If your write something of interest most likely somebody else will lift it and have it posted on a half dozen other websites within a week. Quality material deserves a printed presentation both for permanence and to make reuse of it require some time and effort on the part of the reuser.

Look what happened some recent attempts to set up "internet based" specific railroad historical societies, closed down in part due to lack of contributed material to publish (ELHTS for example). A lot of people are learning that the internet is a less than ideal place to display your information and photo collections, unless you want to see somebody else selling CD's of them on eBay.

PC

I think the complaint of heavy handed moderation is a little cheeky considering that this site was nearly obliterated because one of the members threatened legal action (nor can I honestly recall the spat--save it might have involved Steamtown or that Pennsy K4).

Actually, I could care less about further rants of any flavor and unfortunately, the internet has devolved into a snarky environment. Gone are the days of free and easy information exchange, especially when data miners will be more than happy to appropriate your knowledge.

So that kind of leaves folks in a jam. I would concur with Preston Cooks assertion that putting up researched content is a no-win game, but then again so is keeping up equipment that is outdoors (some of us still do that : < ) ). I think we have had useful content here (the Lawndale Boxcar and the current thread on IRM come to mind) but people do have to have the time to post and not worry about the sniping that seems to follow anything even moderately provocative. I suppose it really is about Internet etiquette rather than site management.

I think RYPN will continue to play an important role in railroad preservation because (generally) the posters are not pitching politics (and that is what moderators are for) and there is a very large archive to extremely useful information that is available. I certainly consider this site far more informative and credible than I would, say Trainorders.

Keep up the good work folks!

Michael Seitz
Missoula MT

PS: Surprised that nobody has noted the P. Cook had a very informative article on the preservation of diesels (in all their flavors) in the NRHS News recently. Thanks!

Michael, thanks for mentioning the Diesel Preservation article. It too a long and tortured route to get it into print, but now that it has been printed there have been several requests for additional distribution of the information, one through a railroad industry association. A happy ending after all....

Sometimes getting an article about locomotives into a railroad magazine can be as challenging as getting a historical society to host a program that presents and interprets history.

PC

I continue to enjoy threads such as the recent discussion about firing Shays at Cass, and the ERHS saga in the formative years at IRM. Hopefully we'll get some similar insights into preparations for the event in Michigan, including arrangements, etc. for ferry moves for NKP 765 and other equipment. From my perspective, I'd like to contribute a more detailed story of our recent move at NCTM and the development of a new exhibit, but my employer keeps me busier than ever - so time is limited to reading Interchange and providing brief updates.

Wesley

With all due respect, comments such as Mr. Hetters's, which was factually incorrect are misleading and may well hurt our chance to learn something about the question at issue.

I have been a Trainorders.com user/member for approx. 9 years and visit the site at least once daily and sometimes several times/day. I have NEVER witnessed a thread being erased in all that time and a good many have gotten very heated and gone on for 50-60 postings and 2 to 5 thousand views.

The paid membership of the site just hit an all-time high and continues growing so the marketplace is saying that the product represents value to a number of thousands of rail enthusiasts who are PAYING for the opportunity to participate.

I would be the first to agree that RyPN represents a VERY valuable source of industry intelligence and just wonder if less heavy handed moderation might encourage it to prosper as Trainorders.com has???

Ross Rowland

For the record, I HAVE seen threads "disappear" at TrainOrders. Not very often, but it does happen.

I do not remember specifics (I am at best a casual and lackadaisical glancer at the site), but as I recall the yanked threads had to do with either direct criticism of TrainOrders' business practices/administration (including PV charters) and/or posting news of certain special movements (I recall the Levin-organized PRR E8s/PV special for the Army-Navy Games was one such instance; there may have been some military moves as well).

And could I please note the extraordinary irony of a call for "less heavy handed moderation" coming from the very reason such "heavy handed moderation" is applied to this forum in the first place????

