Ian M.I.A.

I noticed that XPForums' administrator, Ian, hasn't logged onto any of the forums he runs including this one since Dec. 19, 2023. That's a long time for a forum administrator to go without logging in.

More troubling is that two other forums he maintains have disappeared.

https://www.vistaforums.com/
https://www.win8forums.com/

I hope he's OK and that this doesn't mean the end of this forum.

 

i will send a message to him through this forum, hopefully he is allright.

 

I hope Ian is alright and we won't lose our forum. I was hoping we would pick up and gain new members and thrive as it once did.

 

Maybe he can no longer afford to maintain all these forums. There aren't any ads so they don't generate revenue. Most of the new members are single posters that don't contribute to any of the discussions. There was one shameless AliBaba promoter but he hasn't posted anymore. I wouldn't expect there to be any kind resurgence in people running Windows XP with the exception of a few here who have posted their custom builds. It would be helpful if people like Roytam, Feodor, ArcticFoxie and HummingOwl were to join to attract new members and activity.

 

This is sad to hear and a sad state of affairs regarding online forum nowadays.

I agree 100%

 

Thats indeed disturbing news. And thats why NNTP is so much better than any forums will ever be, because its decentralized. Thats why I also love IRC, because while servers form single network, protocol itself is open, so there are many networks or its easy to start new one. Unfortunately, those good, old and reliable tech is replaced by newer, shiny stuff with not necessary is better.
Dont get me wrong, I really like this forum. Looks very good, its fast and reliable. Unfortunately, its centralized. Thats the only weak spot.

Hope Ian is okey, but 3 months w/o logging is a lot of time and its very worring.

 

I hope he is OK. Did he respond to your message @Elizabeth23 ?

 

nope, I have had no response,

 

Something just doesn't feel right to me, I get a bad feeling.

 

Regarding Ian and Website. No Idea where Ian is, or what he is doing. However the Website "Windows XP Forums" will be up until 18th November 2025 at the earliest date. Unless Ian personally takes action to shut it down, as this is a privately listed website.

 

I saw this on Ian windows 11 form. Something about new ownership ..https://www.windows11forums.com/threads/forum-ownership.2225/

 

Well, you talk about domain name expiration day, thats different story.
The question is, where that forum is actually hosted. Its behind CloudFlare so, first, what subscription does he have with CloudFlare and where actual server is located (VPS? Hosting? Dedicated Server?).

 

Interesting. A new administrator joins one of Ian's forums in December but makes their first post yesterday.

https://www.windows11forums.com/threads/forum-ownership.2225/post-9242

Forums changing ownership is rarely a good thing. I've seen other forums that suddenly become plastered with ads even being sent to your email. I know it costs money to run a forum (hosting, bandwidth, software licenses etc.) but there's a difference between helping pay for costs and wanting to make a profit.

These forums rely entirely on user contributed content so wanting to use me for revenue is unacceptable. I block all ads. There are forums I'm a member of that forbid discussions relating to ad-blockers. I rarely post on those.

We'll just have to wait and see what the new overlords will do when they assume control or for that matter, whether they will keep any of the legacy forums running (they axed Vista and 8 forums). I still find it odd that this announcement isn't coming from Ian himself.

 

I hope they keep our legacy XP forum going, I allow some ads but not all and I've also left forums with too much tracking and ads ... even my mental health forums became toxic sad to say.