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.Joel

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  1. Like
    .Joel got a reaction from bakersdozen in Restoring 15 Years of Kite Reviews   
    Huge thank you to @bakersdozen and all his help. 
    Today we finally got the number or reviews categorised and organised under 1000, we now have 999 reviews to go  
  2. Thanks
    .Joel got a reaction from Olof Palmolja in Restoring 20 Years of Kiting History   
    For me personally my kiting habits changed, I went from kiting every weekend to taking 'Kiting Holidays' where I'd go away 3 to 4 times a year for 1 to 2 weeks.  For a lot of people they become active around one of these holidays where everyone meets up and then it drops off again inbetween.
     
    I think that may be one of a number of different changes coming together at the same time, where individually they may only impact 1% to 2% but when added together the percentages became significant.
     
    They'll all come back as well, there were no less than about 200 pinned discussions that all had to be unpinned and slowly they'll com back as they're merged.  In some cases we had a discussion pinned on Extreme Kites, one on KiteCrowd then one on RaceKites which would result in 3 discussions covering the same topic at the top of the forum. 
     
    Go for it. Wander and mingle anywhere you like  
    I know a lot of websites have a heap of rules around replying to old topics etc. I'm taking a completely different approach and welcoming it. I feel we're past the point of doing things the 'old way' and it's time to try a different approach.  For some reason there's been this concept that once a discussion reaches a certain age and lacks replies it becomes a portrait, a Mona Lisa as such and shouldn't be altered, lets try taking the other approach and just welcoming replies and see if that results in a more engaged community  
     
    That is the wizardy of @bakersdozen and when he wakes or checks this discussion next he'll notice another one just appeared from the RaceKites Forum Indexing about 20 minutes ago which he'll merge... hint hint  
     
     
     
  3. Thanks
    .Joel got a reaction from king.module in Restoring 20 Years of Kiting History   
  4. Like
    .Joel reacted to Offshore in Restoring 15 Years of Kite Reviews   
    It was nice to see an email ping into the inbox that a review of mine had been reviewed... all those years ago in midlife crisis land - Racekites was THE community and I was one of the early joiners and became one of Alan’s moderators... great to see all the content hasn’t been lost. High point in my kiting was co-organising the 24hr at Hoylake that broke a distance world record and had kiting catapulted into mainstream BBC national news... 
    Nice work here... well done! 
  5. Thanks
    .Joel got a reaction from bakersdozen in Restoring 20 Years of Kiting History   
    For me personally my kiting habits changed, I went from kiting every weekend to taking 'Kiting Holidays' where I'd go away 3 to 4 times a year for 1 to 2 weeks.  For a lot of people they become active around one of these holidays where everyone meets up and then it drops off again inbetween.
     
    I think that may be one of a number of different changes coming together at the same time, where individually they may only impact 1% to 2% but when added together the percentages became significant.
     
    They'll all come back as well, there were no less than about 200 pinned discussions that all had to be unpinned and slowly they'll com back as they're merged.  In some cases we had a discussion pinned on Extreme Kites, one on KiteCrowd then one on RaceKites which would result in 3 discussions covering the same topic at the top of the forum. 
     
    Go for it. Wander and mingle anywhere you like  
    I know a lot of websites have a heap of rules around replying to old topics etc. I'm taking a completely different approach and welcoming it. I feel we're past the point of doing things the 'old way' and it's time to try a different approach.  For some reason there's been this concept that once a discussion reaches a certain age and lacks replies it becomes a portrait, a Mona Lisa as such and shouldn't be altered, lets try taking the other approach and just welcoming replies and see if that results in a more engaged community  
     
    That is the wizardy of @bakersdozen and when he wakes or checks this discussion next he'll notice another one just appeared from the RaceKites Forum Indexing about 20 minutes ago which he'll merge... hint hint  
     
     
     
  6. Thanks
    .Joel reacted to Khonda in Restoring 20 Years of Kiting History   
    Again Joel, thanks for all you’ve done. I have now spent a few hours reading through and it really brings the memories back.
     
    what amazes me though is how extremely the popularity dropped off. It went from most users implying they spent most of their disposable income on kiting and all their spare time thinking about flying or flying, to most accounts stopping just a couple of years later. I certainly saw a lot less people about flying over this time as well. How can so many people just stop after spending such large amounts of money. Any theories? Any first hand experience?
     
    my theory is that fixed bridal technology kinda peaked at the point the blade 5 came out and most serious kiters were tempted by the depower route and then onto the water where lots are still now. This then eventually led to a much smaller market for fixed bridal which in turn makes the sport less appealing for newcomers due to cost and lack of choice.
     
    the reason this particularly interests me is that I had a break due life commitments of about 10 years and then came to find it had all gone with no explanation! Great to see a potential resurgence though.
     
