Did the forums disappear for anyone else?

[DarthEnderX]

So the old forums just kinda disappeared over the weekend and I pretty much panicked because I didn't know what to do about it.

One of the other old forums I used to visit a lot shut down recently(Everquest related), but they gave a heads up, and created a Discord server to replace the forum instead. And the Discord is getting a lot more traffic than the forum was at the end.

Wanted to set up something similar, but didn't know how to contact anyone.

Luckily when I google searched "gotwoot forums" a week later, the new .org came up.

So...anyone know what happened?

[shinta|hikari]

Are you high?

[Kraco]

The .org has been the actual url for a good long while now, ever since Complich saved the forums from extinction. Maybe the old url redirected here? I don't know since I've been using the org for a long time already.

[DarthEnderX]

I just know that I was clicking the same bookmark I'd always used for this site, and it just started saying the site didn't exist.

When I tried to go to gotwoot.net it said the domain expired on 6/11/19.

I tried googling GotWoot Forums again today and suddenly the .org site came up.

Was it really just me? Because I noticed almost nobody else posted in the last several days either.

[Kraco]

Who knows? It's the middle of the summer now, so people might be busier with healthier things (except for Bill with his backwards seasons). I don't even remember if there were any announcements back then about it.

Edit: The move to Complich's own server happened 3 years ago in 2016. I don't think there was much of an announcement, possibly. Still, it's three whole years for people to notice it...

[David75]

I remember having an error some days ago and thought to myself: how can I keep trace of some good people here and how can they contact me if someone pulls the plug on GW ?...

[Kraco]

Hmm... I guess it was a bigger problem than I could have imagined. I hope we won't lose any of our remaining few members because of it. I honestly had no idea there was no announcement or anything about it. Being an admin kind of made me blind to it, I guess, even though it's not like I'd have done much for it, aside from apparently notifying Complich about some bugs after he transferred the data from the old servers onto his own.

Still, you are a mod as well, David75, so you should have known, surely...

[David75]

I guess I should at least save some e-mails somewhere else. Will check ;)

[Abdula]

I just know that I was clicking the same bookmark I'd always used for this site, and it just started saying the site didn't exist.

When I tried to go to gotwoot.net it said the domain expired on 6/11/19.

I tried googling GotWoot Forums again today and suddenly the .org site came up.

Was it really just me? Because I noticed almost nobody else posted in the last several days either.
It was not just you, had the same thing happen. Was trying to get here using the same bookmark I have always used and nothing. Tried using my browser history and nothing. Got the same notice that the domain had expired when I tried gotwoot.net. Google searches for Gotwoot Forums sent me to the same broken links. The only thing I could actually access was the archived forums. Did another google search for GW on wednesday and voila. Signed in just to be sure that I still could. Checked if there were any posts about the forums disappearing and simply decided to wait and see if the same thing happened to anyone else.

[DarthEnderX]

Okay, as long as it wasn't just me. I was in fact, not high, Shinta. :p

I even actually went ahead and made Discord server and then went "Wait, since there's no video game associated with this server, you can't actually find it in a search...this is useless if I can't send people the invite thingy..."

Edit: The move to Complich's own server happened 3 years ago in 2016. I don't think there was much of an announcement, possibly. Still, it's three whole years for people to notice it...Like you said, the old gotwoot.net must have been doing a redirect here all that time, and I just never had a need to change my bookmark.

[Buffalobiian]

The old gotwoot.net actually still worked. I know because occasionally I'll visit on my phone and I'd be asked to sign in to .net (whereas I'm always signed in to .org). The two sites just mirrored each other until the other died recently I guess.

irc.rizon.net/gw is currently the other "hangout/chat" destination some of us are hanging around in.

Y wants to use Discord but we're shot him down a few times :P

[Sapphire]

WHO THE FUCK LET GOTWOOT.NET EXPIRE AND DIDN'T EVEN MASS EMAIL EVERYONE THE NEW URL

I WAS FUCKING FREAKING OUT!!!! FUCK YOU GUYS

[Assertn]

yeahhhh I never knew about the .org. I was gonna disappear forever :eek:

[Sapphire]

SERIOUSLY THO WTF! EVEN LESS PEOPLE ARE GOING TO MAKE IT BACK HERE NOW.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SOMEONE GET CIBER BEFORE .NET GETS SNIPED

[Sapphire]

ADMINS

MASS EMAIL

PLEASEEEEE <3

https://emojis.wiki/emoji-pics/facebook/woman-facepalming-facebook.png

[neflight86]

Same here; I thought it just finally died due to small audience and upkeep costs. A google search got me back on track with the ".org" Bookmark updated. Good to go. Glad to be back.

[ForteCross]

Same here; I thought it just finally died due to small audience and upkeep costs. A google search got me back on track with the ".org" Bookmark updated. Good to go. Glad to be back.

not that i post much on the forums but have been lurking here for a couple of years...

same here, used the history link i have on firefox and it went to godaddy saying the domain expired on the 11/06/19...

google searched to see if someone moved the domain to another name and tried at gotwoot.org

[Buffalobiian]

The only real shame from moving from .net to .org is that the Front Page no longer has any of the blog posts from way back when.

The legacy is lost :(.

[Lucifus]

Yea, I was hit with a nice big pang of grief for the passing of Gotwoot. I checked back every couple days to see if she'd returned from the dead and essentially mimicked DarthEnder's google search and came across the .org (same bookmark for....over....a...decade....nearly 15 years..)

I was 14 when I joined GotWoot and started spamming signatures. Wow.

Glad you're all still alive rofl

<-- secret lurker

Sun, 06-24-"2018", 01:17 AM

Yeah, statistically we're pretty much dead. I still see people visiting and posting in a couple subforums. I have it down to a couple things.

People's anime consumption habits have changed a lot. With the advent of legit crunchyroll and simulcast anime, there's a lot more predictability about where people are getting stuff. Back when fansubs were more of a thing and we were a tracker affiliated with a fansub group, there was always a draw: come get the new whatever the group was releasing, and while you're at it chat about it on these forums over here. Nowadays, there's not a lot of reason to find us.

Moreover, I think with anime becoming a lot more mainstream, people are treating it as more of a commodity like domestic TV, and less like a weird novelty. If you can talk about the thing you just watched on netflix with your IRL friends, why seek an internet community at all? But if you're a super-fan or don't have a lot of IRL people to talk to about it...

Well, we weren't super-great at being a welcoming community. There was always a bit of a sharp-edged boys' club nature to a lot of the discussions here. A lot of good members felt driven away by other people's behavior. In a way, I guess we can feel sorta chuffed that we went through in 2008-2012 what twitter and reddit are going through now, but personally I feel like I should have done more to push against that.

A lot of our community has also just sort of aged out of the thing entirely. I started getting into anime and the fansub world when I was in college, like 19 or 20 years old. I'm 37 now. I've watched pretty much everyone in my age group undergo drastic priority changes. You find someone to spend some time with, you start a family, you get busy with your career, whatever it is, you probably spend your time differently. Back when we were in our peak mode, our average age was probably like 17. That was probably in 2004-2006, so now that average age of people is closer to 30.

Last off, we totally lost the war against spambots, so registration is closed and has been for years. Last time I turned registration back on, we got about 3000 new spambot registrations in a couple hours. We'd have to do extensive customization to make the registration workflow non-standard enough that off-the-shelf spambots didn't just storm in and wreck the place, and "we" is in this case just me, I never was able to find another person willing or able to go mucking around in the backend side of things, and I don't really feel like I have the time or energy to deal with it, given the rest of the whole situation.

So the future pretty much looks like: Ciber's still paying some comparatively crazy amount for his ancient dedicated server that hosts the gotwoot.net dns, and still owns the gotwoot.net domain. I'm still paying the pittance I pay to maintain the gotwoot.org domain name and the digitalocean droplet that the forums actually run on. Eventually, Ciber's server will probably kick it (my money's on sooner than later, it's a pentium-4 generation system). Or he'll stop paying for it. Either way gotwoot.net will stop working -- but that's why I got gotwoot.org. Eventually (I'm guessing a few years from now) I'll wander back by and notice that nobody's posted anything anywhere in a long enough time that I'll stop seeing the point in keeping the forums alive. Or some security vulnerability will show up in the mostly-dead vbulletin 4 branch that actually affects us and vbulletin will say "4 is eol, no patch for you", and I'll feel like it'd be irresponsible for leave it running as is. Either way, I probably pull it down and put up a static page for a year or so on the other side of that decision, is how I imagine that going.

Alternatively, I could just like die in a car wreck or something, and the forums would probably stop working a while after that. We don't exactly have a business continuity plan, on our business that has never made a dime and isn't registered as a business, and is just me keeping the thing running this last decade and change...

All that said, it's been a good run, and made for some interesting memories.

Look's like Ciber's fund has dried up.

[Buffalobiian]

Look's like Ciber's fund has dried up.

And according to that prophecy Comp might die next, so we should mirror this site to yet another backup domain.

[Sapphire]

Seriously, why are you people doing absolutely nothing about announcing the URL change.

KRACO, COMPLICH


-

PS - no hope for .net back I guess :(?

[complich8]

no chill at all...

[complich8]

Anywho, gotwoot, ciber, me, the domain name, even the old server are all still alive. Still recommend updating your bookmarks to .org...

[Shadow Skill]

Oh ok. Myt book mark is the old dot net one.

I will update the decade old book mark I been moving from one computer to the next new computer lol.

[KrayZ33]

I just know that I was clicking the same bookmark I'd always used for this site, and it just started saying the site didn't exist.

When I tried to go to gotwoot.net it said the domain expired on 6/11/19.

I tried googling GotWoot Forums again today and suddenly the .org site came up.

Was it really just me? Because I noticed almost nobody else posted in the last several days either.

I thought this was a routing issue from Telekom. I couldn't visit the site for 2 weeks.

[Sapphire]

no chill at all...

lol yay it got fixed! I thought we lost .net forever. Everyone came through! Happy dance thanks!
PS I lost Gotwoot Subs and it felt bad man. Still have the data but need the URL back =|

[Penner]

Ah, i had an ancient bookmark with the old .net url and it said the domain was expired so i thought the forums finally died for real this time lol

Also, hello again ;P

[Lucifus]

A lot of lurkers....just stalking gotwoot haha