Well apparently Drew isn't going to let me edit the posts nor delete them. Just got this from him:



So now the question is, do I contact his ISP with a letter that he's violated copyright or simply shine it on and let the posts remain? I have nothing against Drew (other than he will not delete the posts). In a way, I could have pressed Rob, who I'm far more pissed at to remove the posts awhile ago. I have no plans to join this forum! Maybe I should just let it go...

Andrew,

Assuming that the 'historical' archive is freely accessible to the public,whether they are
paying subscribers of the forums or not,does that not satisfy the demands most 'historical'
authors wanted this time last week when things blew up?

To be honest,I haven't kept up with the evolution this past week and don't know that the
old forums are,indeed,freely accessible but if it is the case then I should think there would
no longer be a perceived copyright issue.

Are we each able to delete all our old posts on the L.L. forum,or on any other public
forum that is free to access,for that matter ?

Mark

I believe so and my gut reaction is to leave the posts and move on. It does no harm and I really have nothing (yet) against Drew.

But... is it possible that not ALL the archive is available?

I had a few threads bookmarked to read latter (but, silly me, not downloaded), and now there is no way I can find them on the "historicals". I do have the tittle of all of them, but none shows when I do search...

Am I so unlucky? Am I doing something wrong? Am I blind, somehow, and unale to find the way to the threads? Will they appear, eventually?

I wanted to a ask this to the new manager but, of course, I can not post anymore.

Does anyone know anything about this?

Thanks
Ucha

Not sure. Seems to be. However, the search engine is not so hot. Apparently you can't search back more than 1 year. What you can do is fine one of your posts, click on the User info and then select "Show all Users Posts".

You can contact Drew directly through the emailaddress at the bottom of the start page of the new forum or use this one:

drew@prophotocommunity.com


I did so and he responded quite fast.

Regards

Those threads were defenetly less than one year old, two months top... And in most of them I was more learning than posting, so I cannot find them by my user name...

Weird.. Just wrote Drew, if and when he answers, I will let you know

No problems with Drew.

RG and MS were _________deleted by moderator__________

RicAgu, are you a Drew plant? I noticed another thread you started on LL that was equally offensive and as personal an attack on RG and Mike as your post here. I'm not going to get into a debate with you about them. I would hope that you don't poison this forum. Or that if you try to, you get knocked off this one like RG apparently knocked you off his. And no, won't respond to what I expect you will throw my way.

I do hope though that this forum doesn't become one that we're driven away from by the likes of these kinds of posts.

William you're right. The promise that Drew made seems to be simply unture -- at least at the moment. When you do a search for James Russell you pull up only 200 or so posts from the last few months. (You can get on the site with your old name and password without paying for the moment, but can't post.) I did a search before the site went down with JR's name to be able to key in the posts I wanted to download, and there were more than 700.

So Drew has not kept the archive of the site open. Just a mirage of it. When you read his discussion about a "three month rolling archive" system, he's apparently clueing us in to what he's done already, and then will have confirmed by the vote he plans to have of his paid membership -- which by his count in one of his threads is about 100.

the rolling archive thread:
http://www.prophotocommunity.com/ubbthread...ge=0#Post422127

membership numbers thread:
http://www.prophotocommunity.com/ubbthread...ge=0#Post422174

Hope we're just missing something, or that this will be changed now, but from what we saw last weekend (all those dozens of threads with all the RG members objecting to the whole idea of a closed forum are officially gone) have a feeling we've got it right.

What is so odd about it all -- not counting the meltdown, which still makes you shake your head -- is that if Drew and Co had taken a moment to try and understand the nature of the RG membership, and how it differs from their current site, and kept the site open and encouraged people back they would have been booming by now.

For those who missed it, the site was brought down "for technical reasons" a bit after RG, who was still the moderator at the time and allowing members to speak freely as long as they didn't get personal, deleted a post of one of the new moderators for making a personal attack on an RG member. Now that was a fitting end!

Let's hope LL becomes a good place to continue the kinds of discussions that flourished on RG --which is the only reason I'm making the effort to respond directly to the stuff above. It's important to not let LL get hijacked.

Steven

You are absolutely on the money.............The business decisions were SHORTsided.
A business person with vision would have understood the key play was transitioning the majority of the forum to the new site and building on that. Pity.

From what I can figure out from Whois, (if I'm reading this correctly) it's GoDaddy.

