Those of you who have some interest in the subject line above might want to read the Announcement above concerning RyPN's future.

Not to be quick too the draw but if there are any railroad forums that are as good as RYPN (if that's possible) don't keep it to yourself. I'm not trying to synchronize a movement to jump ship yet but if nothing can be done I'd like to know where a good place to go is.

What "announcement above" are you talking about?

This one viewtopic.php?f=1&t=38515

If the ATR&RM doesn't have a forum, offer them this one.

This site seems to be a fit for them to adopt. All the members of that .org post on here anyway.

If this does go away, I need a copy of it all, so who ever our techies are please figure out how we can individuality copy the site for future reference and have it usable.

I'll contribute if that's what has to happen. Everyone send a check for $10 a year and there will be a huge surplus.

Where do I send my check? I'm ready.

Tom

For the public record, Wasatch Railroad Contractors has contacted the Moderators and we have submitted the basis for a detailed plan to revamp the page and make some changes. I would encourage all who really care about the page to submit some form of a proposal (Heaven knows plenty of you will not like my plan!!!). I (WE) really feel that this is a do or die moment for the page and though we do not enjoy it as it is today, we are willing to step up in an effort to make some serious changes.

Kindly,

JohnE.

John,

Why don't you make the plan's specifics available to the entire forum membership?

Agreed; how do we know whether we like your proposal if we don't know what you are proposing?

I really don't think we need to change it, just find a means of making financially feasible either by locating a free host to take the place of the current one, or by making a concrete proposal to the readers for just how much to send where to keep it on line.

I floated the idea of asking my employers to offer hosting; there was a real reluctance to kick it upstairs for approval, to the extent that I won't ask again. Perhaps some of you work in more agreeable parts of the cloud than I do.

When I was the webmaster at TRAIN, we set up a forum, and even announced it at the conventions. The response at the convention was quite positive, but the place just never got going. Somebody at Strasburg (Kelly?) was great about sending photos and updates on projects, but other than that, the response was minimal at best.

We finally came to the conclusion that most of the places were too busy actually doing stuff to sit around and talk about it. Also, since there wasn't much activity, when somebody DID show up, there was nothing to see, creating a Catch 22, of no activity since there's no activity.

I use the same software and photo gallery for several other websites and it works great. Here's a sample: http://www.modelrailroadforums.com/forum/content.php

I could certainly set this forum up in the same way, though I don't know about importing the content. I would hope that's possible, as this archive should be kept intact. Looks like this is running a version of PHP BB, and if so, that would work fine.

I'm reading similar things about many of the other forums I look at every now and then. Makes me wonder if internet forums are slowly dying due to unwillingness for members to pay (as I'd think many people are like he and look in various other forums and simply can't pay to 'subscribe' to them all) or creators wanting to not have advertisements.

And also because much of the function of forums has since been replaced by Facebook.

Yeah, you're probably right, even though a forum, in my opinion, remains the best way to put our category-based info you can find grouped together.
...also, I totally despise facebook and refuse to have anything to do with it.

I'll contribute; 501(c)(3) or not.

We have a winner. Give that man a cigar! None of my forums are fee based. Most have really slowed down in the past few years, especially the photography based ones.

The model railroad site is still very active, because it has a strong group of members and the categories are so useful for organizing the place. But forums are nowhere near as popular as they once were, and pretty much everyone agrees that Facebook is a major culprit.