What happened to 5arts.info?

[NewMan]

I was informed it had closed down. What's the story behind? Anyone know? High operation cost???

[throosden]

Noticed it too. If it stays down, then thats a fairly large public repository of information about the 5 arts lost.

Seems like it is not the first time ...

[The-Monk]

Noticed it too. If it stays down, then thats a fairly large public repository of information about the 5 arts lost.

It's not really lost - not directly at least. Most of the older .net posts was from the web.archive and it was paywalled on the .info forum; so it wasn't exactly publicly available anyway. A suggestion that Puppylove made to help the community keep the hope alive that all is not lost.

Any of the newer information posts that made up the early .info forum until recently however, may be lost if the posts were hidden, but if I were to be honest, how much of that would be a real loss to the community at large?

Even then, any remaining posts that were left open, should be recoverable through the web.archive again.

Seems like it is not the first time ...

.net was taken down because meek felt in their journey that .net was holding them back. And so they took the course of action that would free them from it.

.info I am unsure, it has had outages like this before, but it was remedied previously in a couple of days; it has not had rolling on weeks now worth of down time, so it's currently down status over such a lengthy period of time is a first. The domain name was renewed before the outage, so it didn't seem like any lapse in getting it back up was originally intended. But most certainly, there appears to be no sign of effort to bring it back online that we as users can see.

If I were to guess, a variety of reasons began the slow decline of .info over the years where it may not be economical or productive to keep it running (in no particular order):

1. Loss of professional service.
2. Loss of well informed users willing to share.
3. Mismanagement of forum goal
4. Mismanagement of forum expansion (economical/costs).
5. Mismanagement of forum user experience (transparency/lack of rules/favortisim from greed).

Of those, I would say the biggest problem, was the mismanagement of the forum goal that ultimately lead to decisions being made on the various other factors, that slowly bled the .info site down.

There was plenty of cheer when .info was revealed to have taken on the mantle of the then lost .net forum. It was touted to be a continuation, but better, with less restrictions and rules but with the same function as before, so users were expecting more of the same but on a better scale. Initially, this was the case, but it soon became apparent that the lax rules and the decisions made were letting the rot slowly creep in and nothing was being done about it; there was a good reason such strict rules were in place in the original .net site. It wasn't perfect, but it helped weed out undesirable users from infesting the other users on the site.

Anything on the internet that is hosted has bandwidth requirements and costs. Use more than what is available, and the site goes down, either from lack of available bandwidth remaining or the server has fallen over somehow.

However, as was revealed late in the life of .info during one of their off the cuff blog style posts pleading with the community to stick with them, the management ultimately had very different goals in mind for .info compared to .net.

For their time and money put in for the community, the management did not just want to recoup costs that are needed to run .info, they wanted more from it; not just much sought after information (that they paywalled in some instances but they themselves were able to read freely), but also influence (the owner of the new hub of fivearts, that professionals and experts were wanting to advertise their services on, etc) and also money (paywalling, central hub offering services and advertising).

This lead to a decline in typical forum experience standards in the drive to increase brand awareness of .info, and on came the pitting of users against each other to drive content creation (for advertising, and unique user counts) and hoping to get users into providing more onto the forums to drive ever more users and professionals into signing up to this hub.

In order to keep the increased amount of users accessing the forum (and thus keeping up advertising revenue), the management would have needed to invest into hardware, servers and services to allow the greater amount of users continued access with as little downtime as possible. But this is a spiraling pool that has no end to it, as the .info site itself is only a hub and forum exchange; it did not create anything of value on its own (not that you could not have copied elsewhere online) outside of help from forum users (that management had alienated). So whilst all the management goals remained the same, all it could do was keep the expanding (to maintain revue to offsert costs) until it popped.

First the knowledgeable users left. Then even the frequent fivearts users reduced their visits to the .info site. Then of the last few years, the paid service (professional) users left as well. (For various reasons)

This ultimately left the .info site with extremely high running costs from the now increased exposure of the .info brand over the years, but there is little new revenue generating content and potential advertising revenue. So there's high outgoing costs, but a lot less coming into the purse.

