SkiSoCal.org up for grabs. Any takers? Not I.

Sad. For me, this is like learning that one of your old high school classmates died of old age.

Mark started the Southland Ski Server at about the same time that I started FTO. We were a couple of the first ski-related websites out there. FTO started as first-hand snow reports that gradually started adding reports from others -- this morphed into the "No-Bull Ski Reports" that became these Liftlines forums over time. Eventually other content was added and FTO took on an e-zine format with these forums as merely one feature of the complete package. Mark originally built his traffic primarily from a similar user-submitted snow report concept.

Sorry to see his site fall by the wayside, but I can't possibly imagine doing this for 8 years after ending my ski career as he did. It's an enormous amount of work -- some 6-10 hours per day in FTO's case -- so how could someone possibly keep it going as he did without even skiing anymore? It would be nice to see someone take Mark up on his offer and take the reins.

RIP, Southland Ski Server.
 
Here is another site that is limping.

http://www.nwsr.com/

I liked it during the late 90s/00s. The epic snow year of 98-99 is gone.


It's interesting how this is all evolving.

You have the lift mechanics here:
http://www.skiliftforum.com/
They are good for expansion and operation news.

The obsessed Year Round skiers here:
http://www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_sn ... /index.php

The Frat scene where the JONG you instead of haze you
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/index.php

The ski instructors
http://forums.epicski.com/

The cult ski instructors with visions....this one scares me the most
http://www.skiforums.org/


Marc has done a good job. Especially with news.
 
Admin":1mowgjp3 said:
Patrick":1mowgjp3 said:
Admin":1mowgjp3 said:
Anything can be saved, but that of course is up to Mark.
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And Marc. :wink:
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Hell no.
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:lol:

Think of it Marc... a huge database of ski related forum reports....all under one roof. Plus if Tony wrote on this forum, his numbers would surpassed everyone. :lol:

JUST KIDDING. :lol: However Tony might reply back on this.
 
I sent an e-mail to Mark Bixby last night. I'm sure he'll respond as we've met and had a fair amount of e-mail correspondence when he was active. I am concerned that he may not have backed up the archives and thus they are lost. But maybe they got archived in some other way, like my old articles from skiingmag.com.

Perhaps this is an offline question, but what would be the big problem in converting the narrative portion of Southland reports to FTO's current format? I'm hoping I get his files, in which case I will at a minimum post my own reports manually to FTO. Presumably admin can reset the posting dates if I do this.

I'll point out here that this is another example of a once vibrant forum dying out. Scale and breadth matter. Thus my skepticism about the Utah Ski and Snowboard forum being separate from FTO.

Southland only accepted SoCal and Mammoth reports. From 2002-05 I posted duplicate reports to both sites. I would probably add about 50 reports to FTO if I get the files, about half Mammoth and half SoCal.
 
Tony Crocker":2yf8qmvm said:
The epic snow year of 98-99 is gone.
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Not entirely: http://bestsnow.net/pwdrarch.htm (scroll down).

I was active on skisocal.org from 1995 to 2005. As in FTO, it would be nice to save those archives. Admin was able to convert his old format, how about this one?
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Christian has servers to save that stuff, that NSP at Denise's. I bought a box for ~ 129.00 with 200 Gigs of memory. So nice for the speed it saves on your computer. Where will you save it? Need a lot of memory!

Just got a letter from Waterman Patrol asking me for dues. Well, if they open, they do. At least something possibly close to ski and assist on! Back to work.............! Colorado is open! They are patrolling there now! Somehow those ER's that have concrete, not snow, require slopes to balance one's mind and body!
 
Tony Crocker":2qeovl4m said:
Perhaps this is an offline question, but what would be the big problem in converting the narrative portion of Southland reports to FTO's current format? I'm hoping I get his files, in which case I will at a minimum post my own reports manually to FTO. Presumably admin can reset the posting dates if I do this.
Click to expand...

Mark had created a proprietary system to manage the reports, so any integration would require hiring a programmer to build a script to automate the conversion. This is prohibitive both for the cost and for the potential to fubar our existing database. As for manually changing posting dates, I must confess that my MySQL database knowledge is insufficient for the task (see "fubar," above).
 
We can be reassured that the SkiSoCal.org archives are not lost. If the site shuts down, I'll get a copy of the archive. For those of you who have not seen it, Mark had a fixed questionnaire to fill out, narrative comments optional. There was never an ability to include pictures.

I'm willing to repost all of my non-duplicative Southland reports to FTO. I would probably exercise editorial judgment and post some additional reports that include narratives and further illuminate SoCal and Mammoth conditions.

I would request that admin think about the capability to change posting dates. This may not be the only time he might want to do that. I will assume the responsibility of manually adding Southland reports to FTO if necessary.

Hi Tony,

All of the skisocal.org content is still intact; I have only configured the web server to redirect all URLs to the retirement announcement.

There has been some interest by people willing to step forward and keep the site going. I will be making the transition decision next month.

If the new operator doesn't want to carry forward the old report data, I will make sure I give you a copy.

- Mark B.

CROCKERAF@aol.com wrote: I do not want to maintain skisocal.org as an ongoing site, but I would like to see that the old archive ski reports are not lost.

How much space do they take up? Hopefully you have them stored on a PC somewhere, and can get them to me somehow. At a minimum I want all of my own reports that I posted to your site.
 
Tony Crocker":2ulc5dpg said:
I would request that admin think about the capability to change posting dates. This may not be the only time he might want to do that.
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It's not as simple as deciding to do it, as indicated above. Should anyone intimately familiar with MySQL and the database tables used by phpBB wish to step forward and provide advice, I'm open to it.
 
Hey Everyone, I saw your posts and thought I'd let you know that I'll be taking over skisocal.org from Mark. If you have any questions let me know and I'll try and answer them.

Stephen Pope
 
Ricochet":3a9srh6w said:
Hey Everyone, I saw your posts and thought I'd let you know that I'll be taking over skisocal.org from Mark. If you have any questions let me know and I'll try and answer them.

Stephen Pope
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Glad to hear that someone is carrying the torch, Stephen! Good luck!
 
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