One of the first links I put up here was to the GaragePunk.com forums- a truly international forum where fans could trade knowledge, music, stories and insults, all based around a love for rock and roll- and a very broadly defined rock and roll, at that. They were part of a site which among other things also hosted (and still hosts) excellent and frequent podcasts covering a range of music just as broad, too.
Recently, the guy who runs the site, Jeff "Kopper" Kopp, upgraded the forums, and created the Garage Punk Hideout. It's a different kinda place, with more functionality, and is more akin to a social networking site. So far, so good. He closed the old forums down to new posts- again, so far so good: they were still there, still searchable, if you really needed to know what was on the b side of the original 7" of "Green Fuz", you could find the answer there, or at least find someone who was willing to tell you.*
But now the link to the old forums has been taken down, and so that huge backlog of knowledge is unavailable.
Don't get me wrong- it's Kopper's baby, no one paid to use the forums, and no one has any right to expect him to maintain them indefinitely.
But part of me thinks it's a real shame that such an excellent online resource has gone.
*it was "There Is A Land", if you were wondering
Koppers decision to pull the forum to get people to join The Hideout was a tragedy of our times!
ReplyDeleteversion 2 of the forum created recently is looking to become the next best thing:
v2 Forums
Ahhh that's what happened! I've been trying to get in there for weeks and getting nothing but that damn "Sorry, but this board is currently unavailable. Please try again later" message. At the very least he should let people know it's closed for good.
ReplyDeleteShit, I miss the place already and I was only an occassional lurker.