Registrant:
Domains by Proxy, Inc.

Registered through: GoDaddy.com
Domain Name: PROPHOTOCOMMUNITY.COM

I have got a (real fast) answer from Drew. It says:

"If you substitute the new domain for the old domain in your bookmarks
it should
work.

Replace the http://forums.robgalbraith.com/ubbthreads part of the url with the
following:

http://www.prophotocommunity.com/ubbthreadsarchive

All of the archive should be there with the exception of any threads that had
posts dated April 21st, 2006 or later.

I have just tried the search and it seems to be working fine.

Hope this helps."

It does work on some, does not on others. May be those with posts after April 21st. Not sure of it. But the "search" is not working fine, does not retrieve all the posts.

Just to let you updated.

regards,
Ucha

Actually you may be onto something. I just tried to access all my posts (over 2500) by clicking on the "Show All users Posts" but I can only get 200 to show up. Now I'm somewhat stumped how anyone is supposed to find anything in this quagmire or if all the posts actually are accessible.

200 here too. The user profile shows the correct total number of posts, but then you only get 200 in the "Show All Users Posts".

John

Didn't you mention being anonymized at some point? Might be troublesome to search posts by username that way... The archive does seem to go back all the way to 2000.

Oscar, could you give me a search that takes you back further than one year? As far as I can tell, it's not possible. And the search page states that you can't. I've tried a search using the "older than" button but just get an error message saying there are no records older than one year old.

What search instruction did you use? Thanks

In the ubbthreadsarchive, if you go into a forum, at the bottom of the page you'll find: Show "active in the last 3 month". If you change that to "from all dates" you can browse back to the very beginning of time. btw. the 200 results from the search function is a UBBthreads limit set by default...

Yes, it is GoDaddy. Sort of.

Any comment regarding the 200, Drew?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just thought you folks might be interested in reading a portion of a recent response to an email I received below.

Also, by default Ubbthreads will only search back one year. The search function is not that great. In five or 6 months we may be migrating both boards to a newer, better platform.

Just to make clear once more. The historical archive is available now, and will be available in the future completely free for everyone to enjoy and use.

I wish all of you the best in finding a place that suits what you are looking for.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part of a Recent Email Response:

Regarding posts missing from the public archive. The archive is only supposed
to go through the announcement of the sale on the 21st. After this time it was
made plain that the forums were going to be on a subscription basis moving
forward. However, it has come to my attention recently that when the database
was pruned it pulled out the entire thread if it had any single post dated
April 21st or later. We are looking into this to see if it can be rectified.

As far as class action and all the rest. There is not, and never was any
actionable legal claim in this matter. I'm sure it may seem as if I caved to
pressure from my attorney. This is not the case at all. I was absent from the
forums all last Sunday because I took the day off to be with my family and
attend church. I hoped to make it clear by leaving the archive public that my
intent when I said it was a great "asset" was in terms of the history, not in
terms of money. What assets does a forum really have? A url that gets a lot
of traffic? Well, I will not be getting that. It is simply on loan for 6
months. The only things a forum has are the people. Many of these people have
expressed their strong support for the move and have decided to join.

I am truly sorry that some people have become upset over the sale of the forums.
It must seem like a hostile takeover. This is so far from the truth. I found
out about the closure of the forums the same way you all did. By surfing over
and seeing the closure notice on the site. I did not want to see it die, so
Rob and I worked out a plan to keep them growing and alive. I do not plan to
address these old issues further, as my time must now be spent looking to the
future. If some of the old members that spoke out prior to the transition
would like to join I think that is great. I do not harbor them any ill will. Nor, do I
hold grudges.

Wishing you the best. Please feel free to share this with anyone whom you may
feel would benefit.

Drew

Actually most folks here were more upset with Rob and Mike and how they screwed the forum posters and ran the forums into the ground. I don't think anyone has anything against you (yet ;-)) now that the archives are open. But don't follow Rob's footsteps or you'll be a very unhappy camper.

