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Retirement and forum shutdown (17 Jan 2022)

Hi,

John Howell who has managed the forum for years is getting on and wishes to retire from the role of managing it.
Over the years, he has managed the forum through good days and bad days and he has always been fair.
He has managed to bring his passion for fish keeping to the forum and keep it going for so long.

I wish to thank John for his hard work in keeping the forum going.

With John wishing to "retire" from the role of managing the forum and the forum receiving very little traffic, I think we must agree that forum has come to a natural conclusion and it's time to put it to rest.

I am proposing that the forum be made read-only from March 2022 onwards and that no new users or content be created. The website is still registered for several more years, so the content will still be accessible but no new topics or replies will be allowed.

If there is interest from the ITFS or other fish keeping clubs, we may redirect traffic to them or to a Facebook group but will not actively manage it.

I'd like to thank everyone over the years who helped with forum, posted a reply, started a new topic, ask a question and helped a newbie in fish keeping. And thank you to the sponsors who helped us along the away. Hopefully it made the hobby stronger.

I'd especially like to thank John Howell and Valerie Rousseau for all of their contributions, without them the forum would have never been has successful.

Thank you
Darragh Sherwin

whats happened to this once active forum,

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03 Sep 2018 20:45 #1 by tommyt (tommy tee)
WTF? 'For Sale' posts are gone, only a few posts from this year :-(
whats going on folks, why so quiet here??????
T

Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue.

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04 Sep 2018 09:20 - 04 Sep 2018 09:23 #2 by JohnH (John)

WTF? 'For Sale' posts are gone, only a few posts from this year :-(
whats going on folks, why so quiet here??????
T


Unfortunately Tommy, the bulk of the active members have moved to pastures anew. This - and any - Forum is only as strong as the people who contribute to it with their posts allow it to be. Many have emigrated to facebook groups etc and no longer even log in here. It's a real shame, but that's their prerogative.

I have been talking with folks who run Fora dedicated to other subjects than ours and they're mostly witnessing a similar situation
The sad part is that if this Forum gets closed down the quite comprehensive database of it goes forever.

We can only hope that a turnaround occurs before the closure happens.

John

EDIT: ps, the For Sale section is still there, just rarely used now. It gets purged monthly and - as you will see - no-one has offered anything new there in the past month.

Location:
N. Tipp

We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl - year after year.


ITFS member.



It's a long way to Tipperary.
Last edit: 04 Sep 2018 09:23 by JohnH (John). Reason: Addition

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04 Sep 2018 18:55 #3 by robert (robert carter)
Yes its sad when i fisrt joined this forum about three years ago there would be 40 or more posts every day , certainly i got an invaluable amount of help from its members

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07 Sep 2018 21:33 #4 by tommyt (tommy tee)
such a pity alright John, the loss of the vast info would be such a shame,
whilst FB is handy for some things but i still see a dedicated site like this as a valuable tool where all info is easily accessible.
I thought there was just a downturn in the hobby in general ...
Best to get a backup of the sql database and site files (joomla) before it goes/hosting expires, should it get a new lease of life....
cheers,
Tom

Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue.

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01 Oct 2018 01:02 #5 by iain54 (Iain Minchin)
This is much better than Facebook but with little or no posts people drift away

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04 Oct 2018 20:53 #6 by fishmad1234 (Craig Coyle)
It certainly is a shame maybe 7 odd years maybe even longer I'm on this forum.

I am guilty of not being an active member myself but not due to Facebook as I am not on that tripe.

My wife had twins 4 and a half weeks ago on top of 3 kids that we already had my tank hasent had a water change in about 2 months shocking the state of the tank but that feeling after a big water change and maintence and looking at a spotless tank is great. hopefully get around to it this weekend.


I have found a lot of people have the same fish for months if not years and they might post about them once or twice or post a video but after that you don't have that excitement that comes with new fish or a new tank or a new set up I've had a tank running for years with pretty much the same set up and mostly the same fish unfortunately it does tend to get monotiounos and could be boring just maintaining the same tank and set up.

That could be also a factor in the decline I know myself I've posted about the same dish for years and I do get to a stage when I think are people sick of me posting videos of the same fish over and over again hahhahahahaha.

Hope it picks up to lose this forum would be a big loss for the hobbie in Ireland.


Regards

Craig

at the end of the day it becomes nite

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