Finally migrated over. Never could get past the London question.
PF is no longer recognized by the name servers. Not good.

Welcome~

Are you looking for forums.philosphyforums.com or philosophyforums.com ? The latter is recognised.

OK, the latter is recognized, but in "please stand by" mode.
It is 104.27.132.146 whereas the former was 159.203.90.37 . New server??

Thanks for the welcome Tiff!. I've had a helluva time signing up for some reason, but it worked without a hitch today. And this site has on the fly spell check!

When was it 159.203.90.37 ? A few days ago or when Paul was owner?

PF appears to be back.

That was the IP yesterday, after f.FP had been down a couple days, but was still recognized by the name server. Now both URLs are the new IP. It seems to be back without significant data lost, but I see no new posts. I see no announcements about what's going on.

The PF site is up but still throws frequent errors, and there's no up to date communication from the site owners either on the site or on the facebook page. Underwhelming. The only good source of info is here.

It's pretty broken still, I hope they get it working. I did however manage to 'download all my posts as text', which, when pasted into MS Word, amounts to 2,494 pages and 1,104,583 words. (And that's not even including posts under a previous username). I suddenly have this feeling of having been wasting a awful lot of time. :-}

Leave PF, remain on TPF

Become a Philosophy Forums sponsor and get cool rewards. Contributions so far this month have totaled $0.00. Thanks!

I like the unintended double entendre of the word "thanks" here, in light of the monetary amount.

Bit sad that the old Forum isn't working well. Good that it at least came back.

The Prevent forest fires Smokey add is ok. Yet in general it is a bit pathetic with the ads, but still at least the new owners are trying.

TPF 1 - PF 0

Why not just abandon that sinking ship and opt with a superior alternative? No ads, no likes/dislikes, no track record of the site going down, no forums dedicated to pseudo-philosophy and unmoderated nonsense, better design, features and functionality (including auto-save drafts and a superior quote function), an owner you know and trust...

noAxioms has the right idea. It's just a pity that there are others who still cling on, rather than reunite in a better place.

There will be a day when this site goes down and everyone will run over to PF waiting for this site to come back up. Mark my words.

Don't listen to the lizard, he's the Devil in disguise and he's just trying to tempt you, like that time in the Garden of Eden when he was mistaken for a snake.

There will be a day when this site goes down and everyone will run over to PF waiting for this site to come back up. Mark my words. — Hanover

Well...

... if so, that makes me no one or if I'm part of everyone then you are dead wrong.

Meow!

GREG

Good point. I've not posted over there since Black Wednesday. I don't know if the takeover occurred on a Wednesday or not, but as far as I know, there are no other Black Wednesdays, so from this point forward I move that it be so called. Anyone second my motion?

Good point. I've not posted over there since Black Wednesday. I don't know if the takeover occurred on a Wednesday or not, but as far as I know, there are no other Black Wednesdays, so from this point forward I move that it be so called. Anyone second my motion? — Hanover

Try being a little more melodramatic about it and you might get my vote.

Just call it something simple like,
"The black day the philosophical light went out"
Like I said something simple. :D

Seconded. (I thought about moving that it occurred on the 6th of June at 6 minutes past 6, but we may not get away with that one).

I'll go with "The Great Divorce"...

... as it could be said "Black Wednesdays Matter".

Meow!

GREG

PF seems totally broken now. I think what has happened is, it has a huge amount of custom code which got built over the period of a decade, now that major problem appeared the new ownership doesn't have the skills to fix the problems. So the site is up but it's basically non-functional.

I say we start a subversion tactic and start a propaganda campaign about the virtues to be found at this website. We can promote this place as freedom from smokey, an agent of big brother always watching and instilling fear about us humans that start wildfires.

I think what has happened is, it has a huge amount of custom code which got built over the period of a decade, now that major problem appeared the new ownership doesn't have the skills to fix the problems. — Wayfarer

Actually it has almost no custom code. They just can't seem to keep parts of the database from crashing, for some reason, perhaps suggesting they've stuck it on an overloaded web server. Well, perhaps the main problem is that if it does crash they don't bother to look in and fix it for weeks.

If they ever reported any software issues to me, I would -- as the software developer -- of course quickly fix them. They haven't, so if they're having any software problems they don't seem to have any desire to fix them.

I doubt they've recouped their investment since the transaction and the slow upkeep doesn't bode well for site activity in the future. Is there some ulterior business model at work that doesn't involve ad revenue? — Nils Loc

Don't underestimate the possibility that rich kids can be incredibly stupid and wasteful with their investments and then quickly get tired of them and move on to the next exciting thing, too. Even if they had an ulterior revenue source, squandering the ad revenue was still stupid.

Thanks Paul. I had guessed there was a lot of customisation due to all the tweaks you had made but you would know better! It's a shame they've let it go, but that appears to be what has happened.

.

Don't underestimate the possibility that rich kids can be incredibly stupid and wasteful with their investments and then quickly get tired of them and move on to the next exciting thing — Paul

This. I don't think Porat ever came close to understanding the value of what he had with PF or how to nurture it. The best thing would be if he sold it on to someone of a less commercial and more intellectual persuasion.

I called it from the first couple of days when the site went down. I said there was something fishy going on and that they probably realised they weren't making any money and simply abandoned the site.

Well, I'm gonna stick with the user name Mayor of Simpleton.

Although Κασσάνδρα could be a good alternative.

Meow!
(indeed)



GREG

The other place is officially dead to me, it is beyond hopeless. Still, I can't quite shake the feeling that some thing fishy is going on (my guess is money laundering) and that pisses me off. I mean who pays tens of thousands of dollars for a website when they take no interest in actually running it as a legitimate business?

Buying something that has value and then wrecking it sounds more like a money toilet than a money laundry. Don't you have to get the money out, in some way, to erase the odor of sleaze?

It worked pretty well for General Motors. They bought metropolitan public transit systems and then wrecked them so that they could sell more cars. The citizens of those cities have been paying the price ever since.
http://www.trainweb.org/mts/ctc/ctc06.html