That other place down…

[724Seney]

A pity the sole FPN administrator seems unwilling to be open to help. Oh well, it's his right I suppose. Happy New Year to all!

Whether he wants