VE VILL NOT BE INTIMIDATED...

[SGypsyMermaid]

ve are back und ve vill post!!!

[Chet]

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:


Very nice gypsy, it's good to see atleast one die hard member is back and just as enthusiastic as ever. On the bright side, this gives us the opportunity to make it better, stronger, faster.....I feel like I'm in some old movie. But really, I'm glad the sight is back up, now we must recruit new members and coax back old ones.

[m&m]

What happened this time???!

[SGypsyMermaid]

glad to see you're back, also, chet!.... m&m--tom posted a description of what happened on the page marker for the old site: cichlidresource. he said that a machine went haywire and gobbled all the data. maybe the movie that we're in is "maximum overdrive". :wink:

[jonah]

The movie it reminds me most of is "Groundhog Day" with Bill Murray. The same day happens over and over again until he gets it right.

[SGypsyMermaid]

lol--welcome back, jonah--maybe that's what chet meant, too. i was thinking more along the lines of a takeover by hostile machines... :twisted:

[chennes]

oooh - like in Terminator?? :)

[SGypsyMermaid]

lol--hi chennes! i never thought about those terminator machines!

[NEO_72]

Hey everyone, is this the Matrix or what? How many times has Zion been destroyed? ;)

Looking back at what I think might be the first post in this round, it made me think of the history of this site. Any veterans here care to spin the tale of the roots of CihlidForums.com?

What was CichlidResource all about?

[Chewy]

yeah I would like to get some of the background info of this site

[tom]

Not much to tell, really, but here's the Official, Unadulterated, Sappy, and otherwise Dull story of cichlidforums.com (as best memory serves, which it often doesn't):

In February 2002, figuring a forum would better serve the purposes of information gathering about cichlids from the everyday aquarist's perspective than a catalog or flat resource as such (what I'd been working on years before, hence cichlidresource.com, which I finally let expire in 2004 as an empty page), I wrote to a few people asking if they'd mention a new forum (or let me mention it) on their sites. Of those who responded, all were very gracious: Mark Barnett (of www.aquabid.com , among other sites); Bob Fenner, marine biologist and admin of www.wetwebmedia.com ; Michael Oliver, biologist and owner of www.malawicichlids.com

I was soon contacted by SGypsy, CichlidPete, and Rex (Pete was a friend of Bob Fenner, Rex came via a usenet group, I think, and SGypsy came here from one of Mark Barnett's sites). We were very shortly thereafter joined by Jonah and Boilermaker, then by Chet, Nyassaeman, Chennes, Overawed, and Rudy after the first search engine listings appeared. (I'm no longer sure of the exact order, but that's close.)

Others began joining as they found us in the searches. In fact, here's a thread asking how people found the site:

http://cichlidforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8163

That's pretty much it. Uneventful? I told you so. But the two crashes in Aug 2002 were exciting. :uh:

[jonah]

Originally posted by tom


Others began joining as they found us in the searches. In fact, here's a thread asking how people found the site:

http://cichlidforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8163



Some of us are PG (Pre-Google).

[Chewy]

that's sweet, if it wasn't for this site, I probably would have a lot of little messe son my hands because mostr of the material available to me was outdated, and directed toward the beginner...(not really what someone in cichlkids should be


again I thank you and all of the member s of this site who have made my hobby much more fulfilling.

My wife on the other hand sneds evil thoughts as she is sick of me saying, hey got another mommie ready to spit....need another tank

[tom]

Now the real story:

After the second site crash--the Big One--resulted in our losing the entire database (not just "posts" were lost--there were friggin theses written on cichlid care and behavior), many of the (guessing here) 400 members just went off in search of a forum that didn't need a daily dose of Viagra. Could you blame them?

But SGypsy, Chet, Chennes, Rudy, Overawed, Rex, NMan, Boilermaker, PG Jonah--well, they decided that this forum was going to happen. And I think it had very little to do with cichlidforums.com: They're just the sort of tough people who are determined to get things done. SGypsy's gotten ribbed time and again about her high post count, for example, but she racked a chunk of those during the early days of CichlidForums II (or, properly, III), when she worked--and it was work--literally 12 hours a day on this forum for several months. They all did. I remember Rex emailing me when the forum lights were out with a simple "We good to go?"

Maybe they were all nuts, I don't know. But I do know that this site, modest as it remains, wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for them.

OK, gotta go watch the Sox.

