Modern Vespa

I have failed to reach Modern Buddy for a couple days now. Changing browser makes no difference. All I end up with is

Don't know the problem, but others on Facebook pages and the like are experiencing the same issue with MB.

I hope it hasn’t been hacked into oblivion. MV obviously shares the same (rickety, insecure) infrastructure.

I've emailed Jess.

I understand both were originally based on the same software. My impression is that MV has had more patching done over time to address issues than MB. And it is certainly fair to say that MB has had a much worse problem with spam posts in recent years than has MV. I think that is most likely the result of MV having a larger and more dedicated team of moderators than does MB. I hope Eric will turn things around over there, but I am not optimistic.

Wasn't MV member Ericalm MB's "owner"? Anyone PM him from MV and ask "What's up? Miguel

The root page has a message which sounds hopeful. So for those that use it there is hope.

http://www.m.modernbuddy.com

Modernbuddy.com is temporarily down for essential upgrades and maintenance. We hope to be back up and running by Wednesday, November 18. Thanks for your patience.

Thanks, Harbinger.

Yes, he is. I did PM him, but Eric is not really engaged all that much with MB these days and he did not respond.

I can't imagine the traffic to the MB site is that much and I can see where interest is low for the owners. Please don't take that the wrong way, I'm just being pragmatic. TBH I'm supposed MV has been around for so long as I do not really see a large revenue stream. I imagine there is some, at least enough to keep the site alive. I know many of us would give money for a "premium" membership but that hasn't happened.

This is also the problem with anything online. There is zero guarantee they will be around forever and one day we may wake up to see MV gone for good. I don't see that happening (I hope!) as there is so much valuable information on the site for owners of Piaggio vehicles.

As an aside does anyone own the G400C ? It looks like an Interesting starter bike.

Anyway regarding this I wouldn't panic until after tomorrow. From the info I pulled it looks like someone has carved out the time to have a look at it.

You are certainly correct. The number of posts on MB has dropped substantially in the last several years. A combination of less interest in scooters and alternative on line sites such as Facebook groups. And it isn't just scooters. I am a coffee nut as well. One of the best sites around has been CoffeeGeek. The number of posts are way off and the site owner is planning a major upgrade of the site software. He says the the cost of parts of the upgrade and the declining interest in using the Forum portion of the site means he will probably discontinue the Forum by early next year.

Running a forum has for a long time been either a labor of love, like MV, or an adjunct to a business, like AF1's Aprilia forums.

But with a little bit of effort (occasional ad placement and/or soliciting members for donations) they can be kept current without being money pits.

The content and network built up on Modern Buddy, like Modern Vespa, is quite remarkable. Facebook Groups are a terrible substitute. I hope efforts are made to pass the baton on them before the current benevolent dictators decide to throw in the towel.

Last time I was on MB they had those fake Nike post popping up left and right. Someone would clear the spam and it would be back in a few days. And think about it, if scootdawg is still around then MB should be as well. I'm hoping its just down for a overhaul and I no longer even own a Genuine product.

MB wasn’t overrun with spam, there would be a post or two every few weeks, but there were three in one day before the site went down, which made/makes me worried.

Not sure if MV fends those off any better by design, or if the moderators are just quicker to act. The best-run forums I participate in require a user’s first several posts to be approved by a mod before they become visible. This cuts spam to zero, but definitely requires a degree of mod time and attention.

Mod's don't have time to look at all posts. The mods are volunteers and have another life too. We can help them keep MV span free. Click on the "Flag" tag in the upper right of someone's post, it gets sent to a mode to report spam, personal attacks, politics, guns, religion, etc. Mods they can take action from there.

Best
Miguel

Last edited by Miguel on Wed Nov 18, 2020 6:07 pm; edited 1 time in total

Modern Buddy is even more genteel than MV these days. Whenever I see a flaggable post there, somebody beat me to it. It is getting slow there, but I still check in every day.

MV has good defences against spam. The only way any gets in is when a spammer makes the effort to register. This requires a human, and time, so we see very little here. Also, MV members are very quick to report it when seen!

I'd be surprised if MB didn't have the same safeguards as MV.

While I wasn't a member, I was aware of totalruckus, which was a huge scooter forum. It's gone too. Many of the established forums are running on very old, creaky software, where there's not a lot of effort by the developer in keeping it up to date anymore. And a lot of the founders of the forums have moved on or lost interest. It's not that easy, fast or free to move everything from one platform to a new one like Discus or one of the open-source WordPress platforms, which are being actively developed. Another of the big factors driving declining membership is probably that so much personal computing has gone to phones, and most of the well established forums don't have a good mobile interface. That alone would bring in a lot more members.
Otoh, if you know how to get things like this done cheap, you could probably move a huge site like MV or MB to a newer platform, and keep your content, for around $5K. All that's involved is the $5K, one person in charge of the project, hosting space and the willingness of the site owners to make that transition.

And don't forget Zumaforums. I think they went to Face Book only. I don;t do FB.

I've done that with my own forums over the years and it never cost me more than $500.00 (plus the monthly dedicated server rent but the ad revenue pays for that and then some). I moved what's called a big board (a forum with more than 1 million posts) for a guy once and charged him 1200.00. It takes only a day or so of down time. I don't know how you came to your 5K cost but it's just not that expensive for a forum the size of MV (or, I assume, MB). However, if "cheap" is at the top of the criteria list, then it will very likely become quite costly in the future. You do get what you pay for (but not if you pay too much).

It will be sad if MB goes away. It's been a great resource over the years. A lot of helpful people with tons of knowledge interact there.

A Buddy 125 was the first scooter I owned, I was convinced by the wife to buy a scooter instead of a larger bike, because she bought a People 150, she said we could ride together so I got the Buddy and we have been riding scooters together since.
Enjoyed the site and I hope it continues; I remember riding with Ericalm at AMERVESPA in 2009 Los Gatos CA. with my newly kitted 125.
The forum was a great learning place for scooters great people – I hope it stays together.

So, is it time to panic now?

The message at modernbuddy.com has been updated to Sat the 21st. Keep breathing!

Not sure about that. He was our wiki moderator for a while.

good to see that it's being worked on...i thought it went down as well

I think Jess started/created MB and turned the day to day running of it over to Ericalm. From what I can tell Ericalm is not involved in MB for some time now.

Ericalm updated the software - MB is back, baybee, in full living color (blue).

Oh, thank the heavens!

Looks good, but I'm having trouble logging in.