Uncreative Labs

Joined: 17 Jan 2012 Posts: 1 Location: South East, USA

Wow.. I'm so happy this place is still here ! A lot of changes.. and I remember when Peter and Steven were the administrators on here. Who is running the show now?

I still love legacy hardware and software.. I wish I still had my old xt's and AT's ..

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

A group of us got together around '04 and purchased the domain after Peter & Steven grew tired of keeping it up. Puckdropper is the "great guru" here, but others of us provide support. Feel free to contribute any info you feel relevant. There's (sadly) little traffic these days, which undoubtedly indicates that low-end PC's aren't as popular as they once were...

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

There is plenty of old PC talk at The Vintage Computer forum actually (multi platform forums tend to get more members).

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

Actually the interest in vintage PCs has increased. The traffic has just moved elsewhere. Probably the two best places to go are vintage-computer.com and VOGONS

Joined: 10 May 2008 Posts: 62

I would have to agree that interest in vintage computers has increased and will continue to go strong. Just look at eBay.

Old commodore 64 computer that I could pick up in the mid 1990s at Goodwill for $5 each fetch ten times that or more today.

Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 5:27 pm

What could we do to bring some of the traffic our way? I'd love to see UCL grow to the point where we can once again discuss old computers on a regular basis and help newcomers learn about computers.

Joined: 21 Dec 2005 Posts: 66

Tough call ...

VC Forum does so well because it has critical mass. On the other hand, that much traffic has other problems. I run a PCjr specific forum - tt also has minimal traffic, but the topics are so tightly focused that it makes sense.

Answer the question - What makes UCL different? Then the answer will come ...

Mike

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

Back when I joined the VCF it was nothing special. Forums live and die by knowledgeable people not by traffic in general (you just end up with people coming to seel things and spam). Having a greater topic section helps since people tend to collect more then one platform but that also causes problems because you will lose focus.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

I posted a long description about floppies and flappy problems and wor-arounds
it was DELETED
because the moderatpors dis not seem to undertand what it was about.
that was enough for me.
I have not been back for a very long time.
I decided help or valid information was not needed or welcomed
if everybody there already knew everything.
my attitude " go figure it out for yourself"

Joined: 21 Dec 2005 Posts: 66

Unknown_K wrote:

Back when I joined the VCF it was nothing special. Forums live and die by knowledgeable people not by traffic in general (you just end up with people coming to seel things and spam). Having a greater topic section helps since people tend to collect more then one platform but that also causes problems because you will lose focus.

Agreed, but having critical mass kind of solves the knowledgeable people part. I think that VCF probably has some of the best technical people in the hobby, except for the CCTalk list which often devolves into off-topic madness. And yes, we do get the clowns and scammers too. I know you haven't been thrilled with that aspect lately, but the situation is correcting itself ...

So forget VCF now because that is not the question. (And we're off topic for this thread, so really, who cares ...) What's the niche for this group? What makes it special? Answer that correctly and then you'll know what to do about traffic, or even if you want more traffic.

Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2012 5:29 pm

It's funny how things work these days on the 'net. Even though we can visit practically any site any where in the world at any time during the day or week, we still tend to visit a select few and at pretty much the same times and days (generally speaking of course). It's like hanging out with a group of friends at a bar or club. You have many in town (if it's of some size) to choose from, each with their own aspects but you tend to hang out in the same one or two favorites.

With these vintage computer forums it's much the same. Most of them are like this one with a group of regulars who come here because of the established friendships and familiar interface.
The crew we have here I believe is similar to what many of us had with the OCHL. When the actual site went down, the core group of regulars found another site which was familiar enough to them as far as the interface and continued their activities there.

Of course there are the "happening" places that people visit because "everybody goes there" (facebook anyone?) or because the site owner bought a better spot in the search engine ratings.
You also have a greater chance of finding an answer to an obscure question there too simply because of the greater volume of people visiting there.
VCF is an example of the latter. Nothing wrong with VCF, especially if you want to meet new people and ideas. People find the VCF because search engines show the highest traffic sites first, thus creating a self generating loop fueling even more traffic. That's how money is made on the web. I believe that's what's meant by VCF having "critical mass".

I found this site originally because of a search engine years ago. At the time it was visited as much as any other site in this category so it would show up near the top results. Remember, at the time that this and many similar sites were created, there was not that much interest in old computers. We were a strange and small group in the general scheme of things and most of us were here because we recognized the the value that these old machines still have as computers, plus we like to tinker with things. Now we have lots of obsolete PC (and other platform) interest because of NOSTALGIA. People are graduating college, starting families, starting to make real money and want to recreate some of their cherished memories from childhood (generally speaking of course). That's what's driving prices up on this stuff into the $100's that we used to get for $5 at the Goodwill or even at the curb waiting for trash pickup.

Looking back over this post I realize I've kind of rambled on a bit but I'm trying to cover what I see as the foundation of what drives traffic to these sites in the first place. Do we want more traffic? The answer to that would be found in the answer to the question: Do we want to change the very nature of our "hangout" and invite the general masses into our sanctuary? Especially, do we want to make money with this site or are we happy with things as they are?

Perhaps this needs to be in it's own thread?

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

no this has to do with the site and hpow folks use it.
I see little spam here as the moderators seem to be able to weed it out.
I know some here are on Vintage
I am on sevral other formums of different configuration
I am comfortabel with this format sand appearance.
but so,e others like yahoo are not really to my liking
but I still read and posst there.

I see a lots of folks trying to do things with an xt that were never attempted befdore
and I give them credit for trying,
like putting an ide drive in an xt, it requires more effort than it may be worth.
I still have some MFM drives resting in a box.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

Looking at the stats I joined here in April 2007 and have 248 posts (#7 of posters). I joined VCF in Sep 2003 and have 3644 post there (#6 of all time posters).

I have 4004 post on 68kmla.net which makes me #4 on the list of all time posters (joined in 2007 but was a member of that forum before the last crash and rebuild).

I am #28 in DOSgames.com forum but rarely post there in years (566 posts joined in 2002)

1366 posts on EAB (English AMiga board which gets me to the middle of page 2 in post count). Rarely post there anymore but I do read it. Joined may 2002.

So if anything I have been posting in forums for 10 years and do quite a bit of posting.

Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 3:26 am

I'm fine with a thread drifting myself, but if anyone wants to start a new topic feel free.

Do I want more traffic? Yes. I'd love to have a couple active threads each day.
Do I want the site to make money (as one of the guys who takes care of it)? No.

I had this as my Usenet signature for a while, it sums up UCL's mission statement pretty well, I think:

Quote:

Old computers are getting to be a lost art. Here at Uncreative Labs, we
still enjoy using the old computers. Sometimes we want to see how far a
particular system can go, other times we use a stock system to remind
ourselves of what we once had.

Joined: 03 Jan 2008 Posts: 8

Nice to see UCL is still up. I've just been cruising through some of the older posts anonamously and was greeted with "You are banned banner contact administrator" banner.

Is there a time limit or number of posts viewed for anonymous browsing?

I certainly with the above comment that interest in older kit has increased.