The Other Site

Post by **BGuttman** » Thu Mar 29, 2018 2:38 pm

We used to have a thread on the status of Trombone Forum. Looks like it got lost.

I've been periodically checking on TTF to see what's happening. Been getting the "We're Moving" message.

Today I got a "not found" error.

Wonder what's up.

JohnL · Post by **JohnL** » Thu Mar 29, 2018 2:42 pm

I still get the "We're Moving" message, but only if I go to the main page. Any other URL that happens to be in history comes up "not found".

hyperbolica · Post by **hyperbolica** » Thu Mar 29, 2018 2:42 pm

I get the "not found" error if I go anywhere but the tromboneforum.org root. At tromboneforum.org, I still get the "we're moving in 2 weeks" lie.

bigtiny · Post by **bigtiny** » Fri Mar 30, 2018 6:53 pm

I'm guessing that, for whatever reason, the site's not coming back. They mention moving to upgrade...it just doesn't take THIS long. I suspect that there are other circumstances at play here...

Post by **Neo Bri** » Fri Mar 30, 2018 8:56 pm

bigtiny wrote: ↑Fri Mar 30, 2018 6:53 pm I'm guessing that, for whatever reason, the site's not coming back. They mention moving to upgrade...it just doesn't take THIS long. I suspect that there are other circumstances at play here...

A very reasonable assertion.

Grah · Post by **Grah** » Fri Mar 30, 2018 9:15 pm

One has to remember that rlb is a one-man band when it comes to the technical side of TTF. It is not so long since he mentioned he had to undergo more hospital time. Plus that latest message, did not give any time for the improvements.

"We're moving!
Over the next two weeks, the Forum's server is being substantially upgraded and moved to a new datacenter which will have much more available bandwidth and other bells and whistles. During this time, the site will, unfortunately, need to be offline.
Watch this space for details! "

I believe that rlb as a bass trombonist, teacher, conductor and computer programming expert has provided a wonderful website experience for us all over the years and you only have to look at the statistics about the site to realise how popular it has been.

Personally, I wish him all the best of health and hope he will be able to resume his involvement with the trombone and music world in the not to distant future.

None of that is to say that there is not room for TromboneChat in our browsing. The recent improvements have been very good and even the subject matter is getting better as it attracts more members. Keep up the good work.

Post by **Matt K** » Fri Mar 30, 2018 9:48 pm

Except it doesn't have to be a one-man-band. Many people have offered to help out with backend stuff over the years and a LOT of the experience is not provided by the software at all. On the contrary, it's a detriment to the overall experience and it is bandaided by having Bruce largely being the person solely responsible for keeping spam out of the site by parsing through tons of request submissions by hand every week and manually running IP scans on new users accounts.

bigtiny · Post by **bigtiny** » Sat Mar 31, 2018 10:42 am

Grah wrote: ↑Fri Mar 30, 2018 9:15 pm One has to remember that rlb is a one-man band when it comes to the technical side of TTF. It is not so long since he mentioned he had to undergo more hospital time. Plus that latest message, did not give any time for the improvements.

"We're moving!
Over the next two weeks, the Forum's server is being substantially upgraded and moved to a new datacenter which will have much more available bandwidth and other bells and whistles. During this time, the site will, unfortunately, need to be offline.
Watch this space for details! "

I believe that rlb as a bass trombonist, teacher, conductor and computer programming expert has provided a wonderful website experience for us all over the years and you only have to look at the statistics about the site to realise how popular it has been.

Personally, I wish him all the best of health and hope he will be able to resume his involvement with the trombone and music world in the not to distant future.

None of that is to say that there is not room for TromboneChat in our browsing. The recent improvements have been very good and even the subject matter is getting better as it attracts more members. Keep up the good work.

Not to be argumentative, but it says right there in the message that the server is being upgraded over the next two weeks. Usually these upgrades are done offline then implemented all at once. A matter of hours. Note that it says they are moving to new servers and data center which would certainly account for a longer period (like two weeks or so =:-) ), but probably not this long.

My observations on this topic should not in any way be taken as a criticism of the person who runs 'the other site', just guesses about the site's status.

greenbean · Post by **greenbean** » Sat Mar 31, 2018 1:12 pm

Hey, what people say they are going to do and what they end up doing can be very different. For a variety of reasons. Not necessarily nefarious.

That said, RLB did provide a great resource to the trombone community for many years. It seems he could have used help for a long time but did not accept it. That is the way it is, for whatever reason.

Have you guys (admins and mods here) approached RLB to see if he is willing to step aside and let others save all that great information? Perhaps buy the data?...

Post by **BGuttman** » Sat Mar 31, 2018 1:53 pm

greenbean wrote: ↑Sat Mar 31, 2018 1:12 pm Hey, what people say they are going to do and what they end up doing can be very different. For a variety of reasons. Not necessarily nefarious.