Without changes at the highest levels over there, it would only have been a matter of time before economics takes over and it reaches the closed state at .info.

A sad reality unfortunately, but good reason on why due diligence on at every level during business planning is so important.

[TaiYin]

This is sad.

There are so much valuable information in there.

I wonder how much does it cost for them to run forum / host forum. I believe I've seen them seeking people to subscribe for the forum premium access as means to help their cost in the past. They could have done this I suppose.

I still hope it will be up and running.

[NewMan]

I think there is a yearly maintenance cost and sunny might have difficulty paying up. Last I heard he live in West Malaysia? I m not sure if that is true?
Maybe he had hard time finding job to support his living expenses. Closing it down might be cost cutting as it didn't earn him any income.

[NewMan]

I think forum might be old tech in getting Bazi info. Now many young people choose to use Facebook to share info. And it free.

[The-Monk]

I think forum might be old tech in getting Bazi info. Now many young people choose to use Facebook to share info. And it free.

Possibly.

But Facebook is not exactly free either or directly different either.

1. They're owned by a third party company that does not necessarily owe any alleigance to you (the user).
2. You (the user) can be banned in both instances.
3. You can hide posts on forums and on Facebook (privacy), so no different there. Just the process is different. (Those thinking they can delete everything if they revealed too much, the same also applies here for both, so long as both are reputable).
4. Facebook is not accessible everywhere (China for example, where there are some seriously knowledgable people about). Otherwise, a forum is as free as Facebook.

There are likely more identical circumstances, but it basically boils down to there being little to no major difference whether you use Facebook or a forum overall.

Except... on Facebook, you not only can be banned by the group, you can also be banned for other reasons (by Facebook). This means that there are more ways to lose access to posting and reading on Facebook than there is on a forum potentially. But overall however if there is no faults done by the user, it should (as said) be largely the same.

So if you prefer Facebook, but all means use Facebook. If you prefer forum, use a forum.

[aicai]

Does anybody know what happened with the fivearts.info forum or how to contact the owner in this regard? Thanks.

[Gmuli]

There are so much valuable information in there.

Yea, but forums Resource is the community in it. With good enough people we can talk about the weather and will be fun. I think we lost that there, long time ago, and since then its been... Less fun.

If it opens again... Well, in my view it has been dead for a while... Though I did write with the other nick even at the end, but it did feel like it was empty for a long time already...

To get it back working well... I guess will need drastic change in how things are done in there. But I can't imagine that happening, as I imagine things were done that way for a reason, so fresh start and more focusing on the community seem the only way, or at least the easiest one. But who knows. not up to us I guess.

[aicai]

It would be nice if some translations could be recovered from cache.

On the other hand, if anyone knows a way to contact the owner, I'm pretty much sure that even a single 5 years sponsor subscription could cover some hosting for the time being.

[The-Monk]

It would be nice if some translations could be recovered from cache.

You might be better off asking for fellow forum users to help provide useful explanations instead. For if you think about it; if the translated material that was shared was good, there would be plenty of copies around. Yet if it was not, then it begs the question of how much value there was in the translated material in the first place.

On the other hand, if anyone knows a way to contact the owner, I'm pretty much sure that even a single 5 years sponsor subscription could cover some hosting for the time being.

I am certain given the traffic that .info was experiencing, $50US would only cover a month at best and likely not even that. And that is assuming the issues that .info is experiencing is hosting costs.

There is also the small possibility, that it might be legal as well. As there was a shady practice that the management there turned a blind eye to that could land them into hot water legally; sharing of copyrighted material. And not just any sharing; quite often it was entire works that was being shared around. Initially, early on the .info site, such practice was frowned on and proactively stopped. However, as management took the forum to a particular direction, this was even promoted. If the issue was legal, then $50US wouldn't even begin to make a dent into the costs involved that way.

And finally, near the end of the user visible side of .info, it was starting to be plagued by spam posts. And those posts did not have anything done about them. This is often one of the bigger signs that management has basically given up on the site. So it may not be something you can convince them to return to unless if there are many hundreds or thousands of users willing to sign up for the 5 year subscription at $50US.

