I was reminded of RV today, decided to pop back in. I suppose it was time to let it go, it really is nothing compared to what it once was. A mighty shame to see the frontpage go though, after all the work the village staff members put into it. But I suppose it was horribly outdated.

Happy you kept RV alive in one way or another though, so many shared memories between us.

Just out of curiosity - what has the monthly post count been over the past few months?

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Villager #2653
Tech Elite ♥

I have no idea! Let's find out.

The forum's search function isn't being overly helpful when you tell it to find everything, so I'll delve into the database.

Since May 15, 2014, when we jumped servers: 1554 posts

June 2014: 388
July 2014: 243
August 2014: 192
September 2014: 154
October 2014: 181
So far in 5 days of November: 40

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.Legendary themed months are back! Maybe.

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We're glad you've returned.
http://www.wallpaperspictures.net/image ... 626-15.jpg

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I can't view that because it doesn't allow hotlinking.

But in return, here is one of my favorite Nedroid comics:
http://nedroid.com/2012/05/honk-the-databus/
(To this day I use "Honk the databus" (which is the title of that comic) for more or less anything. Sometimes when I'm playing Ingress on my iPhone and I hack some portals I go "honk honk *click*".)

[Mom] Are we done here?
[Me] One sec, I want to honk some databuses.
[Mom] ...what?
[Sparky] He's playing Ingress.
[Mom] Oh.

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.Legendary themed months are back! Maybe.

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haha. That was amusing


here's that image:

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Oh, that image.

...

RUN DUDE YOU ARE DOOMED

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.Legendary themed months are back! Maybe.

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WOW and I just joined lol

This was sad to read.

I miss the old days

.... what do the stats look like now? And how in the world is this website *still* running?

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Huge thanks to Ownage pk for the signature.

Formerly known as Hawaiigopher

We go whole months without a post now so a lot of the data points are zero. You probably just made more posts than most of 2019 combined, hahaha.

The site's still running because I took over hosting, and I keep it up so that people that want to look back on the memories are able to do so. As you can probably tell from all the error messages after making a post, the place is pretty fragile now, but there's not enough activity that it's worth spending time trying to figure out (and potentially break worse, heh).

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.Legendary themed months are back! Maybe.

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The forum probably desperately needs an update of phpBB that can actually work well with the version of PHP it is running. But as you said: that's quite a bit of work.

We do risk having some sort of vulnerability open this way though, which may allow people to hack into the forum.

EDIT: the error message seems like a relatively simple thing to fix in the overall_header template file.
EDIT2: never mind, it seems to be nested a lot deeper than I expected it to. Oh well...

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XML, SOAP, XSLT, JavaScript, SQL, Java, CSS, PHP, Scheme, JSP, C#, ASP.NET, VB.NET, PL/SQL, Visual Basic 6.0, C/AL and C (sorted well to less known).

Huh, well, I appreciate it! There's a lot of nostalgia in this place.

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Huge thanks to Ownage pk for the signature.

Formerly known as Hawaiigopher

You're welcome!

Yeah, when we first started getting these errors I fixed a few of them, but they did end up going a lot deeper than I expected, as well. The ones that show up now seem harmless so really I just haven't invested the time because I don't think the payoff is worth it.

I did look into updating phpBB a couple times, but I don't have root access on the server, so if something were to go horribly wrong or an auto-updater failed it would end up being a tricky situation. I disabled new signups and that seems to have solved most of the problems for the time being, haha.

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.Legendary themed months are back! Maybe.

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I think maybe there should be a memorial for RV as a main page. And on that page should be member stories of how they came across RV and maybe a little bit about their life now, their journey through Runescape at the time etc kinda like a profile page with their Runescape names, their role on Runescape, their role on RV etc. Maybe a few screenshots, perhaps dig up the forums and get an archived copy going from particular dates back in time and extract posts to help to bring the past to life.

There could be a section to thank those who have continued to run the forums to this day and who were the last to maintain a functional Runevillage before it was reduced down to what it is now. It especially would be good to get some of the old mods and admins on board and get their accounts of running RV in its prime to give perspective from the day to day maintaining of what was once one of the best Runescape fansites on the internet seeing that was what held this place up for all of us.