First of all, though it says Site Admin under my name I DO NOT set policy for this forum, I do NOT moderate it, I have no influence over it whatsoever, other than that we provide the hosting for it, and do so at no charge. To extend the above remarks a bit: Not only do I NOT moderate it, I wouldn't moderate it. It is not my site, not my forum and not my responsibility, and that will continue to be true so long as it resides on my servers.

Having said that, I believe (though I may be incorrect) that the 501C3 non-profit that owned/managed/ran this website has vanished. I think some kind of board of directors may still exists, though absent the corporation I don't know what, if any authority they have.

The domain registrant is listed as: "The Railway Preservation News" and the street address is that of the Nevada Northern Railway Museum which is probably a hangover from the days when Mark Bassett was the board chairman.

The site does have a webmaster, who is overworked, underappreciated and I'm not sure who exactly, he answers to. He's the one who wades through the hundreds and hundreds of bogus forum registration that occur every week while trying to figure out who might actually be a real potential user.

The server on which RyPN resides is aging and was scheduled for retirement months and months ago. It is still running solely because RyPN hasn't been moved to its new home on one of our new monster HP servers. There are two reasons for this, Dave the webmaster is horrifyingly busy and I haven't got the time or energy to fight with it.

So having said all that...I don't regard the moderation here has "heavy handed" at all. Not that it matters what I think, because it really doesn't. Policy has been set, it hasn't changed in a long time, and I somehow doubt that it is going to change in the future. Policies exist to please the owners of this site, not the visitors to it. If you find the policies odious, well ... there's always trainorders.

There are very, very few rewards for owning and running a site like rypn.org, or for that matter steamlocomotive.info. If I had known how much misery was going to be involved in steamlocomotive.info before I started, it wouldn't exist. Now, it sort of has a life of its own. Too many nice people have contributed to it for me to be willing to shut it down.

Many, many people have told me that they could do a much better job than I at running steamlocomotive.info. And I agree that perhaps they could. So here's the offer I made them: I'll make a complete copy of the site's databases, stored procedures, views and so forth, burn it on to a CD ROM and sent it to whoever asks. I'll even pay the postage. Go ahead, help yourself. use the data, start a website to display and it, and please, please, please do a better job than I have done.

Apparently, I misunderstood because each and every person to whom I made this offer replied that no, that wasn't what they wanted, they wanted to take over the operation of the existing site, and oh, by the way, of course I would have to continue hosting it for them, and um...well...no they don't know the Coldfusion programming language (which the site is written in) so I'd have to go on supporting it, but they would manage it much better than I have. And perhaps they are right, because I really don't care very much at all about the site anymore. I maintain it, try not to spend a lot of time on it, and eat the costs of having it around.

So...where is this rambling heading? These two sites, rypn.org and steamlocomotive.info are what they are. Nothing more, nothing less. So long as they please their respective owners, the likelihood that things will be changed to suit someone else's vision of what the site(s) should be is pretty near zero, I'd guess.

Regards,
Doug (the curmudgeon)

I think we are all just trying to hang in and keep on with what is working best for us in this economic downturn and there isn't a lot to post about that is very different than many things posted about before. The new items are pretty much evolving and a lot of information isn't available yet - like the EBT situation. Hard to do a post mortem on how it worked when it hasn't really done much so far. Hard to talk about how great the Michigan Steam Spectular was when it hasn't happened. Repeating old commentary about Steamtown and Altoona isn't anything I miss.

Traffic will pick up in the future when we have newsworthy topics to consider. Now that I'm only part-time hobbying in the industry I find RyPN even more valuable since I'm not communicating with so many involved people regularly any more. It's still a good way to keep up with what's going on with less than most other sites amount of foamation and irrationality.

Reading between the lines (and posts) is even more informative.

dave

Doug,

Amen. You said it. Everyone who has run a site knows of what you speak. Remember, for a year or so, I was RYPN "staff."

And I agree, RYPN probably won't change, though the post that started this thread was asking for feedback.

It goes back to what I said about the content. A site owner that is actively posting and driving conversation can (but not always to PCook's point) influence and guide a site.