And Drew said: "Just to make clear once more. The historical archive is available now"

Oscar, could you give us the http link where the historical archive is available to everyone. It's not apparent how one accesses those. (I'm not a member so don't have access to the walled off areas of the new forum.) Thanks

Drew, when I do a search now for James Russell, the results have gone down to 0 matches, down from 200 (yesterday's search result, which was already down from about 700 matches when I did a search going back 1 year just before you shut the site down last week). Could you explain why there are now no matches for a search of JR's posts? Have you deleted his posts/threads, limited the search feature, or some other explanantion? Thanks

Leaving the old forums open is a strategy to attracted new subscribers. It’s a tease to see what you can read on the new paid forum. Unfortunately for anyone who does not know the true history of the real RG site, he ran off most of the better posters. I do not believe he made this info open for any other reason.

Oscar, figured it out. It was a bit hard to find, but it is still about as you described, so Drew did stick to the letter of his commitment. Although with the search feature now so limited, really not possible to make any real use of -- but as I understand it that's true whether one pays or not. Here is where the public archive is:

http://www.prophotocommunity.com/ubbthread.../ubbthreads.php

At least one must give Drew credit for being willing to address the concerns of the present and past subscriber base. I'm not sure I support the new business model, but at least he listens to his customers.

He did it, that is the important thing.

Several posters have almost menaced the new owners in respect to "copyright" of their older postings. While I basically unerstand the point, Drew opened the old content and the problem should be over now.

It is time to move on. In 2 or 3 months the old archives will just be that: Old archives about an industry that goes forward so quickly that in 1y noone will be interested in the old stuff.

Bernie

Sorry to contribute to this post going on a little longer, but having given Drew credit for making the archive available, thought I should mention that he's now turned off the search feature entirely to the public thread. That pretty much makes the public archive unusable. The action speaks for itself -- even though the server is again taking the blame.

One last note about Drew's e-mail above. The discussion on the RG forum during the weekend that has now been deleted, had really nothing to do with an expression that there was a hostile takeover. Nearly all the posters wished the new owners the very best, but raised questions about closing the forum from view to non-subscribers -- and not because the posters wanted to avoid paying for membership, but because they hoped to continue the kinds of discussions that fed on open view and believed would only lead to a healthy and profitable site. It was a very thoughtful and well intentioned discussion by many long time RG members -- with good discussion on both sides. It would be nice if those discussions were put back up to speak for themselves, but I doubt they ever will be. Something important to take into account when criticizing Mike or Rob for censoring and then misrepresenting conversation.

Speaking just for myself, I expressed the thought that, just like with a home, any new owner has every right to redecorate as they choose. And best to them. I did, however, feel it was unfortunate that a decision was made to take a home with the stunning space and wonderful light and views of RG and choose to brick it all up. Concern of a hostile takeover, no. Unfortunate choices, yes. Only one voice, but I think fairly representative.

It was brought to my attention that my name had reappeared on the old RG forums now owned by Drew Strickland.

I noticed that many of the post attributed to me were actually written by other past members so I brought this to Drew's attention, who called me immediately.

Apparently somebody had logged on under my name and had moved posts around or something of that nature which is a real shame and totally uncalled for.

This was my first conversation with Drew and I found him personable and quite kind in all of his responses and I am sure he will rectify the situation.

Since the RG forum changed hands a lot of dialog has gone on and most of it not positive which really is unfair.

It seems to me that Drew is only trying to provide and service and hopefully turn a modest profit, which is nothing different than I or most of us endeavor to do daily.

I wish Drew all the best as well as everyone, MR included that keeps the online communities open.

RG had morphed into something it wasn't meant to be which was as much an online professional photography disucssion as it was an open forum for talk of sharing and learning technique.

For better or worse, I believe it was this form of disucssion that temporarilly made it a success.

Hopefully that form of disucssion will resurface somewhere else, wheter back on Drews blog or here with Michael.

Regardless of how things finally evolve, I can't imagine how difficult it must be to run a forum and I have the highest respect for any group or individual that does this for us.

Still I would strongly appreciate it if everyone would respect Drew's property and not deface it by using my and other other people's names just to cause damage.

No one deserves that.

All the best,

James Russell

Tooo True, can you imagine Rob or Mike actually sticking their heads up from behind the "moderator's parapet" to actually have a dialog ?! No of course not.
I know of many people who were banned protesting or trying to clear up the situation of removing their posts and not even being given the curtesy of a reply (from Rob and Mike) by e-mail - just stone walled!
At least Drew has bothered (and brave enought given the tensions on this) to address our questions and no doubt some of us might reconsider our damning of the site now it is new ownership - and yes a new name !