My suggestion

[!ski]

Not to dis the effort - I too had back orders on the two domains (but had decided from the get go not to bid),

My plan in trying to obtain the two domains, telemarktips.com and telemarktalk.com was to prevent
a cybersquatter or someone else grabbing them (especially if Mitch was to pop back up)

Since a cybersquatter has telemarktips.com ... that battle is lost at least for a while.

The whole situation though about the shutdown of telemarktips.com and telemarktalk.com puts the
entire community in a very bad light - both Mitch for just walking away (many would have paid the bills for
maintaining the DNS and hosting accounts) and also the utter failure of all those who acted if they were
close to Mitch doing anything or providing any information or status as to what happened.

In hindsight, there was not much of a community after all, even if I was just a posting lurker.

-r

[Baaahb]

It is silly for you to say there was no community. I consider myself a part of the community and felt absolutely no desire to obtain the urls...I have other urls to keep me busy and -- more importantly -- I knew the community would reappear in some manner, maybe on TGR, maybe elsewhere...it has splintered but its spirit lives on. The King is dead! Long live the King!

I doubt either this or bctalk will effectively succeed to Ttips...Ttips was a changing community itself and it has splintered. But each of them will continue the community in its own way. Thank God we don't need to use smoke signals anymore.

lovejohnny: IMO it is a bit of a reach for you to keep the titips legend ("this is the world=famous...") it isn't, and never will be...it is its own new thing, your thing. own it.

and season's greetings to y'al! personally, I hope this forum develops a bit of a Quebecois focus. those dudes know winter.

Baaahb

[bobsk]

lovejohnny: IMO it is a bit of a reach for you to keep the titips legend ("this is the world=famous...") it isn't, and never will be...it is its own new thing, your thing. own it.

It's not just "a reach", it's unauthorized appropriation of Mitch's work, copyright violation if he wants to call it that. You may have noticed that the domain name purchase did not include the previous site's databases; it also doesn't include anything else, except the domain name. It's not just a matter of style (though being considered a vulture isn't good style). If you want to attract users, you need to put some thought into it. Create something that is (to appropriate Baaahb's words) "your thing".

!ski: Mitch's inelegant departure says nothing about the community, and as far as I can tell the bulk of the community lives on at EarnYourTurns. If you don't feel part of it, well, that's for you to decide.

[Johnny]

Thank you guys for your feedback.

But I don't think I want this place to become my thing at all. I just want this board to become whatever people what it to be. I want people to get involved and make it their home, the way they want. This is what a community is to me.

I just recovered the description from the web archives, as it seemed like a good starting point to me. I don't have any plans for Telemark Talk right now. I'm not trying to "attract" people. I just didn't want the only worldwide telemark only forum to go away. I'll just leave it online for a year and see if people wanna be part of it or not. You decide, not me.

Fragmentation is very, very sad. When the site closed this summer, some people moved to EYT, TGR, EpicSki and TeleEast. But a lot of people just gave up. While I've been enjoying all those great boards for several years too, none of them is totally focused on the telemark world, whether it's backcountry or not.

Let's get constructive here instead of talking about what is right and what is wrong. Share your ideas, let's get positive. I didn't put this forum online to debate about the past. Consider this forum totally yours. It's not mine, I'm nobody. I do not exist. It's not my forum, it's not Mitch's forum. It's just an online telemark forum where tele-freaks can share their passion with other freaks. That's it.

Peace, Freedom, Telemark and Tofu.

[!ski]

I need to disagree on both counts.

First I have it hard to imagine what happened in Mitch's life to cause the utter demise of the very
special thing he put together (I mean the videos etc) and why he did not turn to the community for some assistance.

Even arrest and incarceration ... death or divorce ... godaddy DNS account was not set for auto-renewal on
a credit-card? Hosting?

Reminds me of a story, how "a person" thought they would know if I had died because
by cellphone would turn off (yes they could call it once a week), but as I explained it is
on auto-pay, it would be long time before anyone got around to turning it off.

Joyce Carol Vincent ...

As to community, the "corn harvest crowd", the "independence pass crowd", the "Loveland Posse" ...
not even an authoritative post here after the fact ...

But hey ... this sort of stuff happens on a continuous basis in all aspects of our lives.

"Situational Friends"

-r

[bobsk]

First I have it hard to imagine what happened in Mitch's life to cause the utter demise of the very
special thing he put together

His utter disappearance is curious, no kidding. But for a website to be left on autopilot, and then for no one to bother recovering it from the inevitable crash, well, that's actually quite common. As per the former, he and his close friends obviously consider it a private matter, and so I will respect that. Sorry to hear it's sort of a loss of innocence for you re the telemark community. These things happen. Move on in whatever way you like.