     
  7. Thanks
    .Joel got a reaction from andy666 in Restoring 15 Years of Kite Reviews   
    Just a small update  
    Reviews have been imported quite successfully, a handful of these will need manual cleaning up so I've created a little label that just has 'pending cleanup' on there.
    On the bottom of all the reviews imported from Race Kites there will be something similar to what's here:
    \

    I'm estimating I'll have the reviews accessible to everyone over the weekend, just a few small things left to clean up which I'll do after the kids go Zzz each night.
  8. Like
    .Joel got a reaction from Mfwetu in Restoring 15 Years of Kite Reviews   
    Just a small update  
    Reviews have been imported quite successfully, a handful of these will need manual cleaning up so I've created a little label that just has 'pending cleanup' on there.
    On the bottom of all the reviews imported from Race Kites there will be something similar to what's here:
    \

    I'm estimating I'll have the reviews accessible to everyone over the weekend, just a few small things left to clean up which I'll do after the kids go Zzz each night.
  9. Like
    .Joel got a reaction from Radian2x in Restoring 15 Years of Kite Reviews   
    Just a small update  
    Reviews have been imported quite successfully, a handful of these will need manual cleaning up so I've created a little label that just has 'pending cleanup' on there.
    On the bottom of all the reviews imported from Race Kites there will be something similar to what's here:
    \

    I'm estimating I'll have the reviews accessible to everyone over the weekend, just a few small things left to clean up which I'll do after the kids go Zzz each night.
  10. Thanks
    .Joel reacted to Radian2x in Restoring 15 Years of Kite Reviews   
    Fantastic news! I loved RaceKites... such a good resource. Thanks for doing this :) 
  11. Haha
    .Joel reacted to king.module in Restoring 20 Years of Kiting History   
    Most excellent work .Joel 
    I was on the flexiforum right back when it was just a black thread based system and there right till the end of kitecrowd (one week there … next nothing but the main page... no warning or anything).
     
    Made a number of life long friends so has a very special place in my heart.
    Still fly but not so often these days
     
    good on you mate!
     
    (now where's my avatar? - lol)
  12. Like
    .Joel reacted to nigel in Restoring 15 Years of Kite Reviews   
    Thank you Alan for the huge effort over the years. 
    Thanks .Joel for bringing, and restoring, the kite world together. 
     
    What a mammoth site this is going to be if you like power kites!! 
    (someone might think I like emojis) 
  13. Thanks
    .Joel reacted to alanshort in Restoring 15 Years of Kite Reviews   
    Joel, thank you for what you are doing for the kite community. Very happy to be a part of rejuvenating this incredible sport.
     
