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[Hellmut1956]

Dear friends, one Mexican forum about naval modeling closed due to issues of the owner of the web presence. Another one in Spain has announced his closing after February 2018 due to retirement of the one who run the forum. This hurts me but also makes me aware how critical is the managing and the funding of a forum. I do not know how it is with you. But my threads play an important role in documenting what I have been doing in my hobby. Now I will have to learn how to download my contribution and save the in my local host to prevent it from going lost.


It is so with me. I felt like publishing threads and contributions in forums was a way to leave a "mark" in the Internet expected to survive my life span! Now I learn it is not so!

[grendel]

we have been through a similar thing on a forum I use for the norfolk broads, the owner had announced he would be taking a step back, and a few of us were training up to take over, then we had someone threaten the owner, who deleted his account and shut the forum down. within a few hours we had it back up and running, we were fortunate that a backup plan was in place, but the shutdown still came as a shock.
What is needed is for volunteers to come forward at an early stage and learn the ins and outs and have the access to restart the forum in a case like this.
the owner had done all of the forum management, but after that due to lack of technical expertise we moved the forum over to being hosted by our forum software provider, this means any technical problems we raise a support ticket, and they fix, any technical issues that are not covered are easily handled by the tecchies who are left (password resets , content changes etc) - or even by the moderators.
as a backup plan for any forum, how to continue if the owner leaves needs to be set up and arranged before it becomes an issue, that means volunteers to take over and learn how to before hand.

[grendel]

cost wise the hosted version costs us about £45 a month. barely more than the cost prior to that.

[RAAArtyGunner]

cost wise the hosted version costs us about £45 a month. barely more than the cost prior to that.

So what is the recommendation for Mayhem, do nothing??

[grendel]

So what is the recommendation for Mayhem, do nothing??

ultimately its down to the owner of the forum, and whether they wish the forum to continue after their period of ownership ends.

[grendel]

I have found that you can highlight a forum page and then copy and paste it into word for a permanent record.

[Martin (Admin)]

Morning!   

We've been going for over 15 years so far and planing to be around for a few more years yet. 

True, costs are a factor as it's very difficult to test the quality of a hosting firm until you've signed up and put the full load on the server.
Yes there are many guaranteed hosting services out there but I don't think many hobby Forums can stump up £100 per month!

But most importantly, you do need solid, reliable, sensible moderators, with sound judgement, fair and impartial, not just "yes men".
 Mayhem is been very privileged in this area! 

[Colin Bishop]

 The bottom line is that any data you post online is ephemeral. It can disappear forever at the flick of a switch and you have no real control over this. For example the previous owners of Model Boats magazine decided to close their forum without notice and a huge amount of information was lost. This is what prompted the introduction of the Mayhem Forum. More recently we have seen what happened when Photobucket suddenly decided it would no longer support third party image hosting.
 
The only way to preserve your data during your lifetime is to keep it on domestic media, regularly backed up and with copies in more than one physical location. You will also need to upgrade your media when necessary when standards change and while there is an upgrade path. Not much point in trying to transfer your data from CD/DVD in 20 years time I would think. Of course when you have gone to the great disk drive in the sky the chances are that your nearest and dearest will only keep such data as is relevant to them and which is unlikely to include model boat data (or even the boats themselves) or your much prized holiday snaps from 20 years ago!
 
As far as Forums are concerned, most of the information held is contemporary in nature and most of it will be irrelevant within a few years as products and suppliers change etc. Even comprehensive build blogs will be of interest for a relatively short period. Keeping data visible for a long time in the public arena still requires it to be held physically. An extreme case would be the hieroglyphs in Egyptian tombs but for us modellers it is still possible to fairly easily get hold of magazine articles dating back to the end of WW2 or even earlier. A lot of the information is now irrelevant except in the historical sense but there are still many useful nuggets such as plans and technical articles such as those by Norman Ough. These old mags are often available through suppliers such as Magazine Exchange but as the years go by and demand drops off this source will dry up. All will not be lost though as the British Library (and five others) by law must keep copies of all publications, including digital ones under the legal deposit requirement. See: http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/legaldeposit/introduction/ This will cover magazines but obviously not things like forum build blogs. If you want your work to stand a chance of surviving long term then get it published!

 
The most immediate danger to forums as identified above is if they are suddenly taken down or crash and burn whilst they are still holding a lot of current and useful information and in that respect there has to be a recovery plan in place for them to continue. Unfortunately this is not always the case with tragic results! People tend not to plan very much for this sort of thing which is why so many people don’t make wills as deep down they cannot accept the fact that at some point they will be needed. The result of course is much hassle and grief for those left behind.
 
