What happened to Wetcoaster?

[Chairman Maouth]

WinMX, Napster…man, some names I’d completely forgotten.

Audiogalaxy
Musicmatch

We didn't lose content with upgrades. We lost content when site admins actively decided to delete 10+ years worth of old content without any warning, something I am still absolutely infuriated about.

That wasn't the call of administrators.

 

[Chairman Maouth]

Kazaa was a spam nightmare, Kazaa Lite was where it’s at. Limewire was my jam up until it ended.

Soulseek is still online, and quite reliable.

 

[Hit the post]

Soulseek is still online, and quite reliable.

I'm still online and quite unreliable.

 

[Aphid Attraction]

I still type https://www.

 

[Chairman Maouth]

I still type https://www.

I like S.O.S. by Abba.

 

[Mr. Canucklehead]

I still type https://www.

I remember everyone making their first websites on Angelfire or Tripod or sites like that.

And searching the web using AltaVista or WebCrawler before Google came around.

 

[Hit the post]

I remember everyone making their first websites on Angelfire or Tripod or sites like that.

And searching the web using AltaVista or WebCrawler before Google came around.

I have a confession to make...

Chairman Maouth is actually the person responsible for the creation of "Razor 1911".

 

[Chairman Maouth]

I have a confession to make...

Chairman Maouth is actually the person responsible for the creation of "Razor 1911".

"The group was founded as Razor 2992 by Doctor No, Insane TTM and Sector9..."

You got the wrong guy. There is/was an admin here who went by the name Dr. No, but then he mysteriously changed it quite a few years ago. He's the man you're looking for. He surreptitiously pulls the strings on HF, even though few people are aware of this. He's the wizard behind the curtain.

 

[Hit the post]

"The group was founded as Razor 2992 by Doctor No, Insane TTM and Sector9..."

You got the wrong guy. There is/was an admin here who went by the name Dr. No, but then he mysteriously changed it quite a few years ago. He's the man you're looking for. He surreptitiously pulls the strings on HF, even though few people are aware of this. He's the wizard behind the curtain.

I remember seeing their tags (Razor 1911 & Sector9) on a few games back in the day.



I still remember getting my 56K modem & laughed at the "old days".

Reminds of a story I was told from somebody who bought a CD burner from Atic Computers (not sure if they're still in business). They said all it came with as installation software was as CD (that had the software and a NFO file on it ). Pretty shady (but I can't verify if the story was true or not obviously, I never shopped there).

 

[Chairman Maouth]

I remember seeing their tags (Razor 1911 & Sector9) on a few games back in the day.



I still remember getting my 56K modem & laughed at the "old days".

Reminds of a story I was told from somebody who bought a CD burner from Atic Computers (not sure if they're still in business). They said all it came with as installation software was as CD (that had the software and a NFO file on it ). Pretty shady (but I can't verify if the story was true or not obviously, I never shopped there).

My first ISP was Digital Ark in Comox. I think they were just a small local company, before the big companies started taking over. That was 1999. I had just bought an IBM computer for $2300.00. Yikes! 8GB of storage and I can't recall the RAM, but it was pitiful.

2300 bucks!!!

 

[racerjoe]

I remember everyone making their first websites on Angelfire or Tripod or sites like that.

And searching the web using AltaVista or WebCrawler before Google came around.

I loved Netscape Navigator...

 

[kaczor]

Discovering Napster in grad school was possibly the highlight of... ummm, all of grad school.
Before that I remember the thrill of email using Elm. Keyboard shortcuts ftw.

 

[Reverend Mayhem]

I remember seeing their tags (Razor 1911 & Sector9) on a few games back in the day.

I hardly remember dial-up. My dad contests we were one of the first in our neighbourhood to get off dial-up. I just remember my mum yelling at me to get off the phone cause she was trying to do report cards

Any of you old timers remember this?



My dad (the maniac he is) left my mum at home with a 6 year old and a 3 year old to go search for this thing for like 2 f***in weeks. Mum's an absolute trooper lol. My dad ended up running into poison oak and was down for the count for some time.

 

[Hit the post]

I hardly remember dial-up. My dad contests we were one of the first in our neighbourhood to get off dial-up. I just remember my mum yelling at me to get off the phone cause she was trying to do report cards

Any of you old timers remember this?



My dad (the maniac he is) left my mum at home with a 6 year old and a 3 year old to go search for this thing for like 2 f***in weeks. Mum's an absolute trooper lol. My dad ended up running into poison oak and was down for the count for some time.

Fortunately I missed out on the period of using cassette tapes as storage devices:

 

[AwesomeInTheory]

We didn't lose content with upgrades. We lost content when site admins actively decided to delete 10+ years worth of old content without any warning, something I am still absolutely infuriated about.

What was the rationale for that?

Laziness?

 

[Hit the post]

What was the rationale for that?

Laziness?

But Gillis!

 

[Melvin]

What was the rationale for that?

Laziness?

I mean, there are legitimate website performance and storage related issues that they were dealing with, and continue to deal with. Deleting several years worth of content is certainly one way to solve the problem, in the same way that a flamethrower is one way to deal with a termite problem.

