Who started this forum?
10-18-2004, 07:58 AM
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The following should be posted as a FAQ
Posted by Rudy, 10/14/04
--------------------------------
I'm no forum historian so someone correct my facts if they are wrong but here goes...
Dave (das) started this forum on June 2nd 2003. He can explain why he did so. Ironically, I don't think Dave even owns an E60, he has an E39 and an E34. At the time the board was hosted on a server (Macintosh) at the University of Wisconsin where Dave works at the URL e60.doit.wisc.edu. The forums were not very busy but had some interesting posters. Mainly, the site was a good source of information on the E60. It contained things like press kits, brochures, etc.
Mark (Lomag) hosted a page or two under the URL www.bmw545.com that contained some official photos and news stories about the upcoming release of the E60. Mark ordered a 545i early (delivered in Feb '04, I believe) and he most likely made his site because of his enthusiasm for the car. It was Mark's site that contained some links to both RF and das' sites.
After ordering my car in November 2003, I discovered Mark's site first (Google) and he and I exchanged a couple emails to try to get to the bottom of some information I was hearing around December 2003 with regard to SMG delays, etc. I began to lurk in about three or four BMW related forums and found that RF was the most active when it came to the E60. I hated the software interface they used over there from day one but since they had the traffic, I decided to participate over there. (I even remember posting a thread asking them to consider upgrading the software to something better but they replied defending theirs as much better.
)
As everyone knows, that software over there, as well as the lack of any effective moderation, breeds trolls. The controversial design of the E60 caused a divide between the lovers and the haters -- also the lovers and the jealous, I think! The RF board became overrun with troll posts and all of us were pretty annoyed by them.
On May 22, 2004, Lomag posted a thread on RF called "Why do we bother with this message board?" and publically asked the question we all had in our heads. He mentioned a few other BMW related boards that we could move to (das' forums, German Car Fans, Bimmerfest, etc.) and all I know is that I was tremendously excited that some momentum finally existed that might help us with a sort of mass exodus from RF over to something more enjoyable. I immediately chimed in with my reply and recommendation that we choose das' forums over the others because his forums were strictly E60 and the others were organized by "3 series", "5 series", etc. so we'd have to sift through posts about older cars to find what we were looking for. To me, Dave had already set up the perfect forum, we just needed to give it some life and try to keep up the momentum.
Here is a link to my post and what's left of the thread that started it all... (Funny that they deleted Mark's original post to cause it to dissapear from the board but you can still read the replies! What crap that software is!!)
It's interesting to know that once we started "selling" people to come over to das' forums, the moderators finally showed up and started deleting any references to Dave's site. There was chaos over there, people posting under other people's names, etc. My posting ability there was quickly shut off but not before a handful of people started to post in "our new home" over here.
I immediately started a thread here on that infamous day called "Hello RF converts!" and did my best to thank das for creating the forum and to try and keep the momemtum up by welcoming anyone who chose to switch over from that other, horrible place! Call me selfish but I was determined to not let the momemtum die -- I really, really didn't want to go back to RF, that terrible interface, and those terrible trolls. Here is a link to my welcome thread. In that thread, you'll see some familiar names, JDN, sg530, Dantheman, kscarrol, Rizbel, Matrix, jtxc, BMWHobo, sj3, browellm, ethanbmw, heezy545i, rollee, etc. Thanks to those guys and many others for sticking around and allowing the momentum that we built on that day to cascade into something quite big and successful!
What happened next? Well, besides the coming of Iceman,
the forums grew and became more popular. Again, I can't speak for Dave and Mark but I think the little "hobby" that Dave was running on the school's servers was becoming large enough that they probably wanted it moved to it's own domain, etc. That's where Lomag picked up the ball. Mark's company is involved with internet hosting, etc. so it was a perfect fit that he take the site and move it to his servers.
Today, we all have Dave to thank for getting everything started and Mark to thank for starting the RF thread and for taking a great little site and turning it into something much greater! Thank you two guys for everything!
[Edited by das to add urls and reference to Rudy's original post]
Posted by Rudy, 10/14/04
--------------------------------
I'm no forum historian so someone correct my facts if they are wrong but here goes...
Dave (das) started this forum on June 2nd 2003. He can explain why he did so. Ironically, I don't think Dave even owns an E60, he has an E39 and an E34. At the time the board was hosted on a server (Macintosh) at the University of Wisconsin where Dave works at the URL e60.doit.wisc.edu. The forums were not very busy but had some interesting posters. Mainly, the site was a good source of information on the E60. It contained things like press kits, brochures, etc.
