Ranking: Online Pioneer, Five Stars

klozhald wrote: I did not know we had such a ranking.
Shouldn't we have piped him onboard 44 posts ago?
#bosunscall
Bob

mattson
FIVE STARS
Online Pioneer
Rank: Online Pioneer
Registered: Apr 23, 2002
Last visit: Jun 10, 2017
Posts: 44

Glad you asked, sometimes I assume everyone knows the history of the site, and what came before.

Bill's ranking, instead of being based on post count like normal, is in honor of his history of service to the beachcat community through his "On The Wire eZine", which he faithfully published monthly for years before this site existed.

See the archive at:
https://www.thebeachcats.com/OnTheWire/catsail/arcvol1.htm

Back then I ran an email list called hobielist (later it was changed to beachcats to be more inclusive) and a website with the url Linkpro.net/hobielist during the 1990's before starting this site in 2002. Those mail server lists trace their roots all the way back to the early 1990's newsroup (anyone remember those?) rec.boats (and also alt.sailing) when only sailors who worked at research universities, goverment, or big corporations even knew what email was. Somewhere I've got a list of the first dozen or so members of the hobielist and most had either .gov or .nasa email accounts.

So consider that "Online Pioneer" Five Star rank a kind of "Professor Emeritus" status of the beachcat world.

When Bill decided to stop producing On The Wire, he allowed me to make it's archive part of this site.

So proper respect please!

Why did the on the wire mag only go a year?

tamumpower1 wrote: Why did the on the wire mag only go a year?

I just linked to the wrong url, there is a tab in the main menu labeled "On The Wire" with this url

https://www.thebeachcats.com/OnTheWire/catsail/archives.html

Below that tab there are drop-down links to Bill's "farewell address" and the last issue.

Those mail server lists trace their roots all the way back to the early 1990's newsroup (anyone remember those?) rec.boats (and also alt.sailing) when only sailors who worked at research universities, goverment, or big corporations even knew what email was.

Oh yea, the Majordomo mail server at nichimen.com those were the days.
Those poor lost souls............. How do I get off here?

Those were the comp-u-serve days with dial up and 14.4 modems

Hate to say I've been around that long.

Edited by nacra55 on Jun 12, 2017 - 02:21 AM.

Bill's ranking, instead of being based on post count like normal, is in honor of his history of service to the beachcat community through his "On The Wire eZine", which he faithfully published monthly for years before this site existed.

Yes, I read those archives when I first bought my 5.7, he was in the Glory Days of BeachCats when I was still in school. There is some good reading there.
I didn't read Kloz's post as disrespectful, I thought he meant Bill should have been awarded the status on his first post because of his contributions.

hose mail server lists trace their roots all the way back to the early 1990's newsroup (anyone remember those?) rec.boats (and also alt.sailing)

Seems like a lifetime ago

alt.sailing - wow

Edchris177 wrote: I didn't read Kloz's post as disrespectful, I thought he meant Bill should have been awarded the status on his first post because of his contributions.

Exactly as intended.
Thank you, Edchris.
Bob

Here is the text of an email I sent to the beachcats mail list in June of 2002 about the history of this site and the previous mail lists in response to Jack Hoying (Hi Jack!) mentioning that we had passed 500 members.

In perspective, this site has had about 36,000 member registrations since it's launch.

Anyone else recognize any of the original list members that are mentioned?

beachcats email reply June 2002 wrote:
We have actually been over 500 members for most of the last 9 months or so. Membership has been up to 512, it changes day to day of course from subscriptions/unsubscriptions and from Yahoo "cleaning" the list of hard bouncing members. In the past the list membership was in the 175-205 range for many years going back to the original Nichimen list. We have had the big increase in membership (number) since moving to Yahoogroups but it's not completely what it seems.

Two things are different now:

During the years before Yahoogroups the list was an actual mailing-list, the only way to be on the list was to sign-up a real email address and receive either a daily digest or every email. This limited the list to only those who were interested enough to deal with the list every day. On Yahoogroups we have hundreds of "members" who clicked on the join button, set the group to "no email" and who knows if they have ever read a message?

The other thing that is different is the focus of the list. For many years this list used the name "Hobielist" and the focus was on all things Hobie. I don't believe other brands were really scorned but the name of the list had to be a turn off to the brand-x boats.

A little list history you may not know. The Hobielist was established in April of 1994 by David Aronson who sailed a Hobie 16 called "Hell Kitty". David worked for a graphics firm and was able to install the Majordomo list serve software on his companies computers. David announced the list in a message to the rec.boat newsgroup on UseNet. The original members who joined based on that announcement were:

Wes Weber, Hobie 16
David Baumgartner, Hobie 16
Michael Sowers
Mark Schneider, Mystere 6.0
Albion H. Bowers, Hobie 16
Don Gatlin, Hobie 16
Keith Worthington, Hobie 16
Dave Fisher, Hobie 16

Since it was 1994 the list was heavily populated with engineers, scientists, and students, because they were at companies, government agencies, and schools that had Internet access. In fact the last four names on the list above all had nasa.gov email addresses. The fact that the founder was an artist and the members were mostly rocket scientists (literally) gave the list it's unique flavor.

Eventually David left Nichimen Graphics but the list stayed on their server for some time, eventually we were told to seek a new home. By that time the list population was more varied in boat type and a new name was called for, I chose the name Beachcats and migrated the list to Listbot in 1998. About 160 members were on Beachcats at Listbot.

Listbot was still a true email list with no web services except the signup page. Microsoft bought Listbot and eventually disbanded it. Then we moved to Egroups which worked pretty well and provided our first ability to share photos and such, in the Egroups days the list peaked at about 210 members.

Then Yahoo came into the picture by purchasing Egroups to get their subscribers. At the time Yahoo had a thing called Yahoo Clubs which was a completely web based "community" service for sharing files and photos and communicating through web forums. Yahoo created Yahoogroups out of the newly purchased Egroups lists and eventually merged Yahoo Clubs with Yahoogroups, mixing the features of the two services.

That's where we stand today, former hobielist and beachcats mail list users prefer the mail list format and former Yahoo Clubs users prefer the web format they are used to. I'm working towards a solution that will satisfy both camps while establishing our Beachcats group as an independent entity, not just a list on some public service. That's what www.TheBeachcats.com is all about.

Damon "WTMI" Linkous

----- Original Message -----
From: "jmhoying"
To:
Sent: Friday, June 21, 2002 5:34 AM
Subject: [beachcats] 500 members

> Congratulations to us!! Looks like we will have list member 500 sign
> up in the next day or so. (will he win prizes, selected especially
> for him/her??) I realize that we have some "doubled up" members, but
> it's still pretty amazing that this many sailors have found a home
> here. Damon, could you give us a "sort of" chart to show how
> membership has grown over the years? It seems to me that the pace of
> new members has picked up in recent months.
>
> Jack Hoying
> Fort Loramie, Ohio
> Prindle 18 #1645
> jmhoying at bright.net
> http://www.bright.net/~jmhoying