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