Mark (Lomag) hosted a page or two under the URL www.bmw545.com that contained some official photos and news stories about the upcoming release of the E60. Mark ordered a 545i early (delivered in Feb '04, I believe) and he most likely made his site because of his enthusiasm for the car. It was Mark's site that contained some links to both RF and das' sites.
After ordering my car in November 2003, I discovered Mark's site first (Google) and he and I exchanged a couple emails to try to get to the bottom of some information I was hearing around December 2003 with regard to SMG delays, etc. I began to lurk in about three or four BMW related forums and found that RF was the most active when it came to the E60. I hated the software interface they used over there from day one but since they had the traffic, I decided to participate over there. (I even remember posting a thread asking them to consider upgrading the software to something better but they replied defending theirs as much better.
)As everyone knows, that software over there, as well as the lack of any effective moderation, breeds trolls. The controversial design of the E60 caused a divide between the lovers and the haters -- also the lovers and the jealous, I think! The RF board became overrun with troll posts and all of us were pretty annoyed by them.
On May 22, 2004, Lomag posted a thread on RF called "Why do we bother with this message board?" and publically asked the question we all had in our heads. He mentioned a few other BMW related boards that we could move to (das' forums, German Car Fans, Bimmerfest, etc.) and all I know is that I was tremendously excited that some momentum finally existed that might help us with a sort of mass exodus from RF over to something more enjoyable. I immediately chimed in with my reply and recommendation that we choose das' forums over the others because his forums were strictly E60 and the others were organized by "3 series", "5 series", etc. so we'd have to sift through posts about older cars to find what we were looking for. To me, Dave had already set up the perfect forum, we just needed to give it some life and try to keep up the momentum.
Here is a link to my post and what's left of the thread that started it all... (Funny that they deleted Mark's original post to cause it to dissapear from the board but you can still read the replies! What crap that software is!!)
It's interesting to know that once we started "selling" people to come over to das' forums, the moderators finally showed up and started deleting any references to Dave's site. There was chaos over there, people posting under other people's names, etc. My posting ability there was quickly shut off but not before a handful of people started to post in "our new home" over here.
I immediately started a thread here on that infamous day called "Hello RF converts!" and did my best to thank das for creating the forum and to try and keep the momemtum up by welcoming anyone who chose to switch over from that other, horrible place! Call me selfish but I was determined to not let the momemtum die -- I really, really didn't want to go back to RF, that terrible interface, and those terrible trolls. Here is a link to my welcome thread. In that thread, you'll see some familiar names, JDN, sg530, Dantheman, kscarrol, Rizbel, Matrix, jtxc, BMWHobo, sj3, browellm, ethanbmw, heezy545i, rollee, etc. Thanks to those guys and many others for sticking around and allowing the momentum that we built on that day to cascade into something quite big and successful!
What happened next? Well, besides the coming of Iceman,
the forums grew and became more popular. Again, I can't speak for Dave and Mark but I think the little "hobby" that Dave was running on the school's servers was becoming large enough that they probably wanted it moved to it's own domain, etc. That's where Lomag picked up the ball. Mark's company is involved with internet hosting, etc. so it was a perfect fit that he take the site and move it to his servers.Today, we all have Dave to thank for getting everything started and Mark to thank for starting the RF thread and for taking a great little site and turning it into something much greater! Thank you two guys for everything!
[Edited by das to add urls and reference to Rudy's original post]
?
10-28-2004, 09:58 AM
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A little bit more history:
I started the forums mostly as a way for people to comment on the E60 news articles, pictures, movies, etc., that I posted at e60.doit.wisc.edu. Slowly, people from Roadfly started joining, and it became a nice little corner of the internet for E60 owners and enthusiasts, free from the trolls, constant fighting, and horrible interface of Roadfly. Once there was an active community at e60.doit.wisc.edu, I stopped visiting Roadfly altogether.
It wasn't long before we had 100 members...then 200...then 300...to over 400 members.
When the Roadfly E60 forum really started going downhill, Mark was in the process of asking people why they even bothered with the Roadfly forums. There was valuable information, but it had gotten to the point where a relative handful of trolls were making the forum almost useless, and pretty miserable for everyone there. The admins showed no interest in making it any better despite about a year of pressure from myself (before I gave up) and others (yes, they did have a lot of other forums to monitor, but they could have made the E60 forums members-only for posting, just temporarily, to help cut down on the trouble, because as it was, they were worthless).
