electricalforum.nz

Hi all

I wonder how much "Master electricians" paid for the domain?

The asking price from memory was about $3000

Time will tell but I think It was a mis-step going to facebook. I think giving and receiving information anonymously was an important feature. Also phpbb gives us a tree structure plus many other features of a modern forum.

Apart from the price; it was a condition of sale that Ron P have a years continued use of the seminar booking page.
ME buying the old forum provided continuity, at was - for them - a fairly small cost.
And they resisted the move to restrict access to members only; keeping it open .
That's very uncommon for any member-based organisation; and I doubt they ever got any new members from providing a free service to non-members.
They were looking at an upgrade to address some of the issues the old forum had.
But right now; with C19, their focus has to be on helping their paying members to weather the storm.

I've yet to look at the facebook version, so can't comment; but for better or worse, most people seem to regard social media as an essential part of life.
I see it largely as largely a waste of time that seriously compromises privacy.
But then I'm old-fashioned; maybe i shouldn't knock what i haven't tried.

I like this new forum so far
But I do wonder about copyright for the archive material from the old forum - and i suspect that copyright remains with ME / ECANZ.
After all, they paid for it.
Just because much of it can be carried across doesn't mean it's legal to do so.

The copyright question is a tricky one indeed. An organisation that operates a platform has no copyright over the content an individual "puts into" that platform. For example, if I dig up some of the gold that is the old AngryClient posts on the old platform and put it on this forum there is sweet FA that ME can do about it. And to be honest the way they handled the shutdown of the old site, if they want to kick up a fuss, then BRING IT ON! I have a team of solicitors standing by.

The 'old' site is still available if anyone needs to view it: http://web.archive.org/web/200902011943 ... rum.co.nz/