Bringing back RV to it's former glory even if it means it's not an actual functional Runescape fansite would be amazing. Get the original site back up or at least modify it to reflect a different time ie now (which also might be a different time if you're now reading this well into the future - spooky!) and give RV a resting place it really deserves.

I think something should be done because right now the forum is fading away. Do we even have TLS/SSL? I'm using an unencrypted session on my end (which is so 1999). When was the forum last updated? Are there backups if something happens? How do you know the forum isn't completely vulnerable and potentially compromised? Are we running outdated phpBB?

From a standpoint of preservation something should be done to keep RV safe from fading away completely, even if it's on an administration level and organizing everything so in the future RV still exists beyond just the forum. I believe the time to start preparing for the future of RV probably should have been a while ago and for that to include doing everything necessary to preserve everything and think about ways to give those who keep coming back somewhere to come back to.

It's a tough one though because this format is growing increasingly uncommon. Most people communicate on social media and most platforms have made a homogenous gloop that has changed the way people use the internet to the point where the demand for bulletin boards are going extinct, at least from my perspective anyway. There doesn't seem to be separate worlds for gaming communities anymore with their own ecosystems. It's all generic. So the question arises - how would you keep RV going without losing what made RV what it was (the forums mainly) while also seeking to preserve the history of RV in a way that doesn't take the forums away? To me anyway coming back to the forums is like stepping back in time when the world was pretty different to it is now and so it's a privilege to have access to something that is slowly becoming an obsolete platform. It feels RV is really holding on to something todays generation hasn't got the same understanding of. Aren't we preserving a niche moment in time as well as RV? In 5, 10, 20 years how many communities like this will still be maintained and how many will have been lost with only weak Wayback Machine crawled copies available that don't let you go beyond the surface?

When you also think about it in another way, here is many peoples childhoods stored in digital form in the profiles they had, the avatars, the signatures, the forum content, their relationship with others, their memories, their connection to the world of Runescape. That's pretty damned valuable even if many don't come back to seek it out. If it's still there for people that would be great.

One thing I'm pretty sure we can all agree on - losing RV for good is not something we want ie for RV to be taken offline completely and any attempt at preserving it's history left to whatever remains of the fragments all over the internet, which will be nothing compared to the actual treasure trove that is RV itself. Memory holing RV, something in this modern disposable and expendable culture is unfortunately all too common, should not happen, in my opinion.

Personally, I think it’s best to leave everything the way it is. The resources to do any of what was suggested isn’t worth it IMO. Realistically, who is going to see any of that? Hardly anyone comes around here anymore and I don’t think an update will change that. I also don’t expect anyone to devote time with updating this place. The very fact this place is still here is good enough for me (thanks Jaron!).

I’ve just grown to accept that if this site ever breaks down or disappears, I will lose whatever contact I have left with this place for good.. and to be completely honest, if and when that day does happen, I think I’ll spend a few seconds reflecting on it and how it’s drawn to a final close and then move on with my day. I expect the majority of people to react the same way more or less.

Just my opinion on the matter.

-Phat

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PoopbaLL`

Hey Sirangetta, good to see you again! Hope you're doing well. :) I appreciate the thought you put into your post, and I want to reply detail as well.

Honestly, the hard parts of this plan would be the same as any other: It's hard to get in contact with our friends of yesteryear, and it would be a lot of effort for something almost no one would see. But if you have screenshots or stories, please feel free to post them on the forums! We do read those, and I'll absolutely respond. :)

I think The Elder List was the original plan to thank those who have served RV in some way over the years. If I had to guess, I think mods/admins giving perspective on the day-to-day maintenance of RV would usually boil down to three things:

1) We were literally trying to impose order on a site with thousand(s) of teenagers. It was typically a thankless job, because people don't care if the rules are clear and there for a reason, they want to see how far they can push them, and they don't want others telling them what to do. I learned a surprisingly high number of life lessons simply from the multitude of grief that people would give me for other reason than that I was an admin, lol.

2) When the team worked together, we were able to make a lot happen, and as you said, became one of the best RuneScape fansites in the world. I remember Jackstick, Tweedy and I had very similar senses of humor and of right and wrong, and that always made it a pleasure to work with them.