I noticed an uptick in membership over the course of a few days, during the Roadfly exodus. Curiously, I received an email message, out of the blue, from Charlie of Roadfly, saying:
I responded:
Charlie then replied:
At this point, I really didn't feel like arguing, so I simply deleted the reference to my E60 site. I could have gone into how it really doesn't matter how much money you spend on "marketing" when your messageboards for BMW's new midsize flagship sedan are about 95% worthless.
I got in touch with Mark and asked what his plans were for bmw545.com. He said he really didn't know. And frankly, I really didn't know what my plans were either. But I knew I had a growing community, and Mark knew that Roadfly, at least at that time, was a lost cause. A little time passed, and Mark decided he wanted to go ahead with plans to expand the forums and the site, and we made the decision to retire e60.doit.wisc.edu and bmw545.com, and point them at the new site Mark secured, e60.net.
We also moved the forums from a server at the University of Wisconsin to Mark's location. The cutover went flawlessly, and when the forums came back up, the new e60.net got its 500th member.
Now, we've got almost 1000.
The rest, as they say, is history. Thanks, everyone!
I started the forums mostly as a way for people to comment on the E60 news articles, pictures, movies, etc., that I posted at e60.doit.wisc.edu. Slowly, people from Roadfly started joining, and it became a nice little corner of the internet for E60 owners and enthusiasts, free from the trolls, constant fighting, and horrible interface of Roadfly. Once there was an active community at e60.doit.wisc.edu, I stopped visiting Roadfly altogether.
It wasn't long before we had 100 members...then 200...then 300...to over 400 members.
When the Roadfly E60 forum really started going downhill, Mark was in the process of asking people why they even bothered with the Roadfly forums. There was valuable information, but it had gotten to the point where a relative handful of trolls were making the forum almost useless, and pretty miserable for everyone there. The admins showed no interest in making it any better despite about a year of pressure from myself (before I gave up) and others (yes, they did have a lot of other forums to monitor, but they could have made the E60 forums members-only for posting, just temporarily, to help cut down on the trouble, because as it was, they were worthless).
I noticed an uptick in membership over the course of a few days, during the Roadfly exodus. Curiously, I received an email message, out of the blue, from Charlie of Roadfly, saying:
Please remove the reference to your E60 forum. Links to competing web forums are not allowed in signatures.
I haven't posted on roadfly in months, and I don't link to any forums, and never have. My E60 site is completely non-commercial and always has been...I don't link to "forums", and don't even make any reference to forums. The fact that the site happens to also contain local forums is incidental. This is not a "competing" site and is not commercial. My signature has been the same ever since I've been a roadfly member. My E60 site is informational only, and is widely recognized as the most comprehensive source of E60 information and documents...you're saying that you don't want that in a roadfly user's signature?
We do make a few distinctions when people place links in signatures and there are many factors that come into play regarding links. The one thing which is not open to interpretation is the policy against linking directly to competing message forums. In addition to all the information you have on your site regarding the E60 you also host a message forum for E60 owners. You are linking directly to an E60 forum which you own/run from your Roadfly signature which is strictly prohibited.? We spend tens of thousands of dollars marketing Roadfly it isn't fair for you to get to advertise your message board for free on our nickel.
Thanks for your cooperation.
Thanks for your cooperation.
I got in touch with Mark and asked what his plans were for bmw545.com. He said he really didn't know. And frankly, I really didn't know what my plans were either. But I knew I had a growing community, and Mark knew that Roadfly, at least at that time, was a lost cause. A little time passed, and Mark decided he wanted to go ahead with plans to expand the forums and the site, and we made the decision to retire e60.doit.wisc.edu and bmw545.com, and point them at the new site Mark secured, e60.net.
We also moved the forums from a server at the University of Wisconsin to Mark's location. The cutover went flawlessly, and when the forums came back up, the new e60.net got its 500th member.
Now, we've got almost 1000.The rest, as they say, is history. Thanks, everyone!
10-28-2004, 06:54 PM
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Originally Posted by Rudy' date='Oct 28 2004, 08:33 PM
You 'da man! das!!
As always, thanks!
As always, thanks!
[snapback]50537[/snapback]
. billion thanks 
!!!
