A Brief Forum History – Including some of the “Behind The Scenes” Administration
Much of this was provided by Jake who is one of the “Forum Founders” and still deals with the “behind the scenes” issues – such as the hosting of the site.
I’ve added a few bits and pieces – such as the merging of Aprilia Ridersite with Ridersite back in 2007 and how things have worked since then.
It’s all from memory – so some things might not be 100% correct or the order of some things may have got muddled but it’s a reasonable overview. Long-servers such as Biker Gran and Gio will probably recall things too.
Jake wrote:Ridersite was set up late 1990’s by the Webhamster (Hammy) Jooshead and me (Jake). Hammy and I came from an IT background but he was the one who did most of the forum techy stuff. I kept the administrative stuff ticking over.
It was based on our personal interest, passion and enthusiasm for motorbikes. It went from strength to strength and various offshoots occurred including RIOT Racing our European Superstock team which was instigated by us at Ridersite and Jorge at Renegade Exhausts and ran for a few years in the early noughties. The members were involved and we had a few fun years living the life. Plenty of exhibitions, rideouts, rallies, events and sillinesses followed.
There were some upgrades and enhancements made to the forum software over time. But it became impractical to upgrade the forum without losing some of the add-on features that had been installed. The time and effort it would take to sort that out again became nonviable. So the forum has remained on and old version of Discus for some years now.
Ridersite was funded by us, some donations from members and by Bike Johnny limited, which was Jooshead’s and my online store which closed c2007. By then we (Hammy/ Jooshead/ myself) no longer had bikes and very rarely visited the forum. Kwackerz and Samray, with others had taken over the day to day admin on the site.
D-Rider wrote: One of the spin-off forums was Aprilia Ridersite. It had been running for some time when I joined in the summer of 2005. That too was funded by Bike Johnny and towards the end of 2006 the writing was on the wall as despite having a healthy membership, we didn’t have funds. Kwackerz (Tim) and his dad (Samray) were the Admins and ran things behind the scenes but looking after things on a day to day basis was by then in the hands of a couple of Moderators – myself and Falco9 (Rich).
We had a think about the best way forward and put a number of ideas to a forum vote. Overwhelmingly we chose to merge Ridersite with Aprilia Ridersite – with the Aprilias having a sub-forum within the main site. This happened in January 2007. I think there was some fear on the part of the existing Ridersite membership that they might be swamped with Aprilia riders … and to be fair, there was a bit of swamping. Nevertheless, we’ve got along OK as a rider-based bike forum that is open to all but happens to have a greater proportion of Aprilias (especially Falcos). Funding has been commonised to that of a single forum and we’ve got by. Falco9 and I became “Aprilia Moderators” within Ridersite with a remit to look after the Aprilia area and Kwackerz and Samray administered the whole forum (with the mysterious Hammy and Jake somewhere behind the scenes). After a while we lost Falco9 and Aladinsaneuk (Pete) joined me as an Aprilia Moderator.
Back to Jake’s account – picking up from the point at which both forums lost the Bike Johnny funding:
Jake wrote:There were quite a few early (and new) members still enjoying the forum so for sentimental reasons I couldn’t bring myself to shut it down. However, I also wasn’t able to continue paying for it, so a few years ago I asked for help with funding. Kwackerz & Samray did start to help with funding. It was an ad-hoc arrangement and didn’t cover the out of pocket costs. I felt uncomfortable asking for the money so didn’t keep on top of it and time drifted by ending up in the position we are in now.
D-Rider again:
D-Rider wrote:Kwackerz and Sam collected contributions from the forum in a PayPal account and periodically had a “tin-rattling” campaign as we needed to pay our dues …. but it wasn’t a regular thing.
Over time, Kwackerz and Sam needed more day to day help with the forum so Aladinsaneuk and I were eventually co-opted as full admins across the forum.
Sadly a few years ago, our dear friend Sam passed away (I know many of us still miss him …. He’s still a “friend” of mine on facebook – though he doesn’t post up much….) and so the admin team was reduced. At the beginning of this year, Kwackerz had to take a back seat as his life didn’t really have the hours to do the things he did previously. That left Pete and me. At that point, Kwackerz passed over the Paypal details to Pete and I with instructions to pay Jake when there was a need.
Also this year, Pete and I have been hard-pressed with other things and struggled with time so we co-opted Mangocrazy and Mart Dude to join the Admin team.
As expected, Jake eventually came along asking for a contribution towards hosting fees. We took that opportunity to ask how far behind we were and got a bit of a shock. We paid up what we had in the account but found that as things had slipped over a long period, the outstanding sum rather exceeded the balance.
We need to sort this out ASAP to stabilise things and then adopt a policy of keeping enough in the kitty to see us through the coming few months.
Although the amount seems large, if we can all chip bit by bit over a few months, we should get there – effectively paying for the benefit we have already enjoyed.
“Scientists investigate that which already is. Engineers create that which has never been.”
-- Albert Einstein