    Alan / racekites.com
  14. Like
    .Joel reacted to Guy Ward in Restoring 15 Years of Kite Reviews   
    Alan is a top bloke.... I contacted him a few years ago  to ask if I could reproduce some race kite flags .not only did he give me permission.. he also sent me the pdf files for the logo...  it's fantastic all the useful  information  well be preserved .. well done 
  15. Like
    .Joel reacted to bakersdozen in Restoring 15 Years of Kite Reviews   
    Another big move in the direction of greater good for the whole land kite community worldwide. Onya @.Joel
    And a big thanks to @alanshortfor allowing us to carry on his hard work.
  16. Like
    .Joel reacted to slide in Restoring 20 Years of Kiting History   
    that would be great and the imformation is absolutly massive , you could get it all really - in the very early days there was a huge amount of pictures from the early blade days i would love to see them , i'd look at it most nights after tea i'm talking many years before kitecrowd-that was the beginning of the end but good luck what ever you can get -it would be good to bring back the early days even for a moment the bullet had just come out and i got a red 4.5 and a early green flexdeck
  17. Haha
    .Joel reacted to Kozzie in Restoring 20 Years of Kiting History   
    Heckas leckas 😁
  18. Thanks
    .Joel reacted to igeighty in Restoring 20 Years of Kiting History   
    Amazing,!
  19. Thanks
    .Joel reacted to Pari in Restoring 20 Years of Kiting History   
    Great stuff Joel.
    Most impressed with your dedication and expertise.
  20. Thanks
    .Joel reacted to Bobby in Restoring 20 Years of Kiting History   
    Joel, you man are doing a great service.  To see those Flexifoil Foil posts of mine from 10 years ago brings a warm glow.  Makes me want to buy back my 4.7 Blade 2 and get wrecked by that mean machine again.  I grew up on those forums, from static flying, to land boarding and then onto the water where I still am.  The people on those forums helped me every bit of the way.  I never went the social media route when the forum died, I thought the collective togetherness could never be duplicated on facebook.  I so wanted the forums to rise again.  Then I received your email.  Man did I smile.
    Thank you for this.  I just hope this all comes together and some of the stoke those old forums created flows into this site.  It sure was a great friendly virtual bunch.  Let's do this.  You've doing the hard work by breathing life back into what was a great scene, now all of us need to do our bit and create the vibe it once was.
    You get 5 stars Joel.
     
  21. Like
    .Joel got a reaction from andy666 in Launching the Library : Downloads   
    Huge thank you to @andy666 and @Mfwetu for your amazing contributions to the library. 
    I've slipped the first Magazine in there today  
     
     
  22. Like
    .Joel got a reaction from RedSky in Restoring 20 Years of Kiting History   
    Some of the content is starting to appear in the main Forum sections, there's about 1.7M posts and I've moved a good bulk (bit over half) of them at the moment however it's going to take the server quite a few hours to index and rebuild those topics after being imported and then complete the other half.  It's also busy merging account statistics from people that had accounts on both websites. 
    Tomorrow (technically today) I'll send out a Newsletter explaining what has happened and welcoming the old KiteCrowd members. I thought I'll hold off that until the system catches up and reindexes everything properly first  
     
    Smartphones also played a significant part.  Typically people on handheld devices aren't going to contribute detailed posts, they'll tend to consumer more and gravitate to things like videos which they can click and watch.  Where they do contribute a reply it'll typically be much briefer and less detailed than if they were on a PC/Laptop.
  23. Like
    .Joel reacted to RedSky in Restoring 20 Years of Kiting History   
    Wow, that graph really tapered off to nothing. It feels accurate with my own experiences and of buggy friends who drifted away. Social media fragmented the forums but I did not follow them onto those platforms so I stayed and watched it get quieter and quieter.
    I'm optimistic, however, that the sport will one day make a return, because no matter how sophisticated people become in their lives, there's nothing like harnessing the power of the wind for a free ride. Just as there'll always be sailing, so too will the possibility of kite traction. It has a future, it will be rediscovered and they will see how we did things way back when and learn from our deep knowledge of the sport. They will be grateful to you Joel for having the foresight to save this resource during the sports infancy. 
    We should consider ourselves therefore, the founding fathers of the sport. We were there at the beginning, we led the way, we contributed our experiences for future prosperity and we should continue to do so while we still can.  I suspect that in 100 years time that graph will take on the appearance of a continuously repeating sine wave, which of course would be perfectly apt.
     
     
  24. Thanks
    .Joel reacted to Khonda in Restoring 20 Years of Kiting History   
    Hi Joel, I’m really impressed and thankful for what you are doing.
    I flew power kites from 2003 to about 2012 but after breaking my leg (not kite related!), starting full time work and having kids I sort of forgot about it. However about 2 weeks ago I found my old blade 3 4.9 and took it for a fly and had an absolute blast! I then had I look online to see what has changed since I’ve been away and am very disappointed! What happened? Flexifoil more or less gone, the forums disappeared and barely any second kites available.
  25. Thanks
    .Joel reacted to Mfwetu in Extreme Kites moves to .ORG   
    This is a fantastic initiative @.Joel. The new format is great - easy to navigate and a real treasure trove where anybody with even a remote interest in kites and kiting can lose themselves for hours. What I particularly like is the welcoming and inclusive message behind it. Well done and a massive Thank You! 
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