Welcome aboard @Retired Weather Man . Yes, Queensland is not exactly snow country but folk like myself do take an interest in the white stuff, not the type that turns @TOFF on though. I live in Cairns and do a snow trip when funds allow me to. Having all you WZ guys will be great for my part of the world, I'm sure there will be a few North Queenslanders amongst you. I always had a vision of being the only contributor to a Cairns cyclone obs thread. Hopefully that will not happen.
As well as being a fine host on these forums @Richard throws a bloody good party too. There was a mighty fine shindig in Melbourne only a few weeks ago.
Welcome to all from WZ . Active on the wz side in the past myself but the vibe is on these pages, has been mine many years . Looking forward to your sharing in this community.
Another ex Weatherzoner here. Will keep posting there until it dies then come here more regularly. I like the look of this site.
Hi @Richard. Thanks your approach to welcome WZ refugees. Anyway quick question, so I that fully aware of how to play by the rules. Am I correct that the rules are here: https://www.ski.com.au/xf/help/terms Or is there any other set of rules for posting we need to be aware of?
Have a look here: https://www.ski.com.au/xf/threads/weather-forum-rules-2019-season.53822/ These are the specific Weather Forum rules, which are tightly enforced, for smooth running and a better experience. We usually repost specific Weather Forum rules, before the ski season. @Richard may be able to duplicate in each of the new forums. @Adaminaby Angler @Toboggan @Michael Hauber @MegaMatch @AshestoAshes @Wavey @crikey @Orebound @Ozone Doug @Chilled @Lani @Krissyleigh @Gleno71 @Retired Weather Man The general or BBQ threads a slightly less on topic, as we realised a while back that people need to laugh and have a bit of banter sometimes!!! But the "no abuse" policy still applies.
I just about posted exactly that @Sandy when "new post" notice came up. What Sandy said is pretty much spot on, have a read of the thread he linked, ignore the "snow" specific comments and that is pretty much it. There are rooms for general banter here, so head to the Apres section for that if you want to discuss things wildly divergent from weather. We do try to keep politics tightly constrained into one sub forum otherwise it undermines every other forum, that would be the main other rule to be aware of. Welcome and enjoy @Flowin
Looking forward to the newbies contributing to the other discussions A great place to start is this link, easier than digging around the site https://www.ski.com.au/xf/find-new/posts
Hi all, just migrated across from Weatherzone. I enjoy reading all the different threads from across the country. Werner
Another ex WZ forum convert here. I used to post as Locke on WZ on a reasonably regular basis. Been somewhat of a lurker here for a number of years without ever registering following each snow event as its happened. Happy that we will still have a forum to discuss other interesting weather after the demise of the WZ forums.
Thanks for the offer, if I had been able to post I may have chimed in on the conversation around 'why are they shutting us down'. But it's kinda mute now. What I can add, is that saving that forum as an archive or selling it or even giving it away is waaaay more trouble than it is worth to a corporate. Just the process of a 'lift and shift' would cost upwards of $10K or $20K of Fairfax engineer time and then whoever received it inherits a nightmare of migration issues trying to modernise that old UBB software. The death sentence was probably five years ago when they failed to migrate off UBB onto something like Vbulletin - but corporates gave up operating 'forums' in the mid 2000's and weatherzone forums were always just a throw-in job-lot with the purchase of the weatherzone meteorological business. Strategically there is no fit. Fairfax wants community attached to their opinion pieces and nowhere else. User data flows vis a vis ad-tech methodology and branded ad campaigns means that is where the advertising yield is. Those forums would not have generated more than $50 a day (on a good day) these last few years.
What is weatherzone's core revenue stream? Advertising from viewers of the main page? Subscription to the extras? Or is more about the business services? I would have thought having a good forum would help draw more viewers to their main page and/or more subscriptions to the extras. But presumably too much cost for whatever crossover benefit. Or maybe they don't want the forum to undercut their 'talk to a meteorologist service' Why pay $5 a minute to phone a meteorologist when you can ask questions on the forum for free? Curious to consider accuweather and Weatherunderground. Accuweather runs a few blogs that get maybe 3 comments. Weatherunderground runs their blog which is almost like a forum with everything on one thread with most of the comments not really relating to the specific blog post.
I just posted in the CQ Thread and it says above " This message is awaiting moderator approval, and is invisible to normal visitors" ? Also I wanted to register as just "Vinny" but it says someone on here has that name? So I tried Vinnie and it said the same too ! Is there a thingo at the bottom of the site that tells you how many users are online and who is online? Edited : I see it , 14 online on Weatherzone over 100 here ! -- So the same company that owns Stan owns Weatherzone? This will be my new home after Weatherzone .
Meteorological & weather data services to media. Virtually zero crossover, waaaaaaay to much cost. Forums don't drive traffic to anywhere except themselves. Certainly no traffic that has any meaningful value. The Internet has canibilised phone information services. With or without the forum, the WZ phone service would likely not be long of this world either. It's just probably automated and the sunk costs in creating it were recovered two decades ago. In this day of $1~$2 CPM from display ads - of all the forums in this country, my guess is that only Big Footy and probably The Woodwork Forums have sufficient daily activity to support a small team of skilled digital devs and call it an actual business.
I have no idea how you did that, I just ran you through the permissions analiser and you are fine to post. Can you please post in that thread again as a test please. I'll see what I can do about your display name
Further to my welcome Post to Weatherzone forum members ( I was in there infrequently) some of the snow info forum folk have been around cyberspace for a long time. For those that remember the first internet post was made in October 29th,1969. UCLA student Charley Kline attempts to transmit the text “login” to a computer at the Stanford Research Institute over the first link on the ARPANET, which was the precursor to the modern Internet. After the letters “l” and “o” are sent the system crashed, making the first message ever sent on the Internet “lo”. About an hour later, after recovering from the crash, the full text of “login” is successfully sent. But even less well known was the first response to the first command . It was on 30th October "Stay on Topic" from a very youthful Claude Cat ... The message compiled from over 2000 punch cards , took over 7 hours to compile and 3 hours to send. Well done Claude !
You are in luck, the original 'Vinny' had zero posts and had not logged in for 15 years. So.. you just got it.
And heres of photo of Claude Cat assembling the first internet reply on October 30th 1969. The sharp eyed observers will note that this was prior to his sex change in 1970 when he was known as Claudette Cat. Rumour has it part of the reason for the gender change was that with the truncated Christian name he would save punching and loading 250 cards each time
Anyone have any knowledge of tips on how to archive forum threads? for the purpose of securing national history
Thanks for asking Richard but I registered using my email address. I would love to be Locke again but understand if this isn't possible due to how I registered. I imagine your quite busy right now helping our us former WZers
Hi guys, I like posting pictures from time to time, any size limits? Im really liking this site, I see I'm going to get lost for days in here. Ive already taken a half a day off from work!!
I have used WinHTTrack Website Copier a handful of times and only for very small sites. It will duplicates a site to your local machine (windows). It may be an option, especially if you can define folders or individual pages. In terms of then making it available for prosperity, you would need some experience in web development knowledge to then rehost for the public and you would likely still need copyright permission.