Demise of Greenspun.com Imminent from the B & W Photo - Film & Processing forum.

In case I goofed up the link, the gist of the message is that Philip will be shutting down greenspun.com in the not so distant future.

-- Preston Wilson (preston_wilson@mail.com), December 10, 2001

Answers

See also the discussion going on in the large format photography forum.

-- Preston Wilson (preston_wilson@mail.com), December 10, 2001.

I followed a link in that thread to Allen's discussion of the events at Ars Digita up until April of 2001 and the beginning lawsuit. What happened next? I notice that they still have a website.

-- John Kantor (jkantor@mindspring.com), December 13, 2001.

I mean "Philip's" discussion. (I must have been thinking about interest rate cuts!)

-- John Kantor (jkantor@mindspring.com), December 13, 2001.

Unfortunately, from what I can tell, it looks like only some of the equipment forums (Leica, large format) that run on greenspun.com are going to be saved, probably reflecting the owner's bent towards the technical over everything else. The forums that are being kept have apparently been notified.

What I find really annoying is that there has been no notice to the rest of the people running greenspun.com boards. I have a music bulletin board on greenspun and haven't been told anything, but I assume it is going away.

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), December 13, 2001.

In the large format photography forum (I think), someone stated that only the photography related boards had the imminent demise notice. The non-photography related boards were going to be kept around a little longer before being given the boot.

-- Preston Wilson (preston_wilson@mail.com), December 13, 2001.

The photo forums going first? I've not heard that. Unless you know something I don't, what's "going" is the server itself. It's being taken off line due to a shortage of resources to manage it. What is being saved are a few of the photo-related forums.

Jeff, I agree with you. Philosophy and People are two forums that definitely ought to be included. I have a bit of "survivor's guilt."

-- Tony Rowlett (rowlett@alaska.net), December 13, 2001.

There are quite a few other options (though we wouldn't have the archive of old posts). Why not beseen.com? That apparently allows images. Or PHPbb, which is a free download. (I've got several domains that I could host that on.)

-- John Kantor (jkantor@mindspring.com), December 14, 2001.

And EzBoard is free and has inexpensive image hosting as an option.

-- John Kantor (jkantor@johnkantor.com), December 14, 2001.

The following is taken from this discussion in the Pentax 67 SLR forum:

---------- Hey, I'm not dead yet... But seriously the easiest thing to do with photo forums is move them into photo.net. The site has a full-time staff. For the rest of the greenspun.com stuff, I'm not pulling the plug immediately. But I want to make sure that the services are rebuilt in a way that is sustainable. I've already told Steve that we can move his forum onto photo.net and redirect seamlessly from old greenspun.com bookmarks.

-- Philip Greenspun (philg@mit.edu), December 07, 2001. ----------

-- Preston Wilson (preston_wilson@mail.com), December 14, 2001.

Well I'll be! I stand corrected. So it sounds like ALL of the greenspun LUSENET forums will live somehow.

-- Tony Rowlett (rowlett@alaska.net), December 14, 2001.

Just as a project, I'm working on rewriting the q-and-a system in php. If push came to shove, we could host the forum on my personal server-- I certainly have the bandwidth to spare.

I can also see easily importing the archives if they stay up long enough to grab. Does anyone have the time to spider the forums and sort them by category?

I'm also planning on adding preview, and other useful features (image url placeholders, perhaps integration of some sort with photo.net).

Even if it never gets used, it's a fun project. If anyone has suggestions, let me know.

-- Josh Wand (josh@joshwand.com), December 17, 2001.

Thanks Josh. I've emailed Phil to ask him exactly what's happening, and to see, if it's such that greenspun's going down, if there's anywhere we can ride with him.

I'm also on the phone as we speak trying to figure out how I can get my webpage started with Rogers At Home. If it comes to it, seems we'll have a few options...:)

shawn:)

-- shawn (seeinsideforever@yahoo.com), December 19, 2001.