Kelsey Media buys Morton’s Titles

[ashley needhamParticipant @ashleyneedham69188]

Wotsup is fine for keeping in touch, and all the bands I play in have a wotsup group.

However, anything you post soon gets hidden by a deluge of other posts and finding something you want to refer to involves scrolling back for 20 mins. It’s not a forum substitute. Ditto Facebook…posts here today…gone tomorrow.

The eventual extinction of whsmiths from our high streets will have dire consequences for hundreds of publications that they sell. Tesco or Sainsbury’s will only stock a very small selection of the most popular titles, as will independent newsagents compared to the vast rows a smiffs.

I don’t think it costs a fortune to have a website…we could do our own…..

Doom and gloom.

Ashley

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

I don’t think it costs a fortune to have a website…we could do our own…..

Ashley,

For the number of members we are likely to have it is unlikely to be financially viable plus a reasonable degree of software and computer expertise is needed to set it up and run it.

Once set up you are entering the internet jungle. Your site will be targeted by web bots and automated hackers as a matter of course. If you are unlucky you will be specifically targeted to the extent that the site becomes unusable. There are methods of warding off these threats but they can be time consuming and expensive and need expertise.

As an example, when accessing the Mazda 6 car owner website which I belong to this morning I was presented with the screen below. normally there may be one or two posts but today there were pages of automated spam posts.

On another forum devoted to ferries on which I am a moderator I have been fending off attempts to flood the pages with irrelevant information on airline schedules.

I still have moderator status on the Model Engineer website and most days I wake up with up to half a dozen email warnings of attempted spam posts.

Most of this stuff goes on in the background so users are protected but Mortons and other Forum providers are spending a lot of time (and often money) in keeping things that way. If you set up your own forum then you you will be in the front line!

A lot of the disruption can be traced to Russian origins. They just try to create random chaos.

Colin

 

 

 

 

[Chris FellowsParticipant @chrisfellows72943]

Well, the switch hasn’t been flicked yet then!

I’m having problems with using via my Android tablet again, i.e. the site is out of date as regards posts.

Probably a waste of time reporting the problem again which as Ray has said has led to the loss of previous ones and also does nothing to help with increasing new members.

Chris

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

I always access this site (and the ME one) from my PC which seems to be generally reliable although the occasional reset requires logging in again (twice!).

I have no news on the changeover, Lindsey said she would update me when she was able to do so. Understandably there is confidentiality involved while issues associated with the sale are worked through.

Colin

 

[Chris FellowsParticipant @chrisfellows72943]

Yeah, I use my PC, as I have to, and for updating blogs as I generally have my photos on it. But most of the time I use my tablet for catching up on forums and Facebook groups so I find it frustrating when I can’t do it. And of course fewer folks have PCs nowadays as they can use tablets and phones.

Chris

[Richard TunstallParticipant @richardtunstall55153]

2026 has arrived and I wondered if there is any more news about the future of this Forum?  I have read through the thread above and it makes the current Forum sound quite precarious, which is sad.  The Model Boat Mayhem forum (a suitable alternative) is also unavailable at present.  I have posted a couple of model builds on the Model Boat Mayhem forum over the years and I would like to post a build story for my current scratch build as well (a 1900s Great Lakes tramp steamer).  I’m a bit reluctant to start if the whole thing might disappear though!  Any updates or advice would be welcome.

Regarding Facebook, I agree with the comments above – it is very slick but it isn’t at all helpful for keeping a build log or searching for past entries.

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

The future of this Forum is in the hands of Kelsey Media. At the moment there is no indication that it will be  closed. However it is rather clunky and can be difficult to access from Android devices. A PC is better.

Model Boat Mayhem has been the main model boat forum for many years but is currently unavailable. It is privately owned by one person. Apparently the host computer recently went down, taking the backups with it. The owner has some backups and is trying to find an alternative host but this will be dependent on his backups being viable. The forum software is functional but now rather outdated.

Anything you post online mjust be considered as ephemeral, it could just vanish in an instant for many reasons.

You might like to consider writing an article for Model Boats Magazine which is likely to be more permanent and will survive even if the magazine itself should stop publication.

Colin

 

[Richard SimpsonModerator @richardsimpson88330]

If I ever post anything such as a build article I keep a copy myself anyway and all the pictures I would use are always kept archived so I would never actually loose anything if a forum was to shut down.

[Chris FellowsParticipant @chrisfellows72943]

Yes, I started doing the same when things started looking dodgy as regards the future of the forum – I use the Snip tool if using Windows. And like you, have the photos anyway, which are invaluable for future builds when I’ve forgotten how to do things! Build Blogs can be a lot of work but they do make you take photos!

Obviously, as has been said before, the closing of a forum is the loss of all the other blogs and advice etc. collected over many years. I’ve copied the odd things but there is a limit and you don’t know what you may need in the future.

Chris

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