20 years of the Forum coming up

In Winter 2005 Jarrod Blair approached me with the idea of creating an “old truck forum” for members of the HCVCA and asked if I would assist with the moderation,

As we wanted to use the Club name we approached the committee, then the club meeting who had no idea what we were talking about but let us do it anyway.

It was meant to be for HCVCA members only but difficulties in getting a club membership, the fact the club had no records of members email addresses in those days and unanswered questions about whether club sponsors should be given access meant it was easier to open it up to everyone.

In the long run this worked to the benefit of the HCVCA and like-minded clubs as the “old truck” hobby expanded so they all got more members as a result of people being able to find them. Soon we had forum members from every state and some from overseas. 

The club saw increased membership as people “joined the club to support the forum we had been using for free” and along with “The Monitor” and “The Yearbook” helped the various branches of the club form, particularly Ballarat and South Australia.

It was a very active site with thousands of posts a day.  It was hard to keep up with so members of the forum who had shown a steady head were recruited to become moderators.

Facebook arrived and had some impacts on the forum. Firstly, some of the “more challenging members" to moderate started their own Facebook groups and left the forum but the number of posts declined. The moderation started to drop off and it went back to being a hobby rather than a “daily chore” for several hours a day. An interesting side note to this is a lot of these people asked for help when their group members started treating them the way they had treated us. Helping them with ideas actually grew the respect for the forum (and the people involved)

During this time Jarrod, who had been handling the software upgrades and maintenance, left the scene and Terry Pollard (aka Gryphon) took over that role and has been instrumental in keeping the forum going.

I am not sure the committee are any wiser about what we are up to now than they were in 2005  but the forum is still going.  It still gets the occasional write up in the IT media for it’s success in avoiding “the Facebook trap” while many forums, who made us look tiny, are now getting one to two posts a month.

Thank you everyone for your participation. I never thought it would last this long, nor be a repository of such useful information on a variety of topics.

Bruce

Bruce,
Thanks for the timely post, must admit to being one of those who at one stage sat on the side and used it as a reference guide.
Have been a paid up member for a few tears now and I for one, applaud what you guys (and gals) have been doing despite some minor criticism from some others who would bitch about being in paradise!
(Probably complain about the weather).
You are all doing a great job and hope things are still sailing along in another 10 or 20 years.
Cheers , Dave _64

Well there you go, I had no idea of when what were the forum started
It certainly was a very robust place when I joined many years ago

I went to log on one day and was "banned", I had no idea why as I have only ever had one post moderated and that was around 12 months ago

Anyway that was the end of me "mrsmackpaul" for a couple of years, then the upgrade to NBN and I could rejoin, I then joined as "Mrsmackpaul" and no one ever said anything

I asked Bigcam when I was in Brisbane once and he had no idea why I was banned either

Not to worry, I have a fairly thick skin, Bigcam went onto explain that he new of no reason why but a moderator back in the day went a bit off the rails axing people and thought I might of got caught in the swing of the axe lol

Anyway no complaints from

It all started because I broke the main gearbox in my IH tractor and needed parts, I grabbed my boy who was still school age and went to the local library and hopped on the computer to start searching for parts as the local CaseIH dealer was useless
This was my first internet experience

Anyway we left the library and went to the local retravision and bought a laptop

Pretty soon I learnt about the forum and joined, quietly cacking myself I made my first post about my Federal truck

www.hcvc.com.au/forum/OldTruck/7834-fede...d-train-in-n-t#87249

Anyway I was welcomed and have pretty much enjoyed things since, except for a couple of years when I had the chop
Met some wonderful people through the forum
They are getting thinner on the ground now

Anyway enough waffle from me, the forum is a fantastic place for me
A huge thank you to all that have contributed in the past and those that still do today
And huge thankyou to those that run it
I still enjoy the forum and if I ever work out how I'll join the club

Send me a email though as private messages don't show on the phone mrsmackpaul@gmail.com


Happy days everyone


Paul

Well done to all the organisers
If U got sum time to kill
U can track back to a bit of history on the wayback machine

clikn here will getcha there  (May 5th 2005)
web.archive.org/web/20050505000000*/http://www.hcvc.com.au/

cya

Swishy wrote:

Well done to all the organisers
If U got sum time to kill
U can track back to a bit of history on the wayback machine

clikn here will getcha there  (May 5th 2005)
web.archive.org/web/20050505000000*/http://www.hcvc.com.au/

cya
 

Following Swishy's link you go to an early incarnation of the HCVC website that I recall was hosted out of ScienceWorks  Museum where Russ M. was working at the time. In the early days the Forum was separate to the club website.

