He posted around the transition time (sale of PF) under his moniker, Paul. Though if he is still posting under another alias, I don't know which.




https://www.quietplease.org/originals/

@Paul hasn't frequented this incarnation of the forum since the early days. There's plenty of back-story spread across a few of the early discussions that helps to explain what happened, e.g.:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/40/pf-sold-for-20800
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/34/new-owner-announcement-at-pf/p1
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/33/things-at-the-old-place-have-changed
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/2/welcome-pf-members

Ah, the good old bad old days... :starstruck:

Nils Loc

Is that you, WK? Good to see you are still active in the entropy amusement park. How are things in your part of the Pacific? I guess that's Paul narrating the radio stories?

At the present I have a website, even a new forum just for the appearance of it, but nowadays I treat all of that as diaristic, basically a fancier medium for notes to myself and whomever may sail by on the web. A lot more relaxed and not bothered about things as much. Overall, healthier and clearer. Real life by the moment, not by the keystrokes. :smile:

Baden

After some years of my administering a couple of forums, making a few websites, blogs, etc., I can understand the 'moving on' part of the situation. Apparently Paul had financial difficulties and if PF was the only option in that regard then I can see where it went and why.

Didn't PF have thousands of members at one point? By that time I had already left but I could see how things could get complicated.

As for the good old days, when PF membership was at around 200 or so it seemed enough 'breathing' room. And the rule of thumb was/is that 20-25% of the 'registered' will actually be participating. Factor in those who want to engage with others compared to those who simply want a mirror, then the tally is less percentage-wise.

Is that you, WK? Good to see you are still active in the entropy amusement park. How are things in your part of the Pacific? I guess that's Paul narrating the radio stories? — Daniel V

Things are ok. Hope life is treating you well.

I suspect that is Paul's voice in The Replicator (his story). The second link is to his webpage. You can try and message him through the ko-fi.com profile.

PF had ~50,000 members and ~1.3 million posts. It's sad that the new owner killed that completely. Unfortunately, there's no way I can share any old backups with anyone because it would put both me and the recipient at risk of lawsuit from the owner. I wouldn't put it past him to sue over data he'll never use if he thinks the lawsuit is his chance to monetize it, and I for one am not willing to live in perpetual fear of a lawsuit.

Porat is, amusingly, still trying to sell the dead domain for $50,000: https://auctions.godaddy.com/trpItemListing.aspx?domain=philosophyforums.com

As for me, I hadn't really been posting philosophy content for the last 5 or 10 years of PF either so that's why I don't come here much -- just not that interested anymore. I've still been doing the same stuff, working on my PHP scripts, plus those audio dramas.

Anyway, hi Spaces! According to http://web.archive.org/web/20020402092502/http://www.philosophyforums.com:80/member.php?action=list mokoolo was member #7, but you were somewhere in the first year I remember.

Can you opensource anything to enable sharing of the database?

Good to see you pop in @Paul. The audio drama stuff seems pretty cool. :up:

Paul

Thank you for taking the time to respond.

Looking at the list you linked to it was indeed 2002 because I remember the house I was living it at the time. The recollection of being the 7th to register was because some years later I went to the forum to search for my posts and that placing came up somehow. Considering a forum's registration versus actual participation maybe I looked at "active" posters? But I know I was in there early because there were only a handful of names that were noticeable.

What I've done prompted by all of this was go looking through old CD backup files. I remembered making some but wasn't sure if they were kept or thrown away. Well, I was surprised to find a backup disk with html copies of 78 topics on the forum. These copies showed the dates of registrations and for "Spaces" it was July 1, 2002. You registered on March 10, 2002 so I figure that's the beginning of the forum unless there are technical particulars I am not aware of re the beginning.

Others:

DarkCloud - April 12, 2002
Distortion - May 8, 2002
Baron Max - April 1, 2002
Xev - June 27, 2002
i know - June 7, 2002

That's only in looking at 3 of the 78 topics. When I get a chance I will look at the others and derive whatever info from them.

By the way, is 'Distortion' still running things in Alberta? He was helpful to me for a while and I appreciated it.

Overall, the idea that I had was to find as many of the first or at least active 100 posters at PF and let them use a phpBB forum I have which is not getting any use for a temporary reunion of sorts. It would be interesting to see how things have changed for them, perceptions, priorities, and so on. But then I found this newer PF here and since you're already associated to them then maybe they'd like to consider said reunion. If anything, I think it would make for an interesting read especially with the time-space element of 17 years ago.

Find the first 100 members? Yeah, I know, an impossible task. But that's what makes it a fun challenge. :-D

Anyway, good to hear you're keeping busy. Yet, it is unfortunate that internet Morlocks got a hold of PF and ran it to ground. I know that was probably not your intention, but hey, poop happens.

Considering the status as you put it of the domain name and database, if anyone wants to view some of those html copies then send me a PM. As long as it's done privately and not posted online then there are no legal problems with it.

Cheers

Daniel

Distortion was generously hosting PF on his server for years, which of course ended with the sale. I'm not in contact with him anymore though.

Sorry to say July makes you a bit of a latecomer. :b The site took off pretty good in April and May. 2002 was my lucky SEO year, had 2 websites magically become loved by google then and none since.

Archive.org is frustratingly incomplete, but they did very well at archiving the debate forum thanks to the slow-moving nature of it: https://web.archive.org/web/20120618151541/http://forums.philosophyforums.com:80/debates
I wish I could help them improve their archive since they're the one entity that can get away with it, but I don't have it in html format and they don't accept such submissions anyway. You could try one of these tools to download what they do have though: https://superuser.com/questions/828907/how-to-download-a-website-from-the-archive-org-wayback-machine

It's a statistical certainty that a few of PF's first 100 members are dead after 17 years, but I'd be happy to join the séance.

I cannot deliberately facilitate access to things I don't own the rights to, judges see through that kind of thing.

I did provide a "download all your own posts as a text file" facility on PF and encouraged everyone to make use of it while PF was on buggy life support, but it's too late to use that now.

Does anyone know if 180Proof is alive?

Paul

Re Distortion, I likewise have not contacted him in awhile. Maybe I will send him an email about this idea for the original PF posters.

There may have been many who registered at PF in those first 2 and half months but my recollection is that there were only a handful of actual posters doing the work like you, Aniket, DarkCloud, Distortion, Baron Max and a few others. Which was okay by me, it allowed for a more focussed engagement than just a lot of names making scattered comments. Looking at archive.org for 2003-4 PF does spike and I see other names that I remember.

Speaking of which, re the probability that some posters have passed away that could be the case with Baron Max. He often said he was retired and in one of the html copies that I have he stated that he wasn't afraid of death. The statement seemed a bit more than just rhetorical.

Re SEO, yes, when I had the Esophy website it was decent and the analytics were showing visitors from everywhere. That lasted around 3 years. After 4 and half or so I let go of it along with the domain name.

Re downloading of all posts, I didn't see that since that's awhile after I left.

Anyway, I don't know about a "séance" but I think it would be interesting for a temporary thing of having some of the original posters relate their views about whatever nowadays. Since this is the "new" PF then I think it would be appropriate here. If not then I have the forum I previously mentioned. Just updated the phpBB version and tweaking the styles on it (Light/Dark). I will send you a link to it once that's done. I don't put the link here because that would be seen as 'hijacking' and all that nonsense. Though I have already received an email from someone on this board inviting me to another. :-D

If by some chance you have email addresses of some of the members then let them know with a quick note or I will email them myself if you send the addresses. Again, a long shot, but who knows, even if we could only find a dozen or so names it could turn out interesting.

Cheers

Daniel