Is There a Plan for Future

[Tin Can]

I wonder this often

What if all Mods and our Patron disappear?

Most of us are old, I may not survive this year, but maybe...if you are lucky...

I just checked the Wayback Machine, it seems not up to the task

Perhaps we should plan ahead

LF will outlive us all

I am certain of that

That's why I restore

I am amazed at Wikipedia and it's vastly expanding data

I pay them monthly while I...

as Larry king just said on my TV...."so long"

[Michael R]

Is this some type of poetry? :)

In any case, I’m not sure I understand the concern (which has been expressed before directly or indirectly). Is it the “social” aspect? Or the idea there should be some sort of archive of “information” for future species?

[pjd]

I wonder this often

What if all Mods and our Patron disappear?

Most of us are old, I may not survive this year, but maybe...if you are lucky...

I just checked the Wayback Machine, it seems not up to the task

Perhaps we should plan ahead

LF will outlive us all

I am certain of that

That's why I restore

I am amazed at Wikipedia and it's vastly expanding data

I pay them monthly while I...

as Larry king just said on my TV...."so long"

If this site disappeared photographic knowledge would still exist in books, more concisely and exactly expressed with fewer errors. And people would still have other social media for their bickering, childishness, expression of opinion as fact and general puffing up of self-importance.

[calebarchie]

If this site disappeared photographic knowledge would still exist in books, more concisely and exactly expressed with fewer errors. And people would still have other social media for their bickering, childishness, expression of opinion as fact and general puffing up of self-importance.

Amen.

[Michael R]

If this site disappeared photographic knowledge would still exist in books, more concisely and exactly expressed with fewer errors. And people would still have other social media for their bickering, childishness, expression of opinion as fact and general puffing up of self-importance.

Yes indeed (although many books on photographic technique are also rife with bad information).

Anyone who enjoys the social interactions should just continue to enjoy it. Beyond that there really isn’t any content worth worrying about. Eventually it is doomed anyway. Thermodynamics takes care of that.

[LabRat]

Site is up and running, and people are talking, so just an abstract musing...

Chill out...

Steve K

[neil poulsen]

This is a reasonable query.

I think that there will always be moderators; they've always stepped forward, and they've always been dedicated to the task. This says a lot about our LF community. Oren Grad has been especially attentive. Tuan's interaction with the forum has always been to give moderators their independence; final decisions rest with them. And, moderators have always striven to make decisions that are in the best interest of the Forum. It's only been on rare occasions that Tuan has stepped in to provide guidance. It's been moderators that have led important forum transitions, like switching from Lucenet to the current software, adding For Sale sub-forums, while limiting counterproductive commercialization, including a digital emphasis. Etc.

Less visible, the Forum has always had excellent technical support, for example, from Tom Westbrook and others.

But, there will always be some form of LF Forum ownership, and one wonders what direction this will take in the future? Will moderators have the independence that has been an important part of the Forum's success? Tuan Laong has been forward-thinking, and it wouldn't be surprising if he has a direction in this regard.

[fotopfw]

Having lost my mother, she was 93, makes me wonder. So much photography we did together for 55 years, pictures on the walls.
Now, only for me, doesn't appeal to me anymore.

Other things do, even more, as the contacts for here and now, doesn't matter how long it will last anymore.
Sold half of my studio equipment and gave away some more for free.

Life has been generous for me and aging will rob us all of much more.
Our walking club is nearly dead, literally. De group walk is now 3 miles, every mile a stop, to rest, to eat.
Adapting to all that goes with the demise of things en persons, loved ones.

[Wayne]

Have no fear, the Fotograffy-Forever-Forum chip is included in the Pfizer vaccine.

[Vaughn]

Books

[Dan Fromm]

I am amazed at Wikipedia and it's vastly expanding data"

Ah, yes, Wikipedia. Home of all truth, also of all lies.

[Doremus Scudder]

Yes indeed (although many books on photographic technique are also rife with bad information).

Anyone who enjoys the social interactions should just continue to enjoy it. Beyond that there really isn’t any content worth worrying about. Eventually it is doomed anyway. Thermodynamics takes care of that.

Repeal the Second Law of General Thermodynamics!!

[Oren Grad]

If this site disappeared photographic knowledge would still exist in books, more concisely and exactly expressed with fewer errors.

In between the schmoozing and the umpteenth repetition of discussions about common equipment and materials and basic photographic technique, there are threads here that contain information - particularly about less common cameras, lenses and other equipment - that is difficult or impossible to find elsewhere. Yes, it's very "noisy" and requires some existing knowledge to effectively sort the wheat from the chaff. But so long as anyone is seriously pursuing large format photography, the information will be of practical value.

