When did this Luftwaffe forum start?

[Ruy Horta]

It may be an odd question, coming from me, but I have absolutely no idea!

The earliest date I can find regarding the old BBS is Nov. 17th 1997, but I was hoping someone could perhaps help me narrow it down to the starting date (which according to my E-mail history might be close).

Nevertheless it is with pride that I look at that date.

Nov. 17th 1997

That's almost 7.5 years of active discussion.

Some of you have been with me from the very first hour!!

Guess we are married, since it appears to be through good and through bad times.

Sometimes you need to take some distance and see the total picture.

7.5 years

That's something we've achieved together as a community and something for which I'm both thankful and proud of.

This community driven forum means absolutely nothing without all of you, its members, and I'd like to thank you, all of you (but with an extra warm smile to the old guard) for your continued support and friendship.

[edwest]

Speaking for myself, you are very welcome Ruy. I do not have other people I can talk to about this topic and I have learned a lot.



Warm regards,
Ed

[Andy Mac]

Well. I know I joined in 1998, because I found TOCH when we binned AOL and went to another ISPN.

All I can say is



WOO HOO ! !



toch ROCKS BABY

[David Ransome]

Hi,

And I wish that I had found it earlier than I did, same situation as Ed, there is no-one locally that I have to talk to regarding LW issues!

How sad!

Keep on Toching!

Regards,

David

[Ruy Horta]

Well to give a little back ground.

There was a time when I used to love Newsnet, when I came first on the Internet in 95/96, but the historical newsgroups became intolerant when it came to the Luftwaffe. Half of the discussion was based upon how anyone in his right mind could be interested in a Nazi instrument of war. It didn't help if the odd neo-Nazi popped up and started stirring things up.

The noise over data ration became terrible, too much energy was wasted in self defense, too little was gained in terms of knowledge and/or fun.

But IMHO the basic Newsgroup type of BBS is still the best discussion medium, but that is a different story.

Scot Rose had an E-mail newsletter (maybe he still does), which was nice, but not the most efficient way of having a discussion. Of course that wasn't his fault, but that's how E-mail newsletters are.

About that time a friend of mine, Gregor Rozman told me about the free service of Server.com and that's how the old BBS came to be.

Fortunately my old website* had attracted some interest and that's how people started to populate the forum. It didn't take long before the BBS became the primary part and my website secondary.

I think 2000 was the last time I did something with my site and that was mainly cosmetic

When the current forum is basically set, I'd like to start on a fresh website.