Shame that. I suppose the owner, Dave B, has either lost interest, become unable to upkeep the site, or - God forbid - died.Originally Posted by 45flint
It wouldn't be the first 'zombie' Network 54 site, since plenty of them are still going years after anyone last posted and kept going by funding from ads, like a ghostly echo of the past!
I'm pretty sure most, or maybe all, of the airgun collectors who post on the AVA are also visitors/posters on here, so they will have somewhere to go if it does wither and die. In some ways it would be a shame if the special character of the AVA were to be subsumed in BBS Collectables, but fortunately they do share the same 'gentlemanly ethos'.
The Photobucket debacle has sharpened focus on this 'legacy' aspect of the internet. Site owners really need to engage in 'succession planning' to ensure these valuable entities continue on into the future.
I've had to think about this a lot recently with the vintage gallery - a collective endeavour which has grown into something that should probably be preserved indefinitely, if that's digitally possible!
By buying a dedicated web domain and hosting the images myself (generously paid for by multiple donors), I'm hoping this will give it life after I'm long gone - although someone will have to pay to keep it alive, I suppose.
I'm thinking I will need to distribute the 'keys' to the gallery as widely as possible between trusted individuals when the time comes, so as to avoid it becoming frozen in time.
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