So far as I know, archiving discussion board content in a format that is not dependent on forum-software-living-on-top-of-database-software to enable reading is not straightforward. But I am not remotely a database expert and could be wrong about that. I will try to learn more.

[roscoetuff-Skip Mersereau]

fotofpw: I get it. My dad and I shared model trains. After he passed along, the fun was gone, the sparkle, the joy in it. I still love trains of all sizes all the way to full size, but not doing them myself anymore. Sold all of that off, gave away the rest. Understand 100%.

Now photography was something I always pushed along with on my own. Still do.

Look for something else. Spring comes. Sunshine, too.

[sharktooth]

This is a real problem in the long run. I've spent lots of time on other forums that eventually went kaput. It's all gone. Anyone remember Geocities? That's another huge data site that just went away overnight.

Even here, there's lots of dead links right from the main site. https://www.largeformatphotography.info/resources.html
That's the Resources page from the main site. Almost all of the links are long dead. Even with an active site like this there are many things that no longer work, and many that can never be recovered.

There is so much information now available through the internet, but that information is also extremely volatile. I don't have an answer to this problem, but from personal experience I do know that it could all disappear in the blink of an eye.

[BrianShaw]

Repeal the Second Law of General Thermodynamics!!

Please refrain from political commentary. Thank you. ��

[ic-racer]

What if all Mods and our Patron disappear?

I thought it was the Mods and the Rockers. Not heard of the Patrons.
211763

[Dugan]

I don't know if the Mods or Rockers drink Patrón or not...
but John Lennon was "more of a Mocker, really..."

[Wayne]

In between the schmoozing and the umpteenth repetition of discussions about common equipment and materials and basic photographic technique, there are threads here that contain information - particularly about less common cameras, lenses and other equipment - that is difficult or impossible to find elsewhere. Yes, it's very "noisy" and requires some existing knowledge to effectively sort the wheat from the chaff. But so long as anyone is seriously pursuing large format photography, the information will be of practical value.

So far as I know, archiving discussion board content in a format that is not dependent on forum-software-living-on-top-of-database-software to enable reading is not straightforward. But I am not remotely a database expert and could be wrong about that. I will try to learn more.

The first thing is to find out if the site is backed up on a second server regularly. I've been part of forums where the host went belly up and nobody had made a backup. Decades of knowledge, gone forever.

Individuals can also make functional (read-only) website copies with various software, some free. I copied the original forum at Greenspun when that started going tits up. You don't need to own a copy of vbulletin. One such software is HTTrack

[Oren Grad]

Thanks, Wayne. Our technical gurus are well aware of proper backup discipline for day-to-day operational continuity. The general question of DIY crawlers for database-independent archiving had just come up in our internal discussion, but I wasn't aware of HTTrack - thanks very much, will follow up on that.

[Tin Can]

Protect your website from HTTrack (https://webwarriorlog.wordpress.com/2017/06/16/protect-your-website-from-httrack/)

[Oren Grad]

Protect your website from HTTrack (https://webwarriorlog.wordpress.com/2017/06/16/protect-your-website-from-httrack/)

Yes, one needs to be careful about defending against malicious use of such tools.

[rdenney]

As Oren has stated, the site is routinely and properly backed up, and lives in a server that follows fully redundancy principles. We’ve had a number of crashes and corruptions and hardware failures over the years, from which we have recovered. Tom Westbrook does most of that, but the server itself is managed by Brian Reid, so there is some breadth on the bench in addition to depth.

The mods have full administrative rights, so in a real disaster, we’d be able to make something happen. That spreads it to three more of us, all of whom are capable of learning what needs to be learned at need.

Neil’s description of Tuan’s relationship to the forum is right on. If need be, Tuan could transition to any of us at the drop of a hat, but he has other options, too, and that is entirely his decision. I will say that I still fund and support the Kiev Report, which used to be the place where second-world cameras were discussed. I took that over from the previous owner who had lost interest. Most of those cameras don’t work any more and the forum is down to a handful of posts a year. But I keep it alive for the resource. At some point, the only people who would be interest won’t actually need it, and it may be at that point already.

So, the sustainability of the forum is at least as good as the sustainability of large format photography. :)

Rick “more worried about always changing browser and internet standards killing forum software” Denney

[jnantz]

I'm more worried about the solar burst than anything else. western society is gonna be useless without our brain boxes, and satellite powered life support.
and worst of all, Jonny Depp will be stuck in the internet.