The oldest instance of the Forum that I could find on the Wayback archive was 31st August 2007 and that shows the first post appears to have been made on the 31st January 2007, web.archive.org/web/20070831110905/http:...d=FAQ;num=1170202880

I am not sure of the reason for the gap between Bparo's recollection of 2005 and the start of this forum in 2007, but still even if it is just over 18 years old it is still a solid achievement.

Terry

 

Well ... I gotta admit that if it wasn't for this forum ... I'd probably have never taken all my research public like it has since I started the Old Kwikasair SARs thread. 
It's probably been the biggest event in my life ... Apart from meeting and claiming the missus 

This Forum really became the No.1 go to for a lot of years for everyone, as there was/will always (be) someone with the info you seek ... Or your at least pointed in the right direction to search more.

Just going back through the threads every so often, reminds me of past members and so much info that I've picked up over the years , even if it's something I'm not so interested in 

Long live the Forum ... In what ever form it continues... It'd be a shame to loose such a great information source 

Werk

​​

Gryphon wrote:

Swishy wrote:

Well done to all the organisers
If U got sum time to kill
U can track back to a bit of history on the wayback machine

clikn here will getcha there  (May 5th 2005)
web.archive.org/web/20050505000000*/http://www.hcvc.com.au/

cya

 

Following Swishy's link you go to an early incarnation of the HCVC website that I recall was hosted out of ScienceWorks  Museum where Russ M. was working at the time. In the early days the Forum was separate to the club website.

The oldest instance of the Forum that I could find on the Wayback archive was 31st August 2007 and that shows the first post appears to have been made on the 31st January 2007, web.archive.org/web/20070831110905/http:...d=FAQ;num=1170202880

I am not sure of the reason for the gap between Bparo's recollection of 2005 and the start of this forum in 2007, but still even if it is just over 18 years old it is still a solid achievement.

Terry

 

From Memory 2007 saw a change of server and a change of software as we were hitting limits on the old.  We had a small amount of space on a free server we filled and the company who owned the server wouldn't give us more space. Jarrod did all the migrations and changes and I did a small amount of testing. I don't know why it's not on the wayback machine.

From Memory 2007 saw a change of server and a change of software as we were hitting limits on the old.  We had a small amount of space on a free server we filled and the company who owned the server wouldn't give us more space. Jarrod did all the migrations and changes and I did a small amount of testing. I don't know why it's not on the wayback machine.

Bruce,

I did wonder if there was a previous software and or server change but there doesn't appear to be any migration of posts from an earlier incarnation and a link to the 'Truck Forum' didn't appear on the club website until between Jan 2007 and August 2007. There are no registrations before February 2007, excluding Jarrod in January, again indicating there was no migration.

There was a space issue with the ScieneceWorks' hosting but I think that was later, like 2009'ish when I first got involved.

Maybe there is something in an edition of 'The Monitor' that confirms the date or year it started.

Terry

That's it - refer to paper archives!

Your Bruceness, (say Hello to her Helenness from me)
I do not know when I joined the forum, it was a long time ago but must be after March 2002 (I joined the HCVC, as it was in those days, in 1985 or 1986) because that is when I got a computer of my own after using them at work for years and having bought one for my daughters for their schoolwork. John Wright helped me with the selection and installation of this piece of space-age technology as it was all as clear as mud to me.

I was interested to see the name of Jarrod Blair come up because he is a friend I have not seen or heard of for ages.

I joined the forum just after moderators had banned the few (maybe only one person) who threatened physical violence against other users. In my first few weeks there was one person who constantly made disparaging comments about my user name but he disappeared just as I was about to report him to moderators.

I have always enjoyed going on the forum almost every morning. A few years ago, relatives of a previous President pushed for the facebook page and did not want to know about the forum but it has survived.

Let us hope that the forum continues for many years to come and thank you to all the volunteers who work so hard at keeping it going.

Morris.