Ten years gone.....

[f.Channell]

I just noticed I joined the forums ten years ago.
It is amazing how finding this forum has impacted my life and art.
I discovered George Mattson who was a legend to me at the time.
His books supported my study when the Dojo was closed and I had questions which couldn't be answered.
Through this forum he went from a legend to a man I've grown to admire and consider a friend and mentor.
The forums reintroduced me to old friends like Mike Murphy and new friends like Joe Pomfret who both inspired me to train in the grappling arts.
Through these connections we developed a great tournament series and put smiles on the faces on thousands of Uechi students and an outlet to compete.
I met my sensei Van through the forums and the hard, sweaty, long workouts in the torture chamber put a temper to my Dan rank.

So just a thank you to George Mattson and the moderators for the long thankless hours they dedicate to this site which has impacted my training and life so much.

F.

[gmattson]

It is amazing how much material is contained in this latest forum program. Actually, there were much earlier forums that vanished when the server companies I used went out of business suddenly and everything got lost. When I have time, I'll put up some of the topics I was fortunate enough to save on disks.

Can anyone guess when the first of the forums went on-line?

[Glenn]

Can anyone guess when the first of the forums went on-line?

I'm gonna guess December 16, 1998...or is that just for the latest forum program? If it goes back further, then I'll guess 1994.

[Jason Rees]

10 years ago...

Sounds about right. I found these forums a couple years after getting out of the army. I was a civilian on a government contract job. That would have been around 2000. Crazy arguments with Ian, after about six months of just reading.

Good times.

[Glenn]

Hey Jason, did you get moved or are you still in Omaha? Sorry we couldn't meet up over the holidays, but 31+ inches of snow does put a bit of a damper on things, even in Nebraska!

2001 is when I joined the Forums, although I recall reading George's e-mail Mailbag and Forums in the 1990s (I think I found the website around 1995).

[Jason Rees]

Hey Jason, did you get moved or are you still in Omaha? Sorry we couldn't meet up over the holidays, but 31+ inches of snow does put a bit of a damper on things, even in Nebraska!

2001 is when I joined the Forums, although I recall reading George's e-mail Mailbag and Forums in the 1990s (I think I found the website around 1995).

Glenn, we're still en route! Currently in Juneau; we get on the second ferry ride of our trip Sunday. A day and a half of open sea, then docking at Whittier. No idea how long it'll actually take to drive from there to Anchorage, but we're hoping no more than a day.

[Glenn]

The snow we've had in Nebraska over the past month will seem like nothing in Alaska!

[Jason Rees]

And it ain't just the snow, Glenn! lol. We heard about the -40 degrees Omaha chillled out under a week or so ago. We were in Seattle, enjoying 50 degree weather.

[Van Canna]

The forums also _ are/have been and sometimes continue to be a battle ground.

Gun fights with words...survival of the fittest...

Look at the many casualties we have had in the last ten years.

Like shooting home invaders

[Glenn]

Yes but you administrators and moderators do a great job of not letting it get out of control, something that has ruined many a good forum. I want to second Fred's thank you to all of y'all for all that you give to keeping these forums a cyberplace worth coming back to all these years.

[Bill Glasheen]

The Forums started as an idea I had which I shared with George over 2 decades ago (circa 1985). We both were "geeks" in the online world, and were seeking ways to use the Internet as a vehicle for teaching and communication. George eventually unleashed me about a decade later in the first forum. After Van et al saw how much fun it was (MOST of the time), they spun off their own forums. In terms of number of posts, Van's has been wildly successful. But IMO the more important thing was that many niches were ultimately created (women's forum, legal forum, etc.).

"The old days" were wild an woolly. As I've explained to a few who question my actions when a poster violates forum rules, we've seen a lot. The early days eventually created opportunities for sociopaths to get online and stir up trouble for sport. Ultimately methods for dealing with them were developed that created the least disruption while still making the environment compelling for people to express their opinions.

We aren't perfect by any means, as some are quick to remind us. But if George would only double our salaries, maybe the quality of moderation would go up.

- Bill

[gmattson]

I remember soliciting e-mail from people visiting my early websites. I started the discussion by asking questions like: "How do you feel about teaching karate to children?"

Then I would ask the more computer literate people (like Bill) to write the first responses, which I would publish. We got some pretty interesting exchanges and prepared us for the advance in technology that enabled forums like the one we are on today.

I believe Microsoft created the first "direct response" forums with their "Framework" program. Now that I've got some time, I'll do a bit of looking around my hard drive and the archives on Ted's server to see if I can find some of these early topics.

Bill is correct regarding the dates. But I'm not sure when we actually started the first "direct response" forums. . . had to be in the early 90s though. . .

[Valkenar]

I believe Microsoft created the first "direct response" forums with their "Framework" program.

Usenet is probably the first major internet discussion board software. Those were invented in 1980. Before that, there were computer network discussion forums as early as 1978, though they weren't on the internet. I've never heard of Microsoft's "Framework" (And searching for that is pretty much impossible now due to .NET and such) In fact, I couldn't find a solid answer for what the first forum software was. The earliest package I found a reference to was UBB in 1996, but that doesn't seem right to me.

[Dana Sheets]

The 1998 version of the site seems to use the FrontPage forum:
http://web.archive.org/web/199801242046 ... i-ryu.com/

If you scroll over the navigation you'll see that it uses _vti_bin which google said is a frontpage component for managing server extensions...which sounds a lot like a forum to me....

[mikemurphy]

Thanks Fred.

It's nice to know in 34 years in the arts that I influenced somebody!!

mike