That said, RLB did provide a great resource to the trombone community for many years. It seems he could have used help for a long time but did not accept it. That is the way it is, for whatever reason.

Have you guys (admins and mods here) approached RLB to see if he is willing to step aside and let others save all that great information? Perhaps buy the data?...

Several times and many people. This site exists because Brian got no response from RLB. Brian only wants to preserve the info on the Trombone Forum (formerly Online Trombone Journal Forum).

Post by **Matt K** » Sat Mar 31, 2018 2:27 pm

greenbean wrote: ↑Sat Mar 31, 2018 1:12 pm Hey, what people say they are going to do and what they end up doing can be very different. For a variety of reasons. Not necessarily nefarious.

That said, RLB did provide a great resource to the trombone community for many years. It seems he could have used help for a long time but did not accept it. That is the way it is, for whatever reason.

Have you guys (admins and mods here) approached RLB to see if he is willing to step aside and let others save all that great information? Perhaps buy the data?...

Offhand I can think of at least a dozen attempts by various people including myself.

Post by **Neo Bri** » Sat Mar 31, 2018 2:29 pm

greenbean wrote: ↑Sat Mar 31, 2018 1:12 pm Hey, what people say they are going to do and what they end up doing can be very different. For a variety of reasons. Not necessarily nefarious.

That said, RLB did provide a great resource to the trombone community for many years. It seems he could have used help for a long time but did not accept it. That is the way it is, for whatever reason.

Have you guys (admins and mods here) approached RLB to see if he is willing to step aside and let others save all that great information? Perhaps buy the data?...

All true. The biggest resource TTF had was that it was the defacto COMMUNITY. We now have a structure here that I feel will work great for the community - we just need to get more folks using it.

greenbean · Post by **greenbean** » Sat Mar 31, 2018 3:05 pm

"If you build it, they will come..."

Post by **Matt K** » Sat Mar 31, 2018 3:40 pm

greenbean wrote: ↑Sat Mar 31, 2018 3:05 pm "If you build it, they will come..."

Working on it! My parents are in town this weekend so I'm not goign to get much done starting in about 10 minutes but stay tuned!

Post by **Neo Bri** » Sat Mar 31, 2018 5:22 pm

We've been designing a few very interesting and unique resources. They just haven't gone live yet. Like Matt K said, stay tuned.

ddickerson · Post by **ddickerson** » Sun Apr 01, 2018 6:00 pm

How long did it take the TTF to really take off after it first launched?

It seems that this site is doing well for a new site. It's going to do well in the long run.

Post by **Neo Bri** » Sun Apr 01, 2018 8:38 pm

Well, what I can say is that, as long as we have an active community, we will always have multiple people working on it that have the keys. This thing will be stable.

bhcordova · Post by **bhcordova** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 2:14 pm

ddickerson wrote: ↑Sun Apr 01, 2018 6:00 pm How long did it take the TTF to really take off after it first launched?

It seems that this site is doing well for a new site. It's going to do well in the long run.

I think that it was live over a year before it hit 100 members. And then it took several months to get to 200. I remember celebratory posts being made at every 100 members until we hit 1000. Then things seemed to really take off.

ddickerson · Post by **ddickerson** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 2:55 pm

That’s what I would have guessed. So, this site growing very good.

Grah · Post by **Grah** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 5:15 pm

bhcordova wrote: ↑Mon Apr 02, 2018 2:14 pm
ddickerson wrote: ↑Sun Apr 01, 2018 6:00 pm How long did it take the TTF to really take off after it first launched?

It seems that this site is doing well for a new site. It's going to do well in the long run.
I think that it was live over a year before it hit 100 members. And then it took several months to get to 200. I remember celebratory posts being made at every 100 members until we hit 1000. Then things seemed to really take off.

I think you are selling yourself short Billy. A lot of the success was due to your recruiting of mods and the encouragement of a very special trombone orientated internet social atmosphere. Plus, in those days, the scope of subject matter was much wider in a music sense. It was not concentrated on trombone hardware as unfortunately this site tends to be. That tendency also happened to TTF due to the average age of members and I remember Bruce commenting on the trend a few years back.

Don't get me wrong, one of my main interests in the TTF, when I was a moderator over there, was to encourage younger members to engage in conversations with all kinds of trombone players about playing techniques and all the genres of music.

TTF was also very strict about keeping advertising out of its pages, even when disguised as normal posts.

I think the recent redesign of the Trombone Chat site also recognises the need for a broader scope of conversation and I am encouraged that some of the more experienced trombone players from TTF are now coming over here.

The quality and interest of topics will always determine people's desire to participate in forum conversations.