3) A lot of things that people hated mods/admins for weren't our fault. (Not to speak ill of the dead, but) hiker imposed a lot of rules that simply didn't make sense at the time (he liked to give second chances that weren't deserved, which skewed how far people felt they could push the rules without getting in trouble), and Henner often imposed changes that either didn't take into account everyone else's viewpoints or outright ignored them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Apple was probably the best red-named admin we had, and if you need any more proof of that, he's still practically here daily. Anyway, my point is that people making stories of the day-to-day maintenance on RV would probably include a lot of venting, lol.

There's no audience for it, unfortunately, and all of the people that, growing up, had the free time to devote to such a project, no longer do. Game-based Wikis are the norm now. And no offense, but by posting on this topic seven years late, you perfectly illustrated what's going to happen if the site changes. :) Not enough people would notice, and it wouldn't actually serve any purpose. That's just how it is.

RV has a resting place it deserves, IMO, and it's sitting in it.

The sad-but-true fact is that RV is fading away. As time passes, auto-upgrades to certain parts of the server make everything more and more unstable. You might notice that you can't log out manually. RV also went completely down on July 19th, 2020, and although I tried to figure out what was wrong, I couldn't. It then randomly came back 8 days later on July 27th, also not my doing. Someday, it's going to happen again and that'll probably just be the end of it. I've said before that I'm afraid to perform any updates because I honestly think the whole thing will come crashing down when I do, and I won't be able to bring it back.

I still do back up the entire forums every month (see "The Story of Burks and David" global). RV is huge, though. The site has almost gotten shut down a couple times just because my hosting provider is like "wtf mate". The bigger or more complex something gets, the more risks you run when you try to change a part of it. There just aren't a lot of options (or, at least, options that are worth the time sink.)

You hit the nail on the head. 20 years ago, forums were the way to communicate on the internet. Chat rooms were radical, and the fact we had a custom one was so cool. Computer Science wasn't taught as much in schools, and you didn't have as many kids learning coding from a young age as you do now. But now, forums are practically snail mail. You have no way of knowing if the person you're trying to speak with will ever come back to see your message. I just spent 45 minutes writing this post, knowing full well that you may not ever read it.

It does feel like RV is holding onto something today's generation has no understanding of, I agree. And it's pretty cool that we're able to come back and view it. But if you want to get in contact with RVers using today's generation's tools, we have a Discord server for that. :)

"If it's still there for people that would be great" are 100% my thoughts exactly. That's why the site is still here at all. We still get people coming back every so often to say hi (like you!), and I'm glad that keeping the site up can facilitate that.

I don't think we really get a choice, tbh. Time marches on, the world continues to spin, yada yada yada. RV will never reach the heights that it once did, because the internet has changed too much. Keeping it here, for as long as I can, is the best I can do.

Thanks Phat, that echoes my thoughts pretty exactly. With one addition: When that day happens, if you're in the RuneVillage Discord, you'll at least be able to say hi to people you once knew. ;)

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.Legendary themed months are back! Maybe.

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(I wrote this before I saw Jaron's reply - so it may seem repetitive - but... anyway)


It may not seem like much, but this is our site's resting place. This forum chronicles our history in many ways that the main site couldn't. If you look us up on Archive.org and you look at our main page, it was mostly RS updates; very little to do with our actual community. RV's strongest asset was always our community. Quest guides and things like that may have been what brought people here initially, but our community is what kept people here.

For what it's worth, we have done more to preserve our history and community than even Zybez; the juggernaut of traditional RS fansites. They took down their main site and archived their forum. If you go to their forum, you'll probably see a lot more visitors than we would ever have at any given day, but we never locked our forums. They haven't had new a post in over 2 years. We still welcome anyone and everyone to reminisce, or give us updates on their lives.

Anyone who would've ever been an active member of RV, the RV that you remember, would've likely spent 99% of their time on the forums or in chat. The main site was... I don't want to say "useless," but something close to that, starting around 2008. You would never believe how much effort was put into trying to "save" the main site with projects like RV2, "The Village" etc., with a team of over a dozen people. Honestly though - if you'd told me back then, in 2008, that we'd still have a forum 13 years later - I'd have been so grateful with that knowledge alone. It would've been so relieving to know that we didn't just shut it all down and lose touch with each other.

