Model Train Journal

I'm tossing this out here, as I've failed at several attempts in the past few weeks to reach Lee Berman (moderator), who maintains the forum now that Bill (owner) passed on. In the past, Lee has always responded to my emails concerning forum outages or problems and has even helped get some new members signed up. Bots killed the normal sign up process, so this is the only way to get new members on board.

So, I was just wondering if anyone else has contact with Lee or has corresponded with him since the 1st of the year? My real concern is if the forum goes down for any reason were toast. Just saying......................

Oh yeah, there was a moderator 2, but I have no idea who he is/was and he's not responding to PM's. His last post was in 2024.

I hope this platform doesn’t end. Nobody in tech is fostering or developing this kind of platform anymore. It’s all high stakes AI driven social platforms like Meta TikTok Reels etc etc now. The never ending scroll… the trillion dollar cash cow…. And, there is no money in this platform so there goes the incentives for anyone developing fixes or improvements or in anyway to keep this 1990s-2003-30 year old construct alive.

Anyone here wrote code? How about malware security? I fear this thing will get hacked and gone one of these days. We could go to Groups I/O and build a new email sharing group, it’s all that’s left of Yahoo Groups.

I’m sorry Bill left, I liked him, an extraordinary modeler and resourceful guy. But like all of us, me included now 50 we are dinosaurs that want to hang onto the world we knew. It’s all about to change, extraordinarily soon. Hang on guys. It’s gonna get interesting.

Pacific Limited wrote:I hope this platform doesn’t end.

It would only take 1-3 people to maintain it as is until that day where it lack adequate compatibility to be supported at all and the funds for the server and domain name.

Anyone here wrote code? How about malware security?

Not recently, but I have a guy for both hardware and software support that's capable. He's rather busy, but for adequate persuasion I suspect things are "possible".

I fear this thing will get hacked and gone one of these days.

There's nothing here worth the effort; probably well below the radar for any threat other than "just because"

We could go to Groups I/O and build a new email sharing group,

That has a real cost associated with it. Fairly minimal if you choose to stay at a lower level. The days when that was 100% free have gone the way of the dodo.

It’s gonna get interesting.

Old curse; living in interesting times.

I'm still hopeful I'll hear from Lee.

Rufus T. Firefly wrote:

Pacific Limited wrote:I hope this platform doesn’t end.

It’s gonna get interesting.

Old curse; living in interesting times.

Indeedy

up148 wrote:I'm still hopeful I'll hear from Lee.

I hope so too, maybe he is on holiday?

It’s a huge hassle babysitting these things. I send my kind respect and regards to them for keeping this sandbox open and clean. My thanks.