Author Topic: The demise of Outdoors Magic Forums  (Read 1638 times)

Skip

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 324
The demise of Outdoors Magic Forums
« on: 09:30:16, 19/02/18 »
Sadly, it appears that Outdoors Magic's owners have finally killed off OM Forum.

I visited the main site  several times recently and found that clicking the link to 'Forums' no longer works. Nor does my bookmark to https://  forums . outdoorsmagic . com

I had also bookmarked quite a lot of threads on OM but these links now either fail or give a 404. That's a lot of interesting and informative writing no longer available.

OM Forums was once a lively and informative place with a vibrant and engaged community. This is an ignominious end to a resource I valued greatly. I made some very good friends through OM Forums, bought a lot of secondhand gear through the classified section, and attended some great OM meets.

It's a shame that OM Forum has gone but I'm not surprised. It was flagging for some while because of the owners' indifference but then it got hijacked by a troll and members just drifted away. Now it has finally died. It's a sad end.
Skip

fernman

  • Veteran Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1757
Re: The demise of Outdoors Magic Forums
« Reply #1 on: 09:55:28, 19/02/18 »
You're right, my bookmark for the Zephyros Owners Thread no longer works. Shame.

When I was subscribed to that, I started receiving spam sent to the email address I used with OM and calling me by the user name I had on there.
That email address and user name were unique to OM, I did not use them anywhere else at all.
I couldn't find anywhere on the site to unregister but I found a contact address and asked. This turned out to be the site editor, he was puzzled how it could have happened, and he deleted my membership for me.

I also used to have a bookmark for the gear reviews, but I removed that long ago because they hadn't been updated for a few years. EDIT: I also have Buachaille bookmarked for gear reviews, but they are as old as the hills as well. Looks like it's time for me to delete that one, too.
« Last Edit: 10:05:05, 19/02/18 by fernman »

midweekmountain

  • Veteran Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2094
Re: The demise of Outdoors Magic Forums
« Reply #2 on: 11:33:38, 19/02/18 »
Yes I think its a shame that OM has shut down!!!!

I have not been on this site for six months it struck me how it seems to have gone backward, same old same old and a lot less posts.

Scottish Hills also seems have a lot less usage.

Maybe these types of site just have their day.......

Tin

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 68
Re: The demise of Outdoors Magic Forums
« Reply #3 on: 11:54:15, 19/02/18 »
It's a shame OM is no more - it used to be the go to site for me for checking routes and gear years ago.


I'm just wondering where tdg will end up now.


Ps I've only just realised Skip is that Skip.  :)

fernman

  • Veteran Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1757
Re: The demise of Outdoors Magic Forums
« Reply #4 on: 12:19:06, 19/02/18 »
Maybe these types of site just have their day.......

But not THIS one surely???
I can only see that happening if the owner decides to hang up his boots, metaphorically speaking.

Ridge

  • Veteran Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 6036
Re: The demise of Outdoors Magic Forums
« Reply #5 on: 12:50:59, 19/02/18 »
I guess this site will go as soon as the adverts pay less than the cost of running it.
Use it or loose it.



It is exactly the same as people complaining that the local shops have closed if they only used them once in a blue moon.
Over hill, over dale. Thorough brush, thorough brier....
I do wander every where

tom83

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 118
Re: The demise of Outdoors Magic Forums
« Reply #6 on: 13:52:23, 19/02/18 »
Unfortunately its not just walking forums that are succumbing to less traffic. Over the years Ive been a member of forums for a wide range of topics, football, cars, urban exploration etc, and most move on to facebook and other means of social media websites, and the forums become redundant.


Its a shame, because over the years, the amount of information which has been posted by thousands of members in god knows how many different topics just gets lost in a single click.

Strider

  • Veteran Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1086
Re: The demise of Outdoors Magic Forums
« Reply #7 on: 15:10:40, 19/02/18 »
Agreed Tom, forums in general have been in decline for a few years, going the same way as newsgroups and bulletin boards (for those who've been online long enough to rememeber).  But forums offer a service that blogs and social media sites don't and I prefer to use them.   

Hopefully many of those from OM forum will make their way here, troll excepted.
Not all those who wander are lost

fernman

  • Veteran Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1757
Re: The demise of Outdoors Magic Forums
« Reply #8 on: 15:49:08, 19/02/18 »
A large society I'm in has a discussion board, on which one of the organisers recently posted a message telling us that more happened on their FaceBook page and it would be better for members to switch to it.
This was followed by a number of cross replies from people (myself included) who said they didn't want to open FB accounts.

Hopefully many of those from OM forum will make their way here, troll excepted.

Are you sure that wasn't him who joined at the start of this month?  ;D

happyhiker

  • Veteran Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 569
Re: The demise of Outdoors Magic Forums
« Reply #9 on: 16:42:49, 19/02/18 »
There seems plenty of life in this forum yet!

Jim Parkin

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 124
Re: The demise of Outdoors Magic Forums
« Reply #10 on: 21:21:50, 19/02/18 »
Yes I noticed that too. 

Skip and Dave pointed me here

Gadabout Bounder

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 162
Re: The demise of Outdoors Magic Forums
« Reply #11 on: 22:36:56, 19/02/18 »
The whole forum was strangled by the Troll - Trevor, you couldn't post anything without an avalanche of links being posted.


It became pointless posting on there.


Gad
'We've spilt the same blood in the same mud'

kinkyboots

  • Veteran Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 718
Re: The demise of Outdoors Magic Forums
« Reply #12 on: 08:22:02, 20/02/18 »
Here's a response which I received yesterday from Will Renwick the Editor of Outdoors Magic so there's some hope left however the forums are still not working as of this morning.

As usual with this sort of thing the man at the top probably hasn't got a clue what's going on and I'm not sure he was even aware they had a problem.  ;D

Quote
Hi,
 
Sorry for inconvenience - we're working on it! Should be back up and live by the end of the day.
 
Thanks,
WILL RENWICK
Editor

NeilC

  • Veteran Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 546
Re: The demise of Outdoors Magic Forums
« Reply #13 on: 16:53:07, 20/02/18 »
From posts on OM I read a while ago, they were saying that the owners had basically abandoned it and gave no help or support. Consequently there was little motivation for the moderators to moderate it and they'd, understandably, lost interest.


That meant there spammers were getting on and polluting it with link spam. IME that normally sounds the death-knell for forums. Certainly the traffic through it is very low and the post quality poor. I've been visiting it every now and again to see but really there is rarely anything on it and threads don't go anywhere.


So even if they get it back up, I'm not sure it's worth much.

redeye

  • Veteran Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2470
Re: The demise of Outdoors Magic Forums
« Reply #14 on: 18:42:12, 20/02/18 »
Used to enjoy popping in there over the years and sad to see it go but it had become a bit of a grave yard this past year. Good to see this place is still on going although I don't post a lot, it's still seems to be going along very nicely.



 
http://www.walkingforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=36017.0
www.walkingforum.co.uk
crawl=CC-MAIN-2018-39
72620
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:UI42GXL3ZVEN6UAO5222LYII25FBL47T
<urn:uuid:66c97e61-fdab-4b1e-94c7-bbe569d60c54>
2018-09-25T12:49:45Z
104.28.16.90
application/xhtml+xml
sha1:BJ3BKSAUDQDR6GL673DUZS4FILQWN34H
<urn:uuid:be61205b-192e-4f75-b0ef-6ea077fee197>
http://www.walkingforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=36017.0
response
<urn:uuid:47368c5f-11d2-462e-8828-c24dc89a246e>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2018-39
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for September 2018
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-111-168-72.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.15 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 0.11-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/