Unknown Backstories

[brisray]

Did you ever visit a site you used to like and found something strange had happened to it?

I used to use FoxPro which was a database management system (DBMS). I was also an active member in the user forums one of which was - WARNING: what’s on the site now contains a lot of swearing - The FoxPro Wiki.

Here’s what it used to look like. (Internet Archive)

I have no idea what the backstory behind the tiff was. Has anyone else come across something like this?

[Zombiethederg]

Its almost unnerving to come across stuff like this. Something im always fascinated by is the feeling you get when stumbling upon events that have already happened. Like, in your example, this set of texts on this once flourishing website.

Ive not personally come across anything like this, but its a absolutely fascinating phenomena. You see it with old Minecraft servers that remain up for no reason- builds that have been destroyed, or ones standing tall with no one around. Its almost liminal to see what's happened around this place, and your only left to wonder "what could have happened here?".

[dirtnap]

having spent some time editing wikis (and adminning a couple, back when "wikia" existed) i do understand the webmaster's frustration. if someone wants to troll, there's no real way to stop them. blocking their account is worthless if editing doesn't require one. ip blocks are worthless because it takes two seconds to change your ip.

i suspect steven black hit their limit and decided the time they were spending rolling back the troll's edits were better spent elsewhere. i don't blame them, but it is a shame they wouldn't simply make the whole wiki read-only so the resource isn't lost.

my answer to this thread is: outpost gallifrey.

i never got an explanation.

outpost gallifrey was the second-biggest doctor who forum to ever exist (the bbc's official forum was both more populated and more active, but they made the incoherent decision to shut it down just before the 2005 revival was announced).

according to someone i used to follow on livejournal, the exact date of the shut-down was 31st july 2009. not going read-only, no archives, the whole site simply vanished overnight. they wiped the database and let the domain expire.

my internet access was heavily restricted between 2009 and 2013. for much of that time, i had no access at all. og must have gone down only a few months after i lost access for the first time. what horrendous timing.

2014 was a year of discovering so many of the parts of the internet i used to live on didn't exist any more, or had changed so much that they were no longer my home. but the loss of outpost gallifrey was the worst of these. it was just gone, with no explanation.

thinking about it now still makes me feel that same hollow sadness. when i first learned of this, i also felt angry and betrayed. i had lost so much. so many friends, so much history, so much just...gone.

i still have no idea what happened.

[milo]

In 2003 I joined this small fan forum community for Sonic the Hedgehog. We were a tight knit group of kids online. While not insular at all, we didn't have many folks coming or going... It was mostly the same people hanging out, like a close friend group. Because of this, the webmaster was pretty protective of the space. There were other Sonic fan community sites and one or two of them liked to start feuds with the other sites and troll the forums and even hack them.

I guess with this going on for many years, and the anxiety caused by the constant attention he was getting, in 2008 the webmaster shut the site down with no explanation. When we logged in that day, there was a short apology message on the front page, basically saying he couldn't do it anymore and wished us all the best of luck in our lives.

All the users of that forum quickly assembled in various chat rooms and the like to figure out what the heck was going on. Long story short, we set up a new forum and we actually all still hang out in a discord server these days. Same group of peeps just talking about life and Sonic the Hedgehog like it's 2003.

We never did find out what happened with the old webmaster... he kinda disappeared off the face of the net. I think a few members of the group still keep contact, but they don't ever bring him up, as per the wishes of the webmaster himself. Pretty crazy stuff. He was always a nice guy, if maybe a little aloof. Just got tired of the abuse.

Also, while looking around for stuff to put on my new website not too long ago, I stumbled upon this tool to put music album art into a gallery with like tooltips and stuff talking about the album. I went to the site to try and make one, and the owner shut it down and posted a message about how listening to Satanic music will make you addicted to porn or something and how everyone needed to turn to God and listen to good Christian music... that was pretty strange. I was like, "uhhhhh am I on the right site??". Can't remember the name of it for the life of me.