The previous ducati851and888.net forum

mike

Hi folks -

I thought best to raise this for community awareness. We will all remember the background behind how this reboot of the 851/888 forum kicked off - the old site (www.ducati851and888.net) fell into disrepair and over a long period of time, was inaccessible often, and when it was available, it remained unusable (see https://www.ducati851and888.net/forum/chat/ducati-chat/117890-just-checking for some of this discussion back in the day).

The last post on the old site was on that thread, and was in March 2024.

Despite multiple attempts by several people to contact Jimmy, there has been no contact back, (nor any maintenance on the old site to make it usable).

Until yesterday, when I received a couple of contacts from Jimmy. It would appear that Jimmy has taken the regrettable step of reporting a Copyright infringement to Cloudflare (who provide some services for the site).

I also received an email from him, and so have been fortunate to have discussed the situation. It’s not clear whether he intends to restart the old forum, or whether he seeks something else. I have made it clear that I am open to discussion and suggestion, but thus far have been unable to determine how he views that conversation is to go, or what his goal is.

I mention it here for awareness due to that Copyright infringement report, as I think that there is a possible outcome that the hosting provider may takedown the site, which would be an unfortunate outcome for everyone involved.

I would also welcome Jimmy to log in, and to contribute to this conversation, as his voice remains important, and we would like to agree a suitable way forward.

Regards,
Mike

Bridgland

Mike - he surely must know how hard he has made it to contact him, plus if he was so concerned, he would have seen that the traffic on the site was albeit zero. I can’t tell you how hard I tried to connect with him.

Chris

RWG

Ditto All the above

Bridgland

The .NET site is active and I just posted this (hope he takes it well)

Jimmy We have tried so hard to get you to hear our demands for you to get this site back up and running. In your custody, it is such a shame that you first of all lost the .com domain and the site disappeared for a significant period. When it did come back it became unusable for a significant period of time and I even tried contacting you last week with no joy on the site again. If this message goes through, then well done, but how can we feel confident that it won’t happen again? We gathered together to keep the historical interest of the site alive, as you had become a “ghost” and the work Mike did has delivered what we wanted you to do for over a year. Please appreciate we urged Mike to get something, as your site was albeit dead and you were unresponsive.

I hope this message posts and you understand we did this out of passion and frustration. You need to talk to Mike and find a way forward for the future, please.

mike

Thanks Chris, appreciated.

Bridgland

mike check out Jimmy’s reply to me on the other forum…… Hmmmm!

mike

The phrase “it didn’t work out” is doing some heavy lifting there, I think.

Bridgland

mike What does he mean by “it didn’t work out”?

He has been negligent in his management and ownership of the forum and has lost loads of people. He has not addressed the concern that he will go AWOL again and the site will become unusable…….Really don’t get what he is trying to prove here….

mike

Bridgland

Did you see this thread Chris? (it’s in a non-public place that only “subscribers” to this site can see).

https://www.ducati851and888.com/d/118076-ducati851and888net-copyright-issue

The full conversation between Jimmy and myself is documented there - that’s the entirety of it.

mike

Final public update from me on this - the copyright enquiry has now been dealt with, so we do not currently expect this site to be going “off the air”.

That said - I’m genuinely disappointed, I felt that we tried so hard to recognise the effort and contribution that was made in the early years, and to treat Jimmy with inclusivity and respect. And, as has been said elsewhere - clearly the site was initiated through passion for the bikes and community, but that doesn’t seem to be the main driver in this particular episode.

These bikes are getting pretty old, and there is an ever-shrinking community that we need to protect the information and communication - fracturing and disregarding the community is not the way to do it in my view.

However - we’ll see what happens over time, I’m not going to dwell upon it, and I’ve got nothing to lose here - so we’ll stay on the air, for as long as the community finds an occasional use for this forum. As always - we should be open to evolving, and if anyone has suggestions of how we should change, then please let’s discuss!

Mike

freqrider

I saw this coming. What did you think was going to happen? I appreciate the effort here but not surprised at all.

NVM… I see issue was resolved. Hopefully amicably.

marvin

From what I understand nothing was “resolved” It was just moved to another hosting company.

marvin

This Forum has been moved offshore to Alexhost because they don’t enforce copyright violations!

So, I’m unsubscribing from this Forum. Thanks for the ride but for me the ride is over here. I will only be on Jimmy’s Forum. BTW, he has hired a private tech to monitor the Forum who found out why VBulletin was always letting it go down so rest assured it is up for good.

guillaume69

marvin

May I ask you a honest question ?

Why hasn’t « Jimmy » come on here and explained all this to us? Why didn’t he pop up on freq when we called for him, asking: « Hey buddy, what’s the deal? Are you still around and willing? Is there anything we could do to help you run that thing? »…

Are we not worth knowing the ground truth behind his absences and tech difficulties from his own mouth ? Is he like the Japanese Emperor who no mere mortal is allowed to speak to directly ?

I am fairly new here, and got interested by this community about a year ago when I got my 851, when the 851/888 gig had died for the second time in a year or so.

Today, I can’t help but feeling treated as a « lowlife » or « negligible quantity » by the historical site owners/handlers. I can only imagine how your reaction will make Mike feel…

I have been a frequent user of various Ducati forum based resources for the past 25 years and I am starting to get this awkward feeling that this 851/888 community may be a very sterile one…

Am I the only one feeling this way? I am longing to stand corrected about this. As this is the only way I will stick around. Like many here, I have a bunch of better things to dedicate my energy to than idiotic copyright discussions on something that I don’t understand why someone should even be allowed to be the « owner » of…

marvin

Why is it that any of you think that JImmy, or myself, owe any of you anything?

Mr.R

marvin

Personally I don’t think that you or Jimmy owe me or the forum members anything but…

It can’t be denied that Jimmy left the old forum to “Die on the Vine” so much so that most of the long standing members gave up on it ever being a going/working concern again Marvin.

I can understand your position of Loyalty to Jimmy, but it appears for me and a lot of the original forum members have lost any loyalty/faith in Jimmy being able to or be concerned enough to keep the old site running.

Thankfully Mike stepped forward and saved all of the old info’/posts for the rest of us to be able to use again.

Left to Jimmy I doubt this would have ever happened.

He had more than enough chances to do this, but only appeared again after Mike had saved the site from oblivion.

Lets be honest here the old forum as it was has pretty much died?

So I for one say…Well done Mike and thankyou for all of your efforts so far.

For me this argument isn’t about who owns what?

Rather it’s about saving what was already there, but had been left to rot away.

Steve R

mike

I’d really prefer to avoid using the “lock thread” functionality if I can avoid it, but it’s starting to feel very much like this particular thread has outlived any usefulness for healthy conversation. Folks - it’s time to move on, and get back to the bikes.