A sad day but changes do come.

[White Fox]

Yesterday, I was telling about how large our links area is, etc. That was indeed a real pet area of mine as I did a good deal of the work there.

 

We were going to close it down for a couple of days here to do some work on it. However, I got to thinking and realized that we had to acknowledge that it is now used very, very little indeed. Though our statistics area cannot bring things down this fine, our replies, comments, and emails suggest a good deal of use of our wiki in general, but not a lot for Links.

 

At one point, not that long ago, it seemed to be highly used, and indeed, a poll suggested such. However, we have to acknowledge that has apparently changed.

 

I don't believe that we should keep old and unused areas just for sentiment if absolutely no one looks at them. If no one is using them then probably it is time to let them go to allow other newer ideas to be developed, etc.

 

Folks, I loved that place and would absolutely love to keep it. But, if no one goes there to look at links then it is time to move on. I doubt that there is anyone much here that wants to keep it, but if you do please let me know. This idea is what you might call semifinal. Yes, the decision is made. BUT it could change if totally unforeseen circumstances arise. If someone does use it from time to time, then please let us know here. We don't want to delete any area that is indeed used.

We will be taking the area down as soon as today. We were going to do some work on it. We may do that and bring it back for a short while, or we may just delete it soon.

 

I want to thank everyone who helped us with that area, posting links, and giving info to what was I believe the biggest fur links area on the net.

 

I will really hate to pull the plug on that place! As it was sort of "My baby" here. But, we also need to look forward to trying to use that area for something bigger and better somehow.

 

White Fox

[brandy-uk]

Take it down..

 

and see if anyone asks about it...I guess that is the only test..

 

I am sorry to see it go... but truth be known. I have hardly ever used it..

 

sorry

 

brandy

xxxx

[White Fox]

I have had some messages here from people who like to use it, but unfortunately not enough to make it worth while.

 

You would think that after the folks at FFG removed their links pages a few months back that some people would have been looking to see info like that.

 

I guess that all things have a time and place.

 

W

[Zaphod_bee]

You always can see a good thing if you look for it: in other posts we talked about limited time to do our furry side of life; my first thing to look at is ALWAYS the den and then - what do I need beside TFD if I have limited time --> nothing !!

 

... due to time constraints I have seldom used the links - although the first place to look at if searching for related fur things at this time I would miss them the least on this side ...

 

Zaphod_bee

[foxkid]

I would agree with Brandy. It can always be put back up if a lot of people request it to be put back.

 

If it's an issue of keeping it maintained (i.e. removing dead links etc), what I would do personally as a web dev, is to write a small script to loop through each link in the database and see that it points to a web site (i.e. HTTP 2xx response code in techie talk), or update it if it redirects. Any HTTP 400 / 500 are probably due to the site being down and you can disable these links (and maybe remove them if they persistently don't work).

[White Fox]

This is really not a work issue in total. I actually enjoyed doing the work to build it. I did much of that while some others did some searching to help me. JGalanos and FrBrGr have done major work to help keep it up to date. The mods do all moderating here so that area gave me something to do.

 

Since I posted the original post here we have actually had some feedback here of some members who were indeed using and enjoying the area so that changes things a little bit. We will gladly keep it if people are using it. It is just that it is a whole lot of work to do if absolutely no one every looks at it. If that part of our site just dies a slow death without updating that makes our site look bad. So, we either need to keep it and keep it up to date, or delete it.

 

Foxkid you idea is interesting. There is one negative though. You will notice that in many cases, we make notes such as "Site Down July '08" The reason is that we thought some might come back. Indeed, many sites that were down in July have come back by January for instance when we did a new search for the names. Even JGalanos commented on that to me a short while back. If we just delete those sites, we lose the capability to do a quick search for that new name in six months to see if it returns. In many cases, it did just that. Also of course many sites are improved, etc., changing their ratings.

 

As mentioned, I am not sure what to do right now. If a few people are using it we will gladly keep it, and we have had some limited pm's to indicate that might just be the case. As indicated above I would think it should be of use as Mikhail's links area has been pretty much abandoned for 3(?) years with no updates, and a few months back FFG seemed to delete the links to theirs. (Never heard why but maybe it was not being used either.)

 

We do have lots of room to keep it here. That is not a problem. It is simply that we do not want to put a lot of work into something that no one uses, and we do not want to keep a part of the site that is not kept up and being allowed to die. There are too many dead web sites on the net already!

 

If anyone is using the area please let us know. We will let you know the final decision when we make it.

 

W

[dumbass45601]

I look through it from time to time, just update it and delete the bad links.