Old folks (like me!) ruminate and reminisce... ;-)

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Rohiniranjan
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Old folks (like me!) ruminate and reminisce... ;-)

Post by Rohiniranjan » Thu Oct 24, 2019 1:41 am

Hopefully, this message (rambling?) will catch the eye of EoT (Admin) and Swetha (Owner)...!

I began my cyber-journey back in mid-80s or thereabout. Internet was not yet a darling of the populace, particularly due to absence of browsing software, in my opinion and observation. There were, of course, in western countries a plethora of bulletin board systems (BBS) and a few commercial services such as Compuserve, GEnie, a few others and AOL (and its precursor QLink). I am fortunate to sample all of these pretty intensively and extensively, GEnie had a serious astrology forum (all varieties of astrology were welcome). Compuserve Information Services (CIS) was the largest and although mostly text-based, had arguably the best interface and library available. So called New Age interests were catered by the religion forum and then Neil Shapiro and Rilla Moulden took upon themselves the then Herculean project of bringing all new-age and mystic disciplines under one roof: The New Age Forum, which within a couple or three years had become so massive that Neil et al thought it is best to start a second parallel forum named simply Newage 2 (there was another screen name of course!).

It lasted for nearly a decade and amassed HUGE amounts of information, knowledge and we also had a library section with cyber-racks dedicated to individual areas such as western astrology, vedic astrology, this that and the other. It was not simply serious stuff or simple naval-gazing exercises and we had the more than occasional intrusion from frustrated members who were simply there to make trouble and pick up fights! The world does not ever change, friends, and so on so forth :smt002

Due to work and family-needs pressure (desirable!) etc (I was on a career path very different from my newage-mysticism interests), I had to focus on my *here and now* reality and so I got distracted.

Then in the 2000s I came upon Mystic Board and WOW, though the body of NewAge forum on CIS was kinda sorta decimated by then, what a wonderful surprise to see that the SOUL lives on in the form of Mystic Board and by then way better browsers had come along and MS-DOS was gone and replaced by Windows!

In my off-line vault, I still have stashed away some important-to-me message threads and beautiful heart warming memories of interactions with sympaticos from Compuserve, although they are either gone or lost to me. Their words do stay with me and also their writings (files downloaded from the New Age Forum Libraries) and I do find much solace in browsing through those, from time to time.

My humble request to Swetha and Brian: Unless there is a cost issue or something tangible like that, such as maintenance of this OUR forum and its contents, please do not abolish any forum or subforum if at all pragmatically and for as long possible. One never knows who might come by either to revisit old haunts, or someone new interested in say, for example Rune Readings and may benefit from what has already gotten shared...?

Compuserve sadly did not or would not or could not do that and I remain aghast and extremely saddned by all the jewels and treasures painstakingly gathered, but ALAS now lost forever...!
Rohiniranjan
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eye_of_tiger
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Re: Old folks (like me!) ruminate and reminisce... ;-)

Post by eye_of_tiger » Fri Oct 25, 2019 9:27 am

I hear what you are saying!

Loud and clear!

I can assure you that the ambitious plans which I once had to make improvements to the forum structure, are now well in the past.

However my advice to you dearest friend is to archive any of your material which you could not stand losing, preferably before December 31st.

It is neither a cost nor maintenance issue, which will ultimately seal Mystic Board's fate, during 2020 and beyond.

I will not be saying any more about this subject, on this or any other open forum.

From one old folk, to another old folk! :smt003 :smt003

Brian :smt101

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Re: Old folks (like me!) ruminate and reminisce... ;-)

Post by Rohiniranjan » Tue Oct 29, 2019 1:17 am

eye_of_tiger wrote:
Fri Oct 25, 2019 9:27 am
I hear what you are saying!...
A major element of my growth on this or that or other Internet forums (fora), was to share (not to teach or claim eternal truths were being shared -- a problem that plagues those that are too young and over-zealous, or very old who are kind of sort of calcified and jaded (as in the mineral-crystal?))

The thread was just developing, although several sharings had been created but -- suddenly vanished and the individual who I believe was the human hand of Higher Powers (Gods, not humans!) admitted in so many words what he had done!

The rest, that I have shared, keep it or toss it, are not coveted treasures. Would I have put them on display and shared had I been worried about their loss or misuse by others...?

Thoughts and words are never our own, dear friend. In fact, none of us really know or understand where those (thoughts and words) originate at or from? Meanwhile, copyright lawyers continue to get richer and more powerful...? :smt004 :smt002 :smt010
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Re: Old folks (like me!) ruminate and reminisce... ;-)

Post by eye_of_tiger » Tue Oct 29, 2019 11:12 pm

I can see what you are getting at, but please take into account that what you would like to happen (keep everything of your own which you feel is important enough to keep) necessarily involves a lot of time and energy on my part for the sorting process.

How many of you noticed that or have complained about the Mystic Board Academy boards having been removed?

Another point is that much of what remains on the forums is years out of date.

We increasingly get the ridiculous situation of our newer members responding to the questions of OPs (original posters) who left us many years ago.

Even worse some of the information is extremely negative, highly biased, and inconsistent with the ideals of our community,

The more forums and data which needs to be stored on the shared web server, the higher are the monthly hosting fees.

And a bloated member database means that authentication takes longer, and pages will load more slowly or are more likely to give errors.

It is therefore necessary to periodically prune older data, and decide whether a forum is is worth keeping any longer.

The above having been said, this regular maintenance schedule has rarely been carried out since the first version of Mystic Board appeared, and I cannot any longer see it happening under my watch.

I keep getting mixed signals from Swetha about what to prune from the boards, and how much must be kept, and honestly I believe that anything I could do now in this direction, would be too little, too late.

One after the other psychic/spiritual communities (many of which had text chat rooms) have migrated from having forums liker ours to social media groups, where many of the problems which we are discussing no longer apply.

I apologise if this all sounds pessimistic/morbid/pathetic and suggests that I have given up on MB which has given me back so much joy and personal satisfaction since I joined, but at the same time I am being forced by external factors beyond my control into becoming much more realistic and practical about the optimum use of what little of my energy remains for ANY online activities.

Brian :smt100

Rohiniranjan
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Re: Old folks (like me!) ruminate and reminisce... ;-)

Post by Rohiniranjan » Mon Nov 04, 2019 1:30 am

Just to clear any air, that I do not believe ever needed to be cleared between us my friend -- I was neither complaining nor lamenting. I do fully understand and was simply expressing my wistfulness perhaps as the massive wheel of TIME rolls along and does what IT has to and must do! You are simply being realistic and always a gentle soul, as long as I have cyber-known to be, remain steadfastly doing your duty and as best as you can.

Yes I have observed the tides of Times too, as the backdrops changed, the actors too, and of course the background music. CHANGE might not be DESTINY but the best way to deal with growth, one moment at a time and the best moment, as the WISE claim is always :smt038 NOW! :smt023

Namastay!
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