Post by **Neo Bri** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 6:34 pm

Salient points. That being said, the topics pretty much spring from what people want to chat about. We certainly won't try to guide the direction of the topics - people pretty much talk about what they want to. I'm sure the topic pool will diversify as more folks get on.

I myself tend to be very hardware and pedagogy-oriented.

Post by **Matt K** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 6:45 pm

Also the internet is much different than when the ttf first started. YouTube hadn't came about yet! Hard to believe right? There's only so much one can do to put words about music into a forum post but you can do a lot in a video recording. It seems like most of that discussion (such as musical interpretation) has moved to other types of social media. Stuff like Paul the trombonist,burgerbobs channel, and so forth. Equipment is a lot easier to generalize and thus easier to talk about, at least in my opinion!

Grah · Post by **Grah** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 7:07 pm

I believe you could well do some recruiting of the people who were popular on the other site over the years. And who definitely diversified the topic matter.

ChristineWoodcock2.jpg

imsevimse · Post by **imsevimse** » Tue May 01, 2018 10:07 am

I think Matt K did a good job to have included the TTF archive now. This was what this page needed and makes it the one to go to even if the old one comes up eventually. It is due to Matt K the sum of knowledge of thousands of hours of experience from both pros and amateurs have been saved

. Personally the thing that I missed the most was the possibility to google old trombone models. That's a subject where both amateurs and pros have been invaluable to me. I never liked the problem with "one man" owning and managing the forum. In all professional high tech work we do all to avoid single point of failures. Hopes this new forum grows now. It's looking good

/Tom

mwpfoot · Post by **mwpfoot** » Tue May 01, 2018 3:30 pm

In 2 days it will be 3 months since the last tromboneforum.org post.

I remember RLB as a fun participant in the early "other forum" days. Yes, this and that would have been nice for the community - but it was always his site, closely held, and so it goes.

I wouldn't be surprised if it came back looking a lot like this! I also wouldn't be surprised if the domain is never registered again. Either way, I wish him well.

boneagain · Post by **boneagain** » Tue May 01, 2018 4:11 pm

mwpfoot wrote: ↑Tue May 01, 2018 3:30 pm ...
I wouldn't be surprised if it came back looking a lot like this! I also wouldn't be surprised if the domain is never registered again. Either way, I wish him well.

+1

pompatus · Post by **pompatus** » Sat May 12, 2018 5:32 pm

I’m seeing the following update on the old forum...

We've moved!

All hardware has been installed in the new colocation facility and final upgrades and tuning are being completed.

May 12: Almost there...watch this space.

SwissTbone · Post by **SwissTbone** » Sun May 13, 2018 12:35 am

At this state I wonder if thats good news. I mean... TC is working great and is getting more and more following. TC will be cannibalized by TTF and the contrary will be true also.

The best of both worlds would be to merge TTF and TC with the support team of TC, the archives and the following of TTF.

pompatus · Post by **pompatus** » Sun May 13, 2018 6:17 am

I agree, cozzagiorgi. The support team here has been fantastic! TTF has also been down long enough that search results are now starting to pop up for the archive on TC rather than the original TTF post, sometimes, which was the largest frustration for me (Google results for unreachable TTF posts while that server has been down).

boneagain · Post by **boneagain** » Sun May 13, 2018 6:30 am

I, for one, won't be logging back into TTF. I find it easy enough to find the TTF results I want here by doing something like:

"benge 190" site:trombonechat.com/

which brings up enough from the archives to keep me busy.

I suppose it WOULD be possible to pull over a "differential" archive of newer posts, if TTF came back full steam. But since THIS site now has TTF archives AND the support, I see no point in going back to TTF all on its own. This LONG outage has been a lesson. With all due credit and full thanks to Dr. Byrd for keeping TTF hardware ans system up all these years, I'm sticking with this more open support structure.

JohnL · Post by **JohnL** » Sun May 13, 2018 9:09 am

boneagain wrote: ↑Sun May 13, 2018 6:30 amI suppose it WOULD be possible to pull over a "differential" archive of newer posts, if TTF came back full steam. But since THIS site now has TTF archives AND the support, I see no point in going back to TTF all on its own.

The TTF archive isn't complete. As I understand it, the scraper didn't quite work as planned and, by the time MattK realized it, there wasn't a TTF available to scrape.

https://trombonechat.com/viewtopic.php? ... per#p59120

The archive as it stands is entirely adequate for a lot of common questions, but if you're doing a "deep dive", you'll hit bottom pretty quickly.

Pre59 · Post by **Pre59** » Sun May 13, 2018 9:10 am

I just went to the TTF URL and found this..

"May 12: Almost there...watch this space."

Post by **Matt K** » Sun May 13, 2018 9:12 am

Yeah, I'm curious to see what the site will look like! If it's similar, I might just re-run it and see if I wind up with everything. Previously it was under a CCL, so it was fair game to do so. Not going to step on anyones toes but man, it would be cool to have a backup. There's a lot of cool information there.

