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| UK of Equestria is not allowed to see you again |
Pretty much since the start of my time in the My Little Pony fandom in spring 2012, UK of Equestria was my go-to website. A year or so later, I was taken on as a moderator there, a role which for a while was a fairly busy one. But then social media really got going, and fewer and fewer people wanted to spend their time on a traditional forum-based website with longer-form posts. I did, and indeed one of my more pointless claims to horse fame¹ is that I have the highest post count on UK of E, but increasing numbers didn't. The site became ever quieter, though it was still there for anyone who wanted it... until now.
¹ I guess that covers all claims to horse fame, really!
Technically, UK of Equestria lives on, since as the goodbye page mentions its Discord server remains active. But, in truth, that is not at all the same thing. In particular, it lacks something that especially in the early days I really liked about UK of E: it was public. Not only could anyone making a sneering "And what do you really talk about?" simply be pointed to a link, but passers-by who might be uncertain could browse quietly and have a look. Discord has plenty of points in its favour, but as it's now walled off from casual glances it's certainly not the same UK of E any more.
Indeed, I haven't even joined the UK of Equestria Discord. I'm already a member of BritBronies, the UK PonyCon server and a small server of a couple of dozen friends, and apart from the last I don't use them much except on specific occasions such as conventions. Without a specific personal link or a binding event such as UKPC, a service like Discord simply doesn't appeal to me in the way that blog/forum-style posting does. So, after more than a decade, I am finally saying goodbye to UK of Equestria for the very last time.
I feel rather as I did a few years ago when Yahoo Groups finally closed down, and the Watership Down Yahoo Group that was in fact my first ever online fan community went with it. In that case, too, I hadn't really been active there for several years, but it was still a real wrench to see it go and to lose the archive of posts that I'd made or interacted with over the years. Still, without that, leading to furry, leading to Pony, the blog you're reading right now would never have existed either.
Goodbye, UK of Equestria, and thank you. I'll miss you.
that's definitely sad :/ I've seen people lament the slow decline of online forums, since platforms like Discord aren't exactly good for archiving things, and as you say, are far less public
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's a shame. I've been slightly insulated from it given that ponyfic people are more likely to ramble on a bit and so feel comfortable in forums and blogs, but even in places like Fimfiction the chill winds have blown a bit.
DeleteI would hope they'd at least leave the site up so people could look up old discussions, even if it's not posting new content or necessarily being moderated, but of course upkeep on it isn't free. Might be worth digging through in case there's anything you want to archive. Or is it already gone?
ReplyDeleteIt's already gone, though archive.org provides a way to get at it. As for leaving the site up, the owner was very strong on the GDPR stuff (more conscientious about it than many professional websites, tbh) and so clearly decided it was easier just to go this route.
DeleteAlas, it is indeed the end of an era. There was a bit more to our decision to switch off the platform than just "we don't have time", so I will try to share a little...
ReplyDeleteBasically, there was a software vulnerability that was being actively exploited and there was no guarantee we could close it off because the forum software was on an end-of-life version. So in order to stay on the safe side, we had to shut everything down.
I do have an encrypted backup if I do need to get anything out of the archive, but maintaining such an archive ourselves would be costly and if anything ever needed to be redacted for GDPR, PII or Legal reasons, would cause an administrative overhead that just isn't feasible. Some people have felt ashamed of their past in the community and had a legal right to be forgotten. With a moderation team, such requests are trivial, but when you're the only person with access to go in and modify static files each time someone wants a change made... it starts to get in the way of real life.
I do like the format of online forums - in particular, I have a real fondness now for the "Discourse" forum software because it actually encourages constructive conversations, but it's now increasingly difficult to wrestle people away from platforms like Discord, Telegram and Facebook Groups and it's even harder to get noticed by the search engines.
When I started the forum a decade ago, I was still a University Student, with plenty of spare hours and an eagerness to tinker, build and experiment. Now I'm an adult with a full-time job, bills to pay and cats to feed. And most of my fellow admins were in a similar position and also perhaps not from a technical background. So the forums couldn't continue to receive the love they needed.
I'm upset that it had to end this way, but I'm happy for the memories and friendships that were formed over the past years and I will be sticking around in the Discord if anyone does fancy a chat.
Thank you for taking the time to post that; it's much appreciated.
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