Colin
 

[Nordlys]

Colin, You have such clarity of vision and exceptional common sense, especially in this post.
We dont want you retiring!.

[Hellmut1956]

I have not had in mind to ask for a solution. It does not exist as well written in this thread. What I wanted to share with you was the sudden awareness about the topic I did not have before. Are you i.e. aware of what energy consumption a simple search in Google does have? Multiply its value with the number of searches that Google makes for its users every day! Analyzing the data taken from its user and converting into comerciable data and selling it is what finances our apparently Internet for free!


Having written this I would like to contradict Colin partly. I do focus on writing and reading about the "techniques" applied to building "from scratch" i.e.! The master ship in hand crafting I often read about Is information and the wealth our hobby creates and this is more than just timeless. This not only ever gets outdated, but it is a source to learn about applying such Technics. in what, between other things Colin is right about, the destiny of the models almost all cases at the end is the trash!

[tigertiger]

I think there is truth in what both Helmut and Colin say. Some of the knowledge is timeless. However, looking at youtube videos, made in the 1950s, there are some techniques that are almost obsolete, and some technologies that are also almost obsolete. Many modellers could still make things the old way, but choose not to, and never have.
I know that there are some RC modellers who are still playing with simple switch sets (one click for forward, 2 clicks left, 3 clicks right), but is anyone in RC still using valve sets?

[Colin Bishop]

Many of the traditional means of construction such as plank on frame have not really changed over the years and are very well documented in books. The only real difference is perhaps the type of glue being used and the use of modern finishiing materials in terms of sealers, resin and paints. Likewise the construction of a GRP hull using a plug is also well documented.

Forums are very useful for describing the use of new fast moving technologies such as 3D printing but here I think the techniques described will become outdated quite quickly as the technology improves and becomes more readily available at lower prices.

Likewise electronics and battery technology is also a fast evolving area. Not so long ago a six channel RC combo was all that most people would aspire to but now the radios are computerised and have telemetry options for two way communication with the model to monitor performance data and to send back images from on board cameras. Arduino has been developed by members of this website to synchronise gun turret movement on warships and for other purposes.

Looking back it seems to me that there was a period of innovative technological development after WW2 which explored radio control applications and this plateaued in the 1970s with the introduction of crystal controlled proportional gear. There were then no really dramatic improvements (other than lowered prices) until comparitively recently when the freedom of 2.5GHz radio opened up a whole range of new possibilities which are currently being developed. So forums are an excellent means of sharing all this at the moment but I would think that in five years or so time much of it will be consolidated into the modelling mainstream - such as it may be then - and what we are discussing now will become historical!

Colin

[Hellmut1956]

@Colin: You are right about the technology developing so fast! I believe the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz technologies are an excellent example of an interim technology. Compared to the old MHz technology it is a huge improvement! But, and this is why I am writing this. Naval model aficionados, compared to ones building planes are very conservative and prone to keep and focus on traditional techniques! Let me explain the 2 messages I am sharing with you:


1. The GHz based technology will be replaced or extended by cellular phone data communication! How cheap this can be I give my personal experience. I pay 1 Euro per month for 100 MB of data volume. The provider allows to take a flat fee for a single day, cheap as well! Data volumes when at the sea shore rarely will hit 100 MB of data being transferred! More can be booked just at the sea shore. The use of this data lines for mobile games, IoT and IIoT push for low latencies. When communicating in your workshop you have the device connect by WiFi!


Another aspect of technology agnostics of naval modelists. Providers of 2.4 GHz systems still specify the number of "channels", a term justifiably used in the context of MHz systems, but really close to meaningless in radio control! While old MHz based technology was unilateral transmission, GHz based technology is a bidirectional serial data stream. So channels are physically not existent! Both transmitter and receiver are capable of bidirectional communication. So marketing continues using the term of channels not to confuse users! GHz technologies suffer from one weakness, the direct visual line between receiver and transmitter and the communication suffers as soon as it is not available.


Mobile communication as known from smartphones has an unlimited range, are often faster than copper based Internet access from homes and they can be cheap! Both by the contracts providers make available, see my personal experience and by the more and more getting available electronic semiconductor devices. Effectively they often have, as demanded by the most advanced user interfaces GPS and accelerator functionality included and WiFi! Specially this accelerator sensors have powerful uses in naval modeling!


I have worked in my profesional time over decades in the semiconductor and telecommunication industries. When retired I wanted to promote to have naval modelers stop seeing electronics as black boxes, but as an additional mean that allows to be applied in our hobby! Together with a naval modeler friend we discovered that in just one afternoon we were able to digitize the PWM signals coming out of the receiver channel receptacles and have the duty times displayed on a small 24x4 character display. This friend that developed a course for naval modelers to create a experimental circuit on a board with wholes from an electronic drawing. The goals where to lead the ones interested with small steps that allowed an immediate compensation by seeing a result understand the basics of a microcontroller circuit. The concept was to simulate something we called the "Lego" experience! By combining simple parts to be able to apply the creativity of the users to develop their own "electronics" to implement functionalities.


