No images showing

[VWatchie]

Someone just made me aware that no images are showing in my post (

). Could someone with the proper permissions check this? I believe the images are ones I uploaded to the site, but they could also be ones I shared from my OneDrive, which had an issue some time ago.

[AndyGSi]

The site appears to be on the glitch in general.

Edit

Looking at it now I'd say due to the age of the post they've been dumped from the server.

Edited Tuesday at 01:21 PM by AndyGSi

[VWatchie]

Yes, I've noticed that the response times are getting slower and are more frequent than they used to be. Perhaps the site is running out of space? Maybe some maintenance and/or more space is required. I'm sure we'd all be happy to contribute if there's a cost. @Mark, Please let us know if there's something we can do! After all, your site has become our second home 

[Neverenoughwatches]

You are hopeful H !  Its now nearly 7 months since Mark visited.  That day is looming , we all know it.  I read that walk-through of yours when I joined, you put a hell of a lot of effort into that. 

[watchhammer]

What a coincidence, I was very bummed to find that thread absent of photos just yesterday! I am servicing a Hamilton 694A and it would have been a great resource. 

Edit: I would be willing to pitch in to recover archived data here. I dont contribute much as I don't have the experience but I read through old threads all day at work prepping for the evenings project. 

 

This is what the corner of my monitor looks like all day

Edited Tuesday at 01:43 PM by watchhammer
Added

[AndyGSi]

It would appear this is the shape of things to come as Mark either isn't responding
to requests to expand storage or isn't willing to invest the additional costs.

Not sure it would make a difference but if you're quoting someone in a response and they've
got photos then it's possibly a good idea to delete the photos from the quote to save space.

[VWatchie]

53 minutes ago, AndyGSi said:

Not sure it would make a difference but if you're quoting someone in a response and they've
got photos then it's possibly a good idea to delete the photos from the quote to save space.

I would be surprised if the image file is copied when quoted. It's more likely just a link to the existing image, but good thought nevertheless.

1 hour ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

You are hopeful H !  Its now nearly 7 months since Mark visited.

Such a shame!

If this site shuts down, countless hours of shared insights will be lost, along with the best resource for help and learning.

[Neverenoughwatches]

Thats one reason I don't quote so much now,I often just reply to the thread and hope someone figures out what I'm replying to. But I thought the same as you Andy, that they take up valuable space.

[VWatchie]

I hate the thought, but is there any other similar and decent site dedicated to servicing and repairing?

[RichardHarris123]

I don't think so, that's why we needed a back up plan.  As for quotes, if it's a long post, I  just quote the relevant section. 

[Neverenoughwatches]

1 hour ago, VWatchie said:

I hate the thought, but is there any other similar and decent site dedicated to servicing and repairing?

There are facebook groups ....but another forum that stores information from threads

All we can do is wait and see what happens.  

[VWatchie]

20 hours ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

There are facebook groups ....but another forum that stores information from threads

All we can do is wait and see what happens.  

I h-te the Facebook groups. Facebook is a mess and unsuitable for anything worthwhile, except for short personal messages. As far as I'm aware, it can't be searched in any rational way 

[Neverenoughwatches]

2 hours ago, VWatchie said:

I h-te the Facebook groups. Facebook is a mess and unsuitable for anything worthwhile, except for short personal messages. As far as I'm aware, it can't be searched in any rational way 

I don't mind facebook, a lot of folk won't entertain it. I let it all go over my head, I had a pretty chaotic upbringing,a alcoholic father from my early teens, who always wanted to fight ( nobhead ) and a horrible older bullying sister when I was really young, so nothing at all bothers me in any way .

[ChrisInOz]

On 4/16/2025 at 1:02 AM, RichardHarris123 said:

I don't think so, that's why we needed a back up plan.  As for quotes, if it's a long post, I  just quote the relevant section. 

 

On 4/16/2025 at 12:43 AM, VWatchie said:

I hate the thought, but is there any other similar and decent site dedicated to servicing and repairing?

The NAWCC has a watch repair forum. I haven't used it much myself,  but I have found the clock repair part of their forum to have friendly and helpful people. It might be a useful place for members to communicate if this forum is temporarily down.

I would also recommend that each of  the moderators keep a list of all members email addresses,  to be held somewhere independent of this platform,  so that in the event of total disaster, it will be possible to notify members of any new arrangements.

This site is a tremendous resource for horological education,  and a superb collection of practical knowledge from experienced watchmakers. Unfortunately forums like this can easily disappear overnight if the founder loses interest.

I definitely agree that a backup plan would be a good idea.

[JohnR725]

On 4/15/2025 at 6:26 AM, VWatchie said:

unning out of space

my understanding is message boards don't really use much space at all if they're basically just text. as why their websites out there that will give you free message boards of course they control the advertising but they're just text based

1 hour ago, ChrisInOz said:

backup plan

I thought the message board already was backed up in fact was backed up multiple times?

One of the things that is a real killer for message boards is file attachments. As people get faster computers they think nothing of attaching big files. Then we get a lot of big files reattached multiple times a somebody new post the question we will post things again and again and I mentioned there's a heck of a lot of file duplication it be nice to figure out some place to put all the files and not have them on the message board at all.

then? The last time I checked Facebook maybe I wasn't paying attention to something? So I just now checked his Facebook watch repair group he was last seen on the 14th and I just don't remember this picture? Maybe could that be what's distracting him?  although he is on the Facebook group may be just doesn't like us anymore?