SwissTbone · Post by **SwissTbone** » Sun May 13, 2018 9:30 am

Not even sure TTF will have its entire archive...

JohnL · Post by **JohnL** » Sun May 13, 2018 9:51 am

cozzagiorgi wrote: ↑Sun May 13, 2018 9:30 am Not even sure TTF will have its entire archive...

That would be most unfortunate.

Schlitz · Post by **Schlitz** » Sun May 13, 2018 12:14 pm

imsevimse · Post by **imsevimse** » Mon May 14, 2018 2:05 pm

We'll see what the page looks like if it comes alive. The best thing with that page was you could search for any trombone model or any trombone related things and Google pointed you to some of those old threads at old TTF. I wonder if this will be the same in the future. For other reasons I think this page is better, and will probably be better in time. This is a young but growing page.

/Tom

mwpfoot · Post by **mwpfoot** » Tue May 15, 2018 10:56 am

All hardware has been installed in the new colocation facility and final upgrades and tuning are being completed.

bhcordova · Post by **bhcordova** » Wed Jan 16, 2019 9:14 pm

Richard has discovered this site. I think he has decided not to restart the site.

Post by **BGuttman** » Wed Jan 16, 2019 9:30 pm

Richard is welcome to sign on and join the fun.

If he'd let us post all the other stuff on TTF that isn't in our archive we'd be grateful.

Post by **Neo Bri** » Wed Jan 16, 2019 10:38 pm

BGuttman wrote: ↑Wed Jan 16, 2019 9:30 pm Richard is welcome to sign on and join the fun.

If he'd let us post all the other stuff on TTF that isn't in our archive we'd be grateful.

Indeed we would.

Jimkinkella · Post by **Jimkinkella** » Wed Jan 16, 2019 11:56 pm

Curious of the response those of us that contributed to the "upgrades" would get if we asked for our donations back...

MoominDave · Post by **MoominDave** » Thu Jan 17, 2019 9:32 am

bhcordova wrote: ↑Wed Jan 16, 2019 9:14 pm Richard has discovered this site. I think he has decided not to restart the site.

I'm glad to hear that he's still alive. I'd been a little concerned on that front.

I second the idea that it would be great to make the TTF archive here complete by getting the archive contents. How do we know that Richard's been here? Is he contactable by that route?

While I'm here, I'll just float something that may or may not be of interest to site policy-makers... Since the changeover from there to here, I've come to realise that TTF's off-topic areas were the hook that kept me coming back there. While I wanted to read the trombone content, and in my first years there it was enough to have me open up the site every day and get involved with trombone topics, beyond that period I found more immediate engagement in the controversially off-topic areas - and from there would then check in on any trombone talk.

Net result: I stayed involved in trombone talk there, but haven't found myself drawn in to this site yet.

I know this site is run with a different philosophy, and that many of you are fans of that philosophy. Just mounting a gentle defence of TTF's much-maligned philosophy.

Bach5G · Post by **Bach5G** » Thu Jan 17, 2019 10:11 am

I miss the political discussions. “Nothingburgers” - that seems so long ago.

LeTromboniste · Post by **LeTromboniste** » Thu Jan 17, 2019 3:05 pm

I agree the "off topic"/not trombone or music related discussions should have their place.

I also think this site really should have a "History" board. That was one of the most interesting section of the old site.

Post by **Neo Bri** » Thu Jan 17, 2019 11:57 pm

I am taking all of these suggestions and ideas under consideration. Thanks!

timothy42b · Post by **timothy42b** » Fri Jan 18, 2019 7:14 am

I am one who was a heavy participator in the political and religious discussions.

And, I like that they're not here. In hindsight - it's been a while! - the benefit was not worth the cost. For me. YMMV.

If I had a vote it would be to leave them out. I do observe that the amount of regular participation here is considerably less than the old site, and we've been online here for some time. I don't know if that is partly due to not having those threads - might be.

Post by **BGuttman** » Fri Jan 18, 2019 8:33 am

Most of the traffic on TTF was in the Purely Politics and Religion boards. There are Politics boards and Religion boards out there if you want to participate. Unfortunately the populations of those Boards was not as civil as on TTF.

I don't miss either of them, even though I participated in Purely Politics (I'm not religious and not Christian so I kept out of that discussion). If it were up to me I'd leave those out. I'd support adding a History section that could talk about informed performance and instruments appropriate to various periods.

Schlitz · Post by **Schlitz** » Fri Jan 18, 2019 10:52 am

harrisonreed · Post by **harrisonreed** » Fri Jan 18, 2019 2:58 pm

Yeah I think I'd bail on this site other than to sell stuff if I had to sift through political and religious threads in the "new" pile like on TTF. Please don't start those.