Decline of a great forum

ORIF · Feb 20, 2020

Tollycraft Forum

Does anyone have any idea what has happened to the Tollycraft Boating Forum?

It used to be packed with decades of useful information contributed by current and past owners.
Now it seems barely alive without much useful information.
New membership costs $125.

As a Trawler owner, I find Trawler Forum invaluable but the old Tolly Forum sure was a nice source for information specific to these boats.

Does anyone know what happened to that resource and if there is talk of resurrecting it to its previous state?

Tollyclub Forum - Tollycraft Boating Club

caltexflanc · Feb 20, 2020

Our first big boat back in the late 70's was a 1960's Tolly 32' flybridge sedan. I've followed the forum for sentimental reasons. But as time goes on, I suppose the mark ages out by attrition the further from the last production date. On the other hand, the Hatteras Owners Forum, which is mostly made up of owners of similarly aged boats, and not the newer ones, forges on quite actively.

tozz · Feb 20, 2020

ORIF said:
Does anyone have any idea what has happened to the Tollycraft Boating Forum?

It used to be packed with decades of useful information contributed by current and past owners.

Now it seems barely alive without much useful information.

New membership costs $125.

As a Trawler owner, I find Trawler Forum invaluable but the old Tolly Forum sure was a nice source for information specific to these boats.

Does anyone know what happened to that resource and if there is talk of resurrecting it to its previous state?

Tollyclub Forum - Tollycraft Boating Club

Don’t know about that specific forum but there are over 1200 people over on the tolly Facebook group. It’s pretty active

It’s called the Tollycraft Boating Club and is public.

-tozz

Portage_Bay · Feb 20, 2020

I was an occasional participating member there. I don't recall the details but it was some problems with the hosting site. Lost data archives. That pretty much killed it.

Tolly Roger · Feb 20, 2020

The Tollycraft Forum was started by a few volunteer people on the bridge. It was a fantastic and very valuable resource. (much like this forum)
A new bridge decided to "hire" a computer/web expert person to give the website (and the forum) a refresh. The so called expert wiped the forum out without backing it up and everything was lost. Several attempts were made to try and reset an older copy but it was decided to abandon the whole thing.

For what it's worth there are many long time club members that are still upset about what happened. A few were so upset they left the club.

There is the facebook group and a google group but it's not the same at all.

ghost · Feb 21, 2020

The decision that the old data was no longer valuable and needed to be purged was short sighted by members that simply didn’t want the old forum data any longer. The fact that they did not bother to check for a backup was a byproduct of never intending to need one. When the club members had a different opinion on the forums relative worth than their own, it was unfortunate to confirm that no recent backup existed, but at that point it was water under the bridge. Pun intended.

They had a backup a few years old, but apparently decided that was not worth re-publishing on its own. Not sure I would agree with that continuing thought process, but I’m also not interested in continuing giving further of my own time going forward. That time is done forever.

The thing about volunteer clubs, is if you want things to continue the way you like them, you have to actually give more than you will ever likely get back. The Tollyclub always delivered way beyond it’s monetary dues, but finding volunteers to take over running the forums from past owners was lacking. Eventually somebody with we assume good intentions but no appreciation for what those forums represented gets hold of it. It’s frustrating. For me, really frustrating.

But you get what you get. Just the way the world works. If you are disappointed, consider volunteering. It’s really the only way clubs thrive and most folks, while almost always appreciative of the volunteer efforts, tremendously underestimate the true amount of time, energy and frankly money that those volunteers are actually contributing.

Shrew · Feb 21, 2020

ghost said:
The decision that the old data was no longer valuable and needed to be purged was short sighted by members that simply didn’t want the old forum data any longer. The fact that they did not bother to check for a backup was a byproduct of never intending to need one. When the club members had a different opinion on the forums relative worth than their own, it was unfortunate to confirm that no recent backup existed, but at that point it was water under the bridge. Pun intended.

They had a backup a few years old, but apparently decided that was not worth re-publishing on its own. Not sure I would agree with that continuing thought process, but I’m also not interested in continuing giving further of my own time going forward. That time is done forever.

The thing about volunteer clubs, is if you want things to continue the way you like them, you have to actually give more than you will ever likely get back. The Tollyclub always delivered way beyond it’s monetary dues, but finding volunteers to take over running the forums from past owners was lacking. Eventually somebody with we assume good intentions but no appreciation for what those forums represented gets hold of it. It’s frustrating. For me, really frustrating.

But you get what you get. Just the way the world works. If you are disappointed, consider volunteering. It’s really the only way clubs thrive and most folks, while almost always appreciative of the volunteer efforts, tremendously underestimate the true amount of time, energy and frankly money that those volunteers are actually contributing.

I suspect there is more to the story than a cavalier decision to purge data. Coming from a number of years in the world of Databases, Data Storage and Management, I can tell you it is usually about size of date, indexing, queries and performance.

Archiving old data is a very, very common practice done for a variety of reasons. It would be administratively cumbersome to attempt to cull and save key threads in a Forum prior to archiving old data.

LaBomba · Feb 21, 2020

I don’t think this problem is unique to the Tolley forum only. I have posed a few issues on the Carver online forum and had not a single response and yet the Carver Owners forum on Facebook has plenty of action. It may be just an indication of what formats people relate to.

Solly · Feb 21, 2020

Almost the same thing happened to a Chris Craft forum I was on. Started by an owner who had a passion. Original owner moved on. It was costing some 'real' money and time to host it. And nobody really took it over.

A lot of good, valuable info and DIY tips just went away. Happens....

refugio · Feb 21, 2020

Did anyone check the internet wayback machine?

Decline of a great forum

ORIF

Senior Member

caltexflanc

Guru

tozz

Senior Member

Portage_Bay

Guru

Tolly Roger

Senior Member

ghost

Guru

Shrew

Guru

LaBomba

Guru

Solly

Senior Member

refugio

Guru

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