When I was doing my thing with my own preservation web sites, I dropped the ball. RYPN started and did a lot of what I wanted to do better than I would have, so I just got laxed. And RYPN had the mystique of L&RP. And Bob. And I contributed $$ here and there, and eventually volunteered as an editor for awhile -- which was a time suck as I took it serious and tracked down news on my own.

And, of course, after my own f*ck up posting things that in retrospect I should not have, and despite owning up to it profusely, I realized that no matter what your intention or what your motivation, the world is full of dudes waiting to tear down anyone who makes an effort... whether that effort is helping a website or restoring a locomotive. And so, 5 years later folks here like to remind me of my errors, the same way they can't let go of engine so and so that was painted "wrong" in 1972.

It happens when you put your neck out. When I get published, I get the same gene pool of "experts" who complain about what I wrote. Online, it is just quicker. There's some wanker in New England who berated online for a year after misidentifying a pipe on a locomotive in a printed article. He told me it was his job to remind me I was wrong. Wonder if that job had benefits. He also blamed me for the editor not running a correction. Like I can control that.

And Doug, I went through the same thing with the Milk Trains Yahoo List. A couple of folks kept wanting to "take it over." Really, they just wanted to control the conversation. I was welcome to keep doing the admin work. I told them to start their own. They did. I wish more folks would take the responsibility of doing that, as more is merrier.

And no matter what I think, RYPN can never go back to what it was. It will be the best it can be, and something else will come along, or it won't.

And I need to let go.

Rob

They aren't factually incorrect, Mr. Rowland. They are my observations (I used to be a member of TO back when I was in high school... ouch) I won't try to start a bash-TO thread, but Trainorders is not the site it used to be. There's 4 days of threads on one page, and none of them are over 15 replies. Maybe it's just the cheap-ass RRer in me speaking, but why pay for info that is readily available on multiple other forums.

But make no mistake: TO is very heavily moderated (and you pay for that advantage). They just operate in ghost mode. A questionable thread is gone within minutes. Blink twice and it never existed. And chocolate rations have been increased. And trainmasters are never wrong.

But to the original question. This is a slow time of year. Weather is nice, but there's not much running yet. Just give it some time.

Running yet?

Wait a minute. Tell me RyPN is a community of preservationists and not camera-toting train chasers?

I'm sorry. Maybe I'm in the wrong forum!

Well as a daily Trainorders.com participant I can only report my personal experiences.

I can also report that on average there are between 175-250 participants on the Trainorders.com site at any given time vs. I'd guess an average of 10-15 here so if numerical participation is one of your meaningful measuring sticks then that " pay to play" site is head and shoulders a winner.

Size isn't everything....but sometimes it's important!!

IMHO-Ross Rowland

You know what I mean. Many operations haen't even started for the year. Once they do maybe they'll be more conversation.






I somehow fail to see where the two are completely separate entities. But if that is your belief - is it any wonder some organizations can't attract new people? Doesn't the railfan-bashing get old after awhile? I get sick of it from guys I work with on the RR, do we really need it here?

The sports bar serving up Industrial Lite Beer and ESPN, the club with loud music/a $10 cover charge/$10 martinis, and the local Hooters get lots more traffic and money than the Belgian-style brewpub or the beer bar with 72 taps and 1000 bottles of the world's finest beers. So I should just give up my appreciation of craft beer and follow the sheeple? Skip "Little Italy" and go to Pizza Hut?

If it were all about the numbers and dollars, we'd rip down the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania and just send everything to Dutch Wonderland. Or tear down the B&O Museum and just go to Oriole Park and the Inner Harbor. Or just plow under the Mid-Continent Ry. Museum and send everything to Mall of America. Or shut down Trains and R&R Magazine and just buy People and Cosmopolitan.

What on earth does the above post have to do with the subject at hand. Both sites in this discussion are railfan oriented. One is run one way, the other another way. One has relatively limited participation/viewership, the other a far larger (paying) player base.

That's the basic discussion. Thank you.

Ross Rowland