Everyone had their own unique motivations for being a part of RV or for their often unrewarded or unrealized contributions - and for me personally - everything I ever did was just because I liked you all so much.


I don't know what any of that is (TLS/SSL), but Jaron can probably answer that (edit: he did; see above). I can tell you though yes - we are running a very outdated phpBB lol - you may have noticed broken pages here and there. It's what we can manage though, and from what I've read of Jaron's posts ... Imagine that you're a doctor, and you have a critically ill patient. You can perform surgery, but you also know that the surgery may kill them. So, it may just be best to keep them critically ill, but at least stable. That's essentially where we are right now. Attempting to fix anything may do more damage than just not doing anything at all.


I personally think that the forum existing, even in the fragile state that it is, is the most important way to preserve RV. Once again, RV was always its community. Suppose we do bring back a main site - what could it provide that our forum can't?


I mean, no one ever put an expiration date on this forum. We still have it now, nearly 20 years after it was first created. I remember a conversation from the chatroom in 2007ish, where we considered how likely-or-unlikely it would be that we would even exist (in any form) by the year 2010. Yet here we still are.

It was actually my proposal for us to do away with the main site. I think it was largely to do with finances/costs if I recall (that's a whole 'nother conversation; you can find more info about that here and here). Even back then, I really didn't see our main site as being an anchor of our community's identity. It was just sort of there, and it felt more and more like a shared obligation, or in many ways a stressor for the few individuals responsible for it. It was honestly so relieving to just be done with it, and to just focus on preserving what many of us felt was truly important.


I actually started writing this post before Jaron's reply to you, but what he said is true: It's the best we can do, and it's actually so much to be thankful for. As someone who has been with RV for over 17 years, I'm amazed that we still exist in this form, in this day. There are no words to describe how thankful I am to Jaron for still maintaining what we have. This site was a defining part of my identity for a significant portion of my life - it will never not be important to me. Thousands of forums were created around our time, and many of them don't have what we still have. Many of their users would feel so lucky to have what we still have.

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Great posts everyone. Sirangetta, I definitely get where you are coming from, having something like that would've been really nice, but the time for a project like that was probably like 10 years ago lol. At this point, its probably most appropriate to continue riding it out as we have.

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Appreciate the invite, Jaron I'll keep that in mind.

I was thinking about this topic a lot which led me to remember all the good times I had as a kid on here. Oddly enough, I don't recall any of the big drop parties or RV-wide events that I know we had... I guess I wasn't around or involved in those.

I do remember writing an article for community newspaper. Zone-ant was the guy in charge of that and I wrote (what I thought was) a funny article about him. Is there a way we can get a copy of those? I don't remember what issue or year it was so maybe it's too much hassle to obtain a copy. I remember after writing that 1 article, I knew I never wanted to do it again, because I found it super boring lol.

I remember all the drama with Humbledragon and Kanga going crazy on the forums, getting banned and going to the fagex community. Same thing happened with Petrenks, I believe. Oddly enough, I met a admin from Jaghax that was also a member of a Counter-Strike community I was apart of. We became good friends but rarely spoke about RS.

I remember getting Legends rank (shout out to XXPK for nominating me). I was super proud and happy with that rank. I thought those purple and pink cards were so cool and having access to private forums really made my day.

I remember begin asked if I wanted to be a forum moderator.. And I guess I can be honest now, but I remember that I didn't really want the role. I just wanted to see what kinds of access a mod had and what other private forums they could view. My activity waned after being modded and somehow, I ended up with an elder rank lol. I woulda just demoted my ass back to a Legend lol.

I remember Spooksprings and all his ridiculous posts that I never understood. He always had 5+ warnings and I never understood why.

I remember playing cs_assault with Jackstick on 1.6. I believe we only played a handful of times - probably because I hated that map!

I remember wanting a really high post count Can't lie, I still kinda do but I don't think I have it in me to post as much as I used to.

I remember learning that A5 and Apple were together and the whole community blowing up about it.

I remember " " being the most popular emoji on these forums.

There are more, I'm sure, but those are ones that stick out right now.

Lastly, I just want to say that I find it remarkable that I still post here and that people still (hopefully) read my posts after all these years. It really has been a ride, hasn't it?

-Phat

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PoopbaLL`