 

[ChrisInOz]

1 hour ago, JohnR725 said:

3 hours ago, ChrisInOz said:

 

I thought the message board already was backed up in fact was backed up multiple times

Not that kind of backup.  We're talking about a continuity plan if this platform is abandoned or withdrawn.

[JohnR725]

3 hours ago, ChrisInOz said:

Not that kind of backup.  We're talking about a continuity plan if this platform is abandoned or withdrawn.

you mean like maybe a Facebook group where we could all go to?

Or maybe we just form our own new message board and abandon this one before it sinks

[ChrisInOz]

2 hours ago, JohnR725 said:

you mean like maybe a Facebook group where we could all go to?

Hopefully something less precarious and better managed than Facebook,  but that might be a last resort.

From what I have read above,  people are concerned about potentially losing the extensive database of reference material such as walkthroughs that they have built here.   A good continuity plan would preserve that.  I don't imagine that a site like Facebook would be capable of hosting such a thing in any practical way. From my experience of it,  it mainly seems to be configured to allow businesses to advertise,  and people to post random photos.

I don't think that providing logical access to an organized collection of related data is really part of Facebook's mission statement.

The Invision platform that we are on does a good job of that and provides a good search function, thread following and so on. 

A question that would immediately arise for continuity planning, of course,  is "who owns the copyright on the Watch Repair Talk database?"

[tomh207]

8 minutes ago, ChrisInOz said:

Hopefully something less precarious and better managed than Facebook,  but that might be a last resort.

From what I have read above,  people are concerned about potentially losing the extensive database of reference material such as walkthroughs that they have built here.   A good continuity plan would preserve that.  I don't imagine that a site like Facebook would be capable of hosting such a thing in any practical way. From my experience of it,  it mainly seems to be configured to allow businesses to advertise,  and people to post random photos.

I don't think that providing logical access to an organized collection of related data is really part of Facebook's mission statement.

The Invision platform that we are on does a good job of that and provides a good search function, thread following and so on. 

A question that would immediately arise for continuity planning, of course,  is "who owns the copyright on the Watch Repair Talk database?"

As Mark owns this site and is it’s only administrator I would expect that any claimable IP would belong to him. There is obviously some disquiet at the moment because of the lack of response from him about several issues. Rather than go off trying to build ourselves a new site we do have a Facebook group and a discord server so that if this site disappears we can keep in touch and decide what to do about it.

Mark pays for this place and I would expect that most of that would be storage/database/backups.

 

Tom

[way2wyrd]

On 4/15/2025 at 8:34 AM, watchhammer said:

This is what the corner of my monitor looks like all day

Looks like a 5150 emulator running JDEdwards.  my desk looks similar

[tomh207]

44 minutes ago, way2wyrd said:

Looks like a 5150 emulator running JDEdwards.  my desk looks similar

Takes me back a bit!

Tom

[ChrisInOz]

58 minutes ago, tomh207 said:

Rather than go off trying to build ourselves a new site we do have a Facebook group and a discord server so that if this site disappears we can keep in touch and decide what to do about it.

Thanks.  I just joined the discord group.

 

[VWatchie]

3 hours ago, ChrisInOz said:

I just joined the discord group

Oh, I didn’t know there was a Discord group! I know what Discord is, but I’ve never actually used it. How do I join?

 

[JohnR725]

5 hours ago, ChrisInOz said:

Hopefully something less precarious and better managed than Facebook

the last time we discussed this I went looking for alternatives and found first there is something out there where you can have a free message board yes no give it to you for free as a guess they probably run their own advertising. If you look up this message board we could run a message board just like this one the only thing that bothered me was there was a price factor and it didn't say what the price was always makes me nervous things that cost money we don't know what is there are message board options out there if somebody just wanted to start a new message board

 

5 hours ago, ChrisInOz said:

A question that would immediately arise for continuity planning, of course,  is "who owns the copyright on the Watch Repair Talk database?"

on another group out there when they were updating something they decided that all of the answers to all of the questions longed to the message board which upset the members who felt that their answers belong to them. In other words it's a very strange concept that you write something and you lose the copyright because they decided it stairs so that people added a tag line to all of their messages saying that this belongs to me.

 

5 hours ago, tomh207 said:

the lack of response from him

when I was on the watch repair Facebook yesterday I was resisting the temptation to place a public message of where the heck is Mark and why does he come back to his other group? So as a moderator have you attempted to reach out to him on the Facebook group because he does seem to be there at least it indicates he's there and what about reaching out to the other moderators on that group ask them what's going on it seems unbelievable that he would abandon us which he has and still be active on Facebook?

 

 

[tomh207]

@JohnR725

I have posted a message asking him to contact us and especially OldHippy as he was getting understandably frustrated not getting any response. As to this time it’s been tumbleweed. Rich has posted there publicly today so we’ll see if that elicits anything.

@VWatchie

you register as a user with discord then follow the link I posted on the thread with subject “Mark” and your in . Nothing happens there really it’s a backup place to keep in contact though I’ll see if anything is posted and will jump in to chat

 

Tom