[Gmuli]

Interestingly enough, we actually had plans of making a forum some years back...
The idea was to gather the people that had their own communities or at least strong enough interest based on the Five Arts and try to provide them support/environment to work together for the common good on one more, although bigger place.

So in here todays landscape that could be something like different people leading different sections of the forum, right now:
Jlim leading section for blindstyle,
aeonrel for 5 elemental style
Ren could lead TCM section etc.
Won't list others as this is the people we still have here, but I think people get the idea.

If more then one can always either make 2 sections for a topic or leave 2 people co-moderating it. If not enough - no problem, the more people agree the easier will be for the rest, but not only because its good for exposure or advertising, but hopefully because it can become something worth being part of.

While I think our intention was misunderstood very early on in that and now is impossible to do that for countless reasons, someone else still can.
As in my humble understanding when something becomes so big it doesn't need more control it just needs structure. And that is assigning the leaders to their own sections and living it to them to keep it alive, healthy and well.

In my view the problem with the Five Arts is that its too split out and everyone keeps their stuff seperate as much as possible. While the good stuff happens when people, systems and teachings come together, usually. : )
And while that idea was abandoned long time ago for us, if someone wants to resurrect something with that size I imagine approach like this can still work.

[tyc]

IMO, I highly doubt Gmuli idea would work in a large scale without any form of compensation structure (it'll work in a small scale structure). 

Anyway, just my opinion & sad to see the other forum not working out.

[ren]

Hey All,

I guess I will throw out my opinion on the Fivearts forums.

It is sad to see the Fivearts.info site go off-line, and I think recently the site started to expose some weaknesses.
- I don't believe the site owner was technically skilled in the five arts or what his interest level was.
- There were no technical or policy moderators.
- The site did not have someone watching and promoting the site on a regular basis.

- The original fivearts.net was run by a devout five arts practitioner. He supposedly walked away when it was no longer beneficial for his personal grow and development.
- 5Arts.net had a number of high level technical moderators.
- At the time of 5Arts.net there was no facebook or youtube. The platform was the only place to gain exposure and 5arts knowledge. That is not the case anymore.

So with the fivearts.info and maybe even here, people come here to get their chart read and people come here to provide readings.
For me, that is tiring. There is little knowledge sharing / discussion and the people visiting / using the site are temporary users – they may only be here for their short term personal benefits, not to help build the five arts knowledge base or communities.

That said, I am grateful for JLim to continue to provide this space. Following Gmuli thoughts, if there is a way to assist to make things more usable, I would be happy to help.

There is some nice stuff on youtube these days. I like the idea of people sharing links and other material here.
I personally don't like Facebook, it is too busy with stuff all over the place. And I have not found the group section easy to follow or all that useful.
I don't know if there are any Chinese 5Arts sites / forums.

It would be nice if the fivearts.info site came back online, even if in a read-only static mode.
I guess, no need to build out a new forum, I would think. Just keep contributing here.

JMHO,

Ren

[Gmuli]

tyc : I'm big fan of open source. We put a lot of effort on the things we love and the moment we start doing it focusing on profit it gets corrupted, already. Doesn't mean we can't profit, though, but not as the main motivation, if we want to continue loving what we do.
In my humble view, practice has shown that people that will join only for $ are lead by wrong motivation and is unlikely to manage to be able to sustain good community in their own section. As they tent to always want more, so just a matter of time before it breaks apart as well. So not big loss if someone refuses because of that , it wouldn't have worked anyway. And if not enough agree, then yea, not a great idea in Five Arts context, still. Someday, maybe.
 
Yet that doesn't mean the forum shouldn't support its people,though, the way it looked the big forums always pulled away when they shold have supported  its members and eventually lost them all.

So the middle path as usual, good idea to support the people writing in it, as of course they could be somewhere else doing something else that could be profitable... But if they are doing it for profit its unlikely to work out, either.
At least that is how it looked, though. I think that may not have been what actually happen, but can only comment on what I saw...

ren:
Facebook has other problems. : )