Save Time Travel Institute

TimeWizardCosmo

Senior Member
Zenith
Messages
2,936
I am a successful businessman with over 50 years running multiple businesses. I could pull out one of my many American Express cards and save the website.

I’m not going to do that, because I was poorly treated about six months ago, when I registered for membership, 36 hours later I was accepted, I posted three or four items and was promptly informed that my membership had been canceled. The posts, I posted were copies of the same information word of word from this website “Paranormalis, none of the postings were derogatory, negative, or insulting to anyone, just information like I always post on this great website.

Perhaps 15 years of karma has finally caught up with this website!

Professor Opmmur

It's unfortunate you were treated that way - That's not the way to run a site. If the funding is successful, you'd be more than welcome to return.

New guidelines would be put in place to prevent stuff like that in the future, and would look something like this:
User Guidelines - Curious Cosmos

If I could justify shelling out that much money for something I'm not going to see a return on, I absolutely would. I'm doing this because I want to restore the site and see it continue, not because I think I can flip it or make a quick buck. In fact, ads would be taken off the site entirely.

While I have the requisite hardware, software and skills to deliver on the promises made on that campaign, I also have a newborn and a family I'm responsible for. Spending $1500 like that would get me in trouble with the wife ;)

Edit: For the curious, below is an excerpt from the staff guidelines I have in the Curious Cosmos forum. I don't have any staff there, but this should give you an idea:

Curious Cosmos moderators must work within these guidelines.

Qualities

You must possess leadership capabilities, a good attitude, kind demeanor, good speaking and grammar skills (you must be able to communicate clearly in English), basic understanding of the features of the community software, the ability to stimulate discussion, distinguish a violation of our User Guidelines and aggressively moderate this community, work in a team environment and, finally, have pride in your work and be dedicated to the success of Curious Cosmos.

You Are an Example

It is important that you realize that you are an example of this community and should carry yourself as such at all times. You should always act in a responsible and polite manner. Do not allow yourself to appear abusive, rude or inappropriate. It is your job to cool down threads - not heat them up.

Our User Guidelines apply to you and then some. You are held to a higher standard than regular members. You should not approach, let alone push, the limitations of our User Guidelines.

To that end, do not publicly discuss action taken against any user. Do not post "I have removed Joe's posts as they were full of vulgarities" or "You have been warned" or "Keep this up and I'll remove your posts" or anything of the sort. We handle all of our business privately. If someone violates our User Guidelines, their posts are removed and we handle it. We do not post about specific actions taken against specific users publicly.
 
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Num7

Administrator
Staff
Messages
12,375
I used to post on rare occasions. But like TN, I visited the site quite a bit.

For me, this site has always been around, I didn't experience the Internet without TTI in it.
 

IroncladMarshmallow

Active Member
Messages
578
I never posted there, so I have no emotional attachment to the website. It just seems to me that the current owner could just give the site to someone if they really don't care about it anymore. Alternatively, they could let the registration expire and someone else could register the domain name. The information might be lost, but surely a backup wouldn't be too hard to come by.
 

TimeWizardCosmo

Senior Member
Zenith
Messages
2,936
It just seems to me that the current owner could just give the site to someone if they really don't care about it anymore.

I wish this were the case; this is what I did with Paranormalis when I found I didn't have the willingness to run the site anymore. Instead of letting it flounder and die, I gave it to Num7

Unfortunately for the members of TTI, Mop won't part with it without some compensation. I don't think asking for a return on a 15 year investment on his end is unfair, though given the choice between letting it disappear or giving it away I'd personally choose the former.

(edit: said latter instead of former. doh)

Alternatively, they could let the registration expire and someone else could register the domain name. The information might be lost, but surely a backup wouldn't be too hard to come by.

If the domain registration lapses, it will be extremely difficult to just go and register it yourself. For one, there's a 30 day "grace period" and the domain is put in a specific state which can be seen by domain squatters. Domain squatters use automated methods to snatch up domains which have some Google pagerank or inbound link value, park the domain with an ad on it and collect revenue. I've dealt with this a few times and while the squatter is usually willing to sell the domain, the asking price is usually many hundreds or thousands of dollars. Num7 dealt with this when he picked up the Paranormal Network domain.

Additionally, a proper backup would be very hard to come by without Mop explicitly giving someone a dump of the database (which he's not willing to do without recompense, thus the campaign). There are almost 80,000 posts there and while some of them are likely to be in the Internet Archive somewhere, none of it is searchable and it's not at all complete. Try looking at Art Bell's old Post to Post forums on there and you'll see just how crippled it can become:

Post to Post

Even worse, an entire domain can easily be completely wiped off of the Internet Archive as well by putting a line in a site's robots.txt (Internet Archive Contacts). Many domain squatters do this and if that happens, there is literally zero chance of anything ever being recovered.

I'm not emotionally attached to the site either, but I definitely see the value in trying to rescue and preserve the original home of John Titor (whether I subscribe to him being real or not), as well as 15 years of discussion on the topic of time travel. There are some amazing conversations buried in there and I'd hate to see that just blink out of existence.
 
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