No archives. No explanation. Nada. But I really hope I'm wrong.

🙁 It's been a very hard night.

Aw, too bad, I thought it'd be later in the day and was going to pop on over one last time. 

From the ashes something new is always born. Glad we have places like these, which will honour the org with love

I thought that the official shut down was scheduled for November 14th..?

And, it was supposed to be archived as well.

This seems ...abrupt.

@disneyboy Yea it’s not getting proper closure. It would have been an easier pill to swallow. Now when you check it says “connection not private”

I think it shut down between 12:30- 12:40  am eastern time today.  There was a thank you message on a He-Man and She-Ra  Secret of the Sword poster.  I get that warning message now, though. 

Never was on those forums, but I know what it's like loosing a site / forum you really enjoyed 😢. Hopefully, some of you guys can find a new home here.

Its sad that the org is gone....maybe one day it will return. But I hope this place can be our new home. Here is to the future!! 🙂 

I was giving Val a very hard time there with some of my last posts, for what it's worth. I'm very pissed off with how he handled the situation, and the bizarre mixed messages he put out on the last day. What an insult.

@durendal My problem was that he took away the ability to donate because  he said that wasn’t fair for the users. Then he made a post after he announced closing the site that the donation option was always there but people chose not to. Unless I read that wrong but pretty sure I didn’t.

Posted by: @ornclown

↑

it was supposed to be archived as well.

Assuming that still happens, it's going to take a while just to download final backups including everything up to the closure. Or the plan might have been to create a static archive from the site whilst it's still in situ but with forum set to private apart from for admins.

I'm not sure if Val did his own coding / technical maintenance? So a lot's probably resting on whoever's helping out and their availability.

Anyone have an idea what kind of bill he was looking at? You find 20 people to split 20 ways it can't be too much can it?

The way a friend who hosts TFArchive does it, he rents a server and is technical enough to keep the Linux environment up to date himself. We've never discussed actual costs but there've been plenty of server moves over the last ~25 years and it's gotten cheaper each time. But he does use that server for other more current personal projects.

These days actual storage is cheap, assuming that the Org wasn't on an old contract that didn't offer essentially unlimited resources. If the contracts hadn't been kept up to date, they might have been paying older rates with more limits.

I think the closure was probably a mix of factors -- technical debt and being faced with having to upgrade vBulletin plus the server environment plus rewrite the old code for the rest of the site. Contracts that probably weren't optimal. And years of paying out of pocket for it all. Maybe with a bit of friction with Mattel thrown in, they're generally considered less friendly than Hasbro with fan sites and generating income with sponsors, ads, etc, could have been a line. Plus real life, being busy, etc.

edit: The biggest shame is it wasn't handed over to other people who could deal with that stuff.

And bandwidth could still have been a fairly big cost. I think it would probably have made sense to turn older parts of the forum into a static archive and block crawling by most bots. Effectively keep it online for normal browsing but start a fresh forum with the user database.

@durendal I hate to say this but you brought up a lot of good points and I agreed with your train of thought. Somebody had to say it and you just ended up being the one to call out Val. I certainly didn't have the stomach to say it.

Last night after the site went down the chatroom still worked and a few of us went into it and gabbed for a bit. It was somewhat surreal. The site was down yet that one part was still there and working. 😥

Posted by: @denyer

↑

I'm not sure if Val did his own coding / technical maintenance? So a lot's probably resting on whoever's helping out and their availability

No. I'm pretty sure Adam Tyner jumped in every once in a while for maintenance. However, about a year or two ago, Val did put out a call for volunteers to update the site. I responded (once or twice), but never heard back, which is a shame because I've been managing large and small website since the .org started. Then, I commented on updates needed for the site, and one of the mods mentioned that a new site was coming (which made sense based on what Val emailed a year or so prior.) I also found it strange that the donation option went away at some point.

Regardless, the reality is that the site was technically Val's to do with as he wished. Although, it was the community that made it what it was.

Hopefully we'll at least find out the full story behind its abrupt closure one of these days!

I thought it would always be around!

 😥 We all thought it would always be around