As someone who has worked in that field for about a decade, I could have suggested about ten better solutions, all of which I would have helped them with for free, so it’s particularly frustrating to me that they immediately went with the flamethrower approach. Oh well.

 

[SniperHF]

I mean, there are legitimate website performance and storage related issues that they were dealing with, and continue to deal with.

This is not why it was done. At least the reason given was it stems back to the vB to XF 1.5 migration. Importing/converting the database to the XF 1.5 version was taking *days*. The way the cutover was being done back then, it would have resulted in a couple weeks downtime if they attempted to import the whole DB.

I certainly would have handled it different (archive site at a minimum) but every mod here is an unpaid post janitor. The people who own the site are gonna do what they are gonna do to a certain extent. At the time I was not really in control of as much (RE: Almost nothing) as I am now, or I'd have fought harder for some form of content preservation.

It still may have been a technically surmountable problem but whatever the reasons they did not or gave up attempting so were not given to us.

 

[Melvin]

This is not why it was done. At least the reason given was it stems back to the vB to XF 1.5 migration. Importing/converting the database to the XF 1.5 version was taking *days*. The way the cutover was being done back then, it would have resulted in a couple weeks downtime if they attempted to import the whole DB.

I certainly would have handled it different (archive site at a minimum) but every mod here is an unpaid post janitor. The people who own the site are gonna do what they are gonna do to a certain extent. At the time I was not really in control of as much (RE: Almost nothing) as I am now, or I'd have fought harder for some form of content preservation.

It still may have been a technically surmountable problem but whatever the reasons they did not or gave up attempting so were not given to us.

In that case, the decision to migrate to Xf should have also been reconsidered. Content deletion (that is, hard deletion,) should imo be the absolute last resort, considered only when absolutely every option has bern exhausted. My issue is that I don’t think this was the case, and it seems that the powers that be were all to eager to pull the trigger on hard deletion of over a decade of content that some of us spent a significant amount of time producing. I had threads that I literally spent weeks on get simply obliterated from existence, and I’m someone who sponsored this website for over a decade.

Again, as someone who has spent over a decade in a career of database management, administration, data engineering, etc I would have happily lent my services for free had i been asked, and I am sure there are many people on this website with the same skill sets who would have done the same. This website used to mean a lot to me, and preserving all of that content was important to me.

Whether or not you’re a moderator is neither here nor there, to be honest. That’s not a job that necessarily requires any expertise on the topic. I say that not to denigrate the work, as it’s not something I would do even for money, but just to say that it requires completely different skills than solving technical problems like how to support a platform migration without losing content.

It is just so horrible, deleting all of that data in an irretrievable way. I cannot think of a single worse thing you could do as the owner of a website.

And that’s without even getting into the fact that xenforo f***ing sucks.

 

[SniperHF]

My issue is that I don’t think this was the case,

I know they worked on it semi-regularly between 2015 and 2017, We were told of the pruning in late 2016 and they did two rounds of pruning once right in 2016 and again before the actual migration. Were the people working on it competent? I have no idea. I'm an NE, databases are icky.

The point of explaining the distinction of the moderators (and even admins IE the dark blues) of this site is that while we may have some input in certain things but they wouldn't have have ears to hear it about the pruning. None of us had the juice to make a case they'd listen to.

 

[Hit the post]

I know they worked on it semi-regularly between 2015 and 2017, We were told of the pruning in late 2016 and they did two rounds of pruning once right in 2016 and again before the actual migration. Were the people working on it competent? I have no idea. I'm an NE, databases are icky.

The point of explaining the distinction of the moderators (and even admins IE the dark blues) of this site is that while we may have some input in certain things but they wouldn't have have ears to hear it about the pruning. None of us had the juice to make a case they'd listen to.

Nobody in their right mind would give me any kind of input on decisionmaking.

 

[Melvin]

I know they worked on it semi-regularly between 2015 and 2017, We were told of the pruning in late 2016 and they did two rounds of pruning once right in 2016 and again before the actual migration. Were the people working on it competent? I have no idea. I'm an NE, databases are icky.

The point of explaining the distinction of the moderators (and even admins IE the dark blues) of this site is that while we may have some input in certain things but they wouldn't have have ears to hear it about the pruning. None of us had the juice to make a case they'd listen to.

Oh for sure. My point is that, they may have made site moderators aware, but I don’t think the larger community was aware at all, and there’s no particular reason to target the communication at moderators and admins exclusively, the entire hfboards community was impacted and should have been consulted. As mentioned, I was a very active regular at the time and would have been more than happy to help. There’s no reason to say, we will talk to the moderators but not anyone else who contributes to the website. There’s nothing special about moderators as it relates to this particular situation.

 

[Quinntessential]

Interesting that HF deleting archives coincided almost perfectly with Jim Benning becoming GM of the Canucks

 

[Aphid Attraction]

Interesting that HF deleting archives coincided almost perfectly with Jim Benning becoming GM of the Canucks

Thats not actually interesting at all.

 

[RandomGuy79]

There was another HFOilers poster named OilerNut from Surrey, BC. I don’t think he posts on here anymore, probably got banned as well.

He's still around...