FOTR Forum is 5 years old

[John Ashworth]

On 19th January 2012, the FOTR Forum celebrated its fifth anniversary.

The Forum started from scratch on 19th January 2007. Now it has 757 members. Nearly 28,000 posts have been made on almost 9,000 topics. There are over 14,000 attachments, most of which are photographs. On average there have been more than 15 posts per day over the last five years, although these days it's a bit quieter. I think we can safely say it has become a useful resource for those who are interested in South African railways, and African railways more generally, as well as its international coverage.

Your administrators (Kevin, Steve, Turtle and myself) are hoping to produce a graph or chart or two to show the growth of the Forum, but we're not sure when we'll get round to it.

[ch.janssen-schmidt]

Happy Birthday - FOTR Forum. A reflection too of the great work you all are doing to preserve the railway tradition in South Africa, may the forum reflect another five times five of the FOTR legacy!

Regards
Charles

[Kevin Wilson-Smith]

And to remember the discussion back then - "this is not going to work" etc!!!!

[John Ashworth]

Another little statistic: over 23% of our members have posted at least once on the Forum, and almost 10% could be called "regulars" in that they have posted in double figures.

[Ian Roberts]

Something I have noticed in the last 12 months or so is that many of the younger members have gone silent.
I wonder if the newer social media formats such as Facebook and Twitter have replaced this forum with its somewhat more rigid format.
I do use Facebook, but mainly because it is the only way to keep up with my grandchildren, I find its very transitory history is not as valid as the structure of the forum or, for example, the Sar-L group on Yahoo.
I would appeal to the formerly very active youth group to keep posting their news here for the benefit of us old geezers who may be internet savvy, but prefer a more controlled discourse than the social media allow.

[Kevin Wilson-Smith]

Interesting comment Ian.

I use WhatsApp and BBM a great deal - especially with pics at the time!

But these are not really substitutes for the Forum - maybe it is just a case of "other things". I have absent for around a year - wrok etc.....

[John Ashworth]

As someone who is internet-literate but has never got to grips with things like Facebook and Twitter, I heartily second Ian's sentiments!

[Steve Appleton]

Ian is right. Facebook is very transitory and largely unstructured. It is very suitable for "instant" communication and pictorial conversation, but is not really a good engine upon which to build an information archive. This forum is structured and also posses a quite good search facility too.

The problem in respect of the apparent loss of younger participation does not apply to this forum alone. It seems that our passion and hobby does not really appeal to younger people over the long-term. Their drop-out rate is high in both the cyber and physical versions.

That said, Atlantic Rail seems to have attracted a large number of younger participants. Is that because AR is new on the block (drop-out hasn't hit yet) or is it because it is doing something right or differently to appeal to the younger generation?

[Steve Appleton]

May I add that this forum is running and its data is stored on a hosting facility rented and provided by FOTR. Unlike the proprietary Facebook engine which runs on Facebook's own servers and stores the data in its own environment, FOTR fully "owns" this forum and is in sole charge of its content.

If Facebook was to decide to close doors tomorrow, everything stored on that system would become unavailable and its public service provision would end -- not a clever environment for the establishment of a permanent information archive. Does anyone remember that picture archive that went bust taking thousands of irreplaceable photos with it?

By contrast, this forum and its data are regularly backed up and stored off-site by FOTR. The software used is public open-source, not proprietary (a big thank you to the phpBB founders and development team). If the hosting facility that FOTR uses should close doors tomorrow, FOTR can easily use that off-site backup to re-build and re-establish this forum including its data upon another hosting facility.

This forum is therefore a free, public facility brought to you by FOTR and FOTR alone. We must thank FOTR for providing it and also thank its moderators, benefactors and donors for making it possible. Last but by no means least, we must thank the public whose participation in providing the thousands of interesting postings (many including priceless pictures) has brought this forum to life and given it the stature it has today.

Happy 5th birthday, FOTR Forum!

[Kevin Wilson-Smith]

Hear hear.

And this Forum will not use your private info ofr any other purpose either!

[Ian Roberts]

Treading carefully as an outside observer, it may be that the political environment in the Western Cape is a little more benign than elsewhere.

Atlantic Rail seems to have attracted a large number of younger participants. Is that because AR is new on the block (drop-out hasn't hit yet) or is it because it is doing something right or differently to appeal to the younger generation?