The result was a near complete failure in the naval modeling community and a strong adoption by those building planes! I have used the course of this friend to evangelize the Spanish speaking naval modeling community by translating it and offering my support! Only one single naval modeler from Mexiko took the complete course and know I am a bit proud of seeing what he is doing with the knowledge gained and how he is advancing his skills in electronics!


My summary:


Naval modelers seem to be less prone to overcome the intimidation of "opening the black box". They prefer to stick to none electronics technics. The do real wonders with traditional technics which require much more perseverance and sweat to achieve the mastership I see in their models and their reports of builds. One thing that happened was that some recreated "solutions" available in the Internet and made the available to the members of the forum communities. It was kind of the "buy a board from China" thing.


The advanced uses of "First Person View", short FPV offerings in the plane building community now has matured into the "drones biz". GHz technology started making this possible, data communication eliminates the limitations given in the GHz based solutions.


As a result I see the "value" of nava modeling sites in a means to preserve and spread the knowledge of traditional technics and technologies and in consequence the closing of naval modeling forums as the means a lot will get lost! Naval modelers are more oriented towards traditional technics that do not get obsoleted ever!

[Martin (Admin)]

This a very interesting topic!

 To widen it out a little bit, I've changed the Topic title. 

[Colin Bishop]

Helmut, you have made some interesting points although I confess I don't understand  all the technologies!

I can believe that 2.5GHz may itself become obsolete but not just yet. I live in southern England, halfway between London and the coast. It is one of the most heavily populated areas in the country although there is a lot of open countryside. Despite this, mobile phone coverage is by no means complete and there are many areas where there is no signal. In the small town where I live my mobile signal is actually very weak and probably not suited to heavy data transfer traffic. Using 2.5Ghz for my boats at the pondside does mean that there is a sufficiently strong local signal for reliable control.

Otherwise, you rather confirm my view that we are living in a period of transition.

Colin

[grendel]

it may be possible to recover some of that lost data, there are websites such as :- http://archive.org/web/web.php that take copies of websites and archive them, if you know the web address and the date you require, you can look at those pages still. then maybe you can save the data to your local machine and pass it on other places such as here.

[RAAArtyGunner]

The solution to the 'mobile problem' is the provision of another 'base station' however that won't happen until the traffic warrants it and they can  make it pay. More base stations, poles with antennas, closer together, improves service, carries more traffic and increases profit. However once you get off the beaten track then the traffic ie users decreases, so you spread the towers further apart. You then lose signal until you come into range of the next tower/pole.

Interesting point re channel's on RC sets so channel really refers to the number of servos.

Good tip about copying thread to word have been bookmarking but only works whilst "connection/link" is valid

[tizdaz]

Hi guys,


I've been designing websites for many moons & during that time I've tried MANY different hosts, I've setup all types of websites such as FTP/Forums/e-Commerce/Social etc. Anyone who has tried to setup websites will know what a headache it can be to find a host.. Bandwith/Disk Space/Reliability/Price etc.. Usually finding one that ticks all 3 is rare. But for the past 4 years I've used a company called UK Host 4U, First off, its servers are in the UK which is a big plus as a lot of hosting providers are based overseas which WILL slow down your website for UK visitors. Secondly, they offer Unlimited Bandwith, this is much more important than disk space & one that is usually overlooked! The offer 3 different packages for shared hosting (shared hosting is the norm & is more than adequate for 99.9% of websites) & there customer support is also based in UK!


I Pay £8 per month (or if you pay a year upfront you save more) & for £8 pm I get Unlimited Bandwith/50GB disk space (which again is more than enough for 99% of websites unless its file hosting that your website caters for) unlimited sub domains & email accounts & upto 5 independant websites/ 30 Databases etc  ..Like I say, I've used this hosting now for around 4 years for MANY different types of websites, the "unlimited bandwith" is 100% unlimited (don't be fooled by some that offer this then in the small print is the "fair usage" BS! as this will cripple your website.)


Anyway just a heads up, like I say I've tried many different hosting providers over the years & ukhost 4u is by far one of the better & cheapest ones!


To the OP.. if you use google to search for the forum (even though it no longer exists), Google keeps cached files, just click on the green arrow after the link under the title of google search & you will see an option for "cached" you maybe able to find the page with your topics using this method, but all depends on how long the website has been down, if recently then the cached files will still exist