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Tiger Owners Club Website demise
Schrodinger - 12/12/22 at 11:16 AM

Does anybody know what has happened to the Tiger Owners Club website.
I can see that the owner of the site has pulled everything but I don't really understand why!

christim - 12/12/22 at 01:25 PM

Sounds like the owner has made his point. Quote:

Thanks for nothing!

Despite putting in countless hours and hundreds of pounds of my own money into running the Tiger Owners Club forum, not one person had the courtesy to mention that there was a "new" home for the Tiger Owners Club and that they were just using this forum as an archive of historical information.

I therefore no longer see any need to keep funding this "free" resource and archive and have deleted all content and all backups.

Please do not attempt to contact me about this, the decision is final.

I hope everyone enjoys their new home.

overdriver - 12/12/22 at 02:59 PM

I don't quite understand the context of the message. Is the 'new home' a rival site? If so, I'm not aware of it.

Or does it refer to the TOC forum itself and the owner is bemoaning the (perceived?) lack of the word being spread since he recently revised the site?

All perplexing and rather sad.

Schrodinger - 12/12/22 at 04:15 PM

I've searched and I can't find any other Tiger Owners site, not for kit cars at any rate.

snippy - 12/12/22 at 06:35 PM

This is all a bit sudden. I'm a regular visitor to TOC and was only checking recent posts a few days ago. All was well and I saw no evidence of any other Tiger Owners site being set up. I've been a member on there for about 16 years and this is all very sad. Most forums require finances and dedication to run them. I dont have those skills but I had previously suggested that we all paid an annual club fee to help towards the running costs. This never happened. Why didn't the forum owner ask for someone else to take it over rather than just pull the plug? I feel sorry for anyone mid build, there was a lot of useful information on there. I have watched the forum decline though over the years with very few threads being posted these days. LCB is similarly a lot quieter these days.

I have just looked around the Web and found a Tigers Owners Club UK & NW Facebook page. I suspect this might be whats made him flip? The NW Tiger club has always been an active club with many runs out. If i lived nearer i would have joined them years ago as there is no local active Tiger club near me. Maybe adding 'UK' to their FB page is the reason? Maybe someone from the FB group can comment......

Myke 2463 - 13/12/22 at 08:29 AM

You could try the East Anglian Tigers Owners Club https://www.eatoc.org.uk/index.shtml for info. All makes of kit cars welcome.

Monthly meetings at the The Old Ferryboat
Holywell
St Ives
PE27 4TG

Mr Whippy - 13/12/22 at 09:03 PM

Weird the above Quote isn't on the site

linky

I can understand the cost thing, even running a computer 24/7 must burn through a lot of money.

christim - 13/12/22 at 11:01 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Mr Whippy
Weird the above Quote isn't on the site

linky

I can understand the cost thing, even running a computer 24/7 must burn through a lot of money.


Yep looks like the site owner has updated the announcement. Agree with the cost (and time)...sites aren't free to host so the money has to come in from somewhere

coyoteboy - 14/12/22 at 12:19 PM

quote:

I don't quite understand the context of the message. Is the 'new home' a rival site? If so, I'm not aware of it.


It'll be Faceache. All the car forums are going the same way. Open a facebook page, get super simple engagement with short-term engagement, everyone drifts across and the knowledge, real interaction and quality goes through the floor. 2 years later the forum closes, the facebook group is full of "which wheels?" questions and folk asking the same thing 10 times a week, and no social continuity.


quote:

I can understand the cost thing, even running a computer 24/7 must burn through a lot of money.


It's not the cash IMHO, I ran a site and forum for a small car group (1500 members, 100 online at any one time in the evenings) - ran quite happily sharing my 7$ per month virtual private server with my other sites, basic adverts covered the cost when I bothered to push for it but most of the time I just swallowed the cost. What miffed me the most was everyone moved to the faceache group, then when one person disliked the faceache group, they made another, then someone else made another, now there's 10 of them and all are really poor quality. That and the fact that it took genuine time from my free time to keep operating, updated and secure, and everyone just dropped it at the drop of a hat.

[Edited on 14/12/22 by coyoteboy]

overdriver - 14/12/22 at 08:26 PM

Quite agree re. Facebook. I have a particular loathing of the medium and only use it through necessity (e.g. British Embassy notifications here in Spain). I have looked at the Tiger Owners Club NW site and see that there are a few names familiar from TOC Forum. This presumably is the 'new home' referred to by Paul (TOC Forum site owner). I am sure that, like me, many people only viewed TOC NW and EATOC as additional entities which did not exclude or replace the TOC Forum.