[tom]

Damn--only the bottom of the 2nd and they're up 8-0. :pop:

[Boilermaker]

I even learned some info I never knew about:


In February 2002, figuring a forum would better serve the purposes of information gathering about cichlids from the everyday aquarist's perspective than a catalog or flat resource as such (what I'd been working on years before, hence cichlidresource.com, which I finally let expire in 2004 as an empty page), I wrote to a few people asking if they'd mention a new forum (or let me mention it) on their sites. Of those who responded, all were very gracious: Mark Barnett (of www.aquabid.com , among other sites); Bob Fenner, marine biologist and admin of www.wetwebmedia.com ; Michael Oliver, biologist and owner of www.malawicichlids.com

I think I ended up here by a link I saw in Marks forum also.
By the way whatever happened to Pete, NMan, and Chennes?

[tom]

After Pete moved from the Vineyard to Maine, he pretty much cut all forum activity. Pete's the one who did a great deal of the work at the very beginning. NMan--man, did he write some great posts before the crash--wrote to me about special circumstances. Chennes, I guess, is planning space missions now. It'd be great to see all three of them here again.

[highplainsdrifter]

...And the saga continues. As it turns out, the story of this sites' genesis is quite interesting, and I had been wondering about it myself from time to time, I'd just never asked. It remains today, the best cichlid forum in existance in my opinion, and I thank all who made and continue to make it possible. Every member of this site, thank you.

[Matt V]

Originally posted by tom


OK, gotta go watch the Sox.

Which Sox? The good ones or the evil ones?

[tom]

err.....The good ones.

The only true Evil Ones in baseball reside in the Bronx.

Watching Oswaltt against the Cards right now...he continues to throw well, although they just scored their first run off him, with Pujols coming up. Baseball Saturday. :dance:

[tom]

Nix that Oswalt remark...:lol:

[Seedy]

Originally posted by highplainsdrifter
It remains today, the best cichlid forum in existence in my opinion, and I thank all who made and continue to make it possible. Every member of this site, thank you.

Agreed. The lack of advertising here is quite refreshing. I can't thank people like Aharris, Finz, Jonah,SGM and many many other who have helped me here enough. While I may browse, post, and even moderate on other sites, this will always be my favorite cichlid website because of the members who are here!

[Matt V]

Originally posted by tom
err.....The good ones.

The only true Evil Ones in baseball reside in the Bronx.

Watching Oswalt against the Cards right now...he continues to throw well, although they just scored their first run off him, with Pujols coming up. Baseball Saturday. :dance:

Those in the Bronx are evil. Not as evil as those that play in the Metrodome, tho. They are PURE evil.

And to the comment immediately above, this isn't just the best cichlid forum, it's the best forum regardless of topic. :)

[aharris]

Wow! I feel, well, honored after reading this thread. I found this forum through Google and liked it and stuck around because people knew their stuff and were friendly and easy to get to know. I had no idea what kind of history this place had. Makes me feel like a midget among giants. You guys are great, and I think this has to be one of the best places around. Thanks for getting it started and keeping it going.

[Glaive]

LOL to Jonah. While some of you are pre google, and longer users of this site than I, there are those of us who remember the birth of mosaic and the web. <not the inet the web ;) >

And still yet are those who vaguely remember the birth of irc some years ago.

Others still enjoyed a speedy web surf via 1.2k baud good old archie and ftp. ;)

In other realms were Icenet or fido net and simular dirrivatives... Ah to pine for the old information super drive way... ;)

Nostalgia.

PS thanx Tom and all you cichlidforums early birds who breathed life to this forum, I may have quite likely found the net before most here but you early birds found and founded this great site first.

[jonah]

I was actually referring to before we got listed by Google. The membership really exploded after that change.

No idea what that other stuff means.:eek:

[SGypsyMermaid]

Originally posted by SGypsyMermaid
ve are back und ve vill post!!!

the origin of this cryptic remark is a reference to another remark that i made after the first crash...i said that we had been under attack by evil peta terrorists.:sygypsy: man, we lost some really good posts in those two crashes. i tried to reconstuct as much as possible from memory...that's why the sticky "cichlidaquarist, tell us...) has a "III" after it; it's the third incarnation of that thread. i really miss some of the old members like nyassaeman, prime8man, and chennes.:(

[NEO_72]

Thanks for the info - it's really great to know the past.

And I ditto the thanks for having such a great resource, and for all the work that went into it.

Here's to many years to come!:drink: :ok: