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Go Broke Saving Money

Find the HUISABH "big thread of deals" here! Also, other watch and watch accessory deal threads.
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deckeda
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Go Broke Saving Money

Post by deckeda »

Several of you have replied in the core HUISABH thread about my throwaway comment I included there. Here's the backstory for your weekend amusement. You might find a few parallels with how and why MoT was created!

In the mid-late 1990s a company began publishing deals (ads) on the Internet, mainly geared towards computer hardware and software. This was DealNews, which survives today albeit mainly as an advertising page ... I don't know if any true "deals" have shown up there in forever.

But what made DealNews special to some of us was that they published a sister website for Mac users, who at the time needed Mac-centric, if not Mac-specific things. Remember, this is before USB (for example) made many things like printers and keyboards more-or-less mostly universal. It was dealmac.com that had the tagline some us still remember, "Go Broke Saving Money."

More importantly, items published on the DealMac home page were very often genuine deals for stuff, and a forum was created to both discuss and share other Mac and Apple-related deals.

In a short time, the forum took on a life of its own, with conversations often having nothing to do with computers, even though that was the core interest that initially gathered the group. One or more rifts occurred, with mgt. deciding to compartmentalize various discussions. It was nothing like the insane delineation over at WUS (where, in my opinion, several similar topics and issues will appear among a variety of so-called "different" areas of the site ... don't get me started ... ) but it was enough to splinter the group to other locales.

Every time a new forum opens and numerous new subforums are deemed "necessary" I just shake my head. They usually aren't needed, but whatever.

One group went to a new site called AppleSwitcher, the name both reminding users "hey, we like Macs" as well as taking the then-popular advertising initiative Apple was pursuing about being "a switcher" (from Windows to Mac). AS has never published advertising and remains with a few core users.

*************************

Anyway, a competing deals site and connected-forum "for the rest of us" (the most of us) was created by Mac-centric seller Other World Computing, called MacResource. dealmac never banned discussions about the MacResource Forum and over time some of us discovered MRF and soon realized it was a better community experience because the policies and moderation were saner.

I will pause here to acknowledge there will always be a cost to user-centric online experiences (such as MoT) eventually financed by business-centric ones (such as, um Facebook). A balance is all we can hope for, unless the Community actually decides to finance the hosting, upkeep, and collectively police the inmates directly.

The DealMac side of DealNews eventually ceased operation, and with it, its forums. MacResource's deals home page is now gone too, but OWC allowed the forums to continue (at their expense, to this day.)

Today, macresource.com resolves instead to the main forums page. There are only 3 main areas:

1) One for the inevitable political stupidity (created not so much for actual discussions but as a holding tank for those of us who won't shut up, yet shouldn't be banned from regular discussion).

2) Member sales (of anything, yes all mashed together)

3) Everything else. Yes, tips and deals gets mashed together with absolutely anything and everything else not related to a personal sale or politics. Trust me, it's a feature, not a bug.

One crucial characteristic this user adores is the use of Brian L. Moon's old phorum.org forum software, tweaked for our desires. This was also what was used for the dealmac forums. Its visual and functional simplicity is deceptive, capable of some things I've seldom seen elsewhere, and certainly without the cruft of most forums.

It has fantastic simple search, more effective than say, WUS, which for me often a) finds nothing b) finds too much because it's not clear (or possible?) to search individual sub forums without already being within that subform?

Also, as setup, MRF has no thread bumping, which along with lack of subforums, 99% of every forum admin and userbase seems positively terrified of implementing. Welcome to the freedom of disorganization. The water's fine.

Phorum doesn't run under PHP 7, calling into question its future for anyone not willing to maintain older hardware/software, perhaps. Until then, it's part of the magic.
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MAAHHH THE FRENCH!
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Re: Go Broke Saving Money

Post by MAAHHH THE FRENCH! »



Back in my day we didn't need anything mightier than Citadel (RIP CrT).
deckeda
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Re: Go Broke Saving Money

Post by deckeda »

Bwahaaha love it! Thanks for that.
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