I recall that Paul was upset on a couple of occasions by certain contributors comments and actions and he put in a lot of work to re-constitute the site recently due to hosting shortcomings. He was persuaded to do so by numerous members offering encouragement, appreciation and support. Whilst he may feel let down by the apparent or perceived migration to TOC NW, many loyal Forum members will feel abandoned by the rather draconian termination.

Perhaps all is not lost as the current notification on the TOC Forum reads as follows:-


"The Tiger Owners Club Forum is closed temporarily for maintenance.

Please check back later.

We wait and see.

[Edited on 14/12/22 by overdriver]

[Edited on 14/12/22 by overdriver]

contaminated - 15/12/22 at 11:27 AM

quote:
Originally posted by overdriver


Perhaps all is not lost as the current notification on the TOC Forum reads as follows:-


"The Tiger Owners Club Forum is closed temporarily for maintenance.

Please check back later.



It says this when you go to the downloads section.

11/12/2022 - The Tiger Owners Club Forum is now closed.

Running a forum requires not only a significant amount of time and effort, but money too, and the decision to close the forum has not been taken lightly.

Unfortunately, the existing arrangements were unsustainable and, despite giving the forum a stay of execution a couple of years ago, as well as ample opportunities for somebody else to take on running the forum, nobody came forward.

I would like to give my thanks to those who, over the years, have provided their time, advice and knowlege to assist all our members, as well as to those who have made financial contributions. Your support has been much appreciated and I can only apologise to you for this decision I have made. Also, for those who have made financial contributions in the past 12 months, I will be contacting you individually in due course to offer a refund of those contributions.

Paul, (ex) Forum Admin.

overdriver - 15/12/22 at 11:42 AM

I appreciate the clarification Paul.

Please accept my appreciation and respect for the enormous time and effort (not to mention financial resource) you invested in the site. I'm sure I speak for the majority of contributors over the years.

Thank you and best wishes.

Michael.

snippy - 15/12/22 at 09:16 PM

I notice that Paul has also shut down his own Web site zetec-cat.co.uk citing continued theft of his resources from the site. There's clearly a bigger picture to this. It was a great site for any zetec installation information.. Farewell Paul, wish you well for the future and thanks for your efforts over the years.

ken555 - 15/12/22 at 10:12 PM

https://web.archive.org/web/20220331072639/http://zetec-cat.co.uk/

Nothing disappears for the web

James - 16/12/22 at 10:09 AM

Gotta agree about the awfulness of FB as a medium for on-going discussion and knowledge storage.

Let this be a lesson to all of us here that it's use it or lose it and we need to keep using LB and donating or it may go.

If you haven't donated recently- please do!

coyoteboy - 16/12/22 at 01:08 PM

quote:
Originally posted by ken555
https://web.archive.org/web/20220331072639/http://zetec-cat.co.uk/

Nothing disappears for the web



Does when it's behind a membership wall 70% of my forums sit behind membership-only access, so even the wayback machine bots can't waybackitup

MikeR - 20/12/22 at 09:39 AM

I'm sure Paul used to come to the meet up I organised 10 to 15+ years ago.

Nice bloke if I've got the right person.

It's frustrating as people generally are less and less willing to help out in my eyes. See this all over, why scouts, football etc.

Schrodinger - 12/1/23 at 04:18 PM

Looks like it's up and running again.
Thanks Paul

Schrodinger - 17/1/23 at 10:18 AM

And now it's totally disappeared

loggyboy - 17/1/23 at 10:49 AM

This is like complaining you dont live in mud huts anymore. FB is a huge resource and just as valuable as any web base forum, what any person with half a clue would have done would have been set up a facebook group that promoted the forum based owners club rather than competing with it. I float through forums and FB groups equally and still subscribe (paid) to the forums that I regularly use. You cant copyright a group of people getting together to chat about a commonly favoured subject, nor throw your toys out the pram when it doesnt go your way. There are ways of locking unpaid members out of certain pages of a forum so if the owner felt the need to protect the content then simply charge a small fee to use, most users will pay, as this site does, despite being like the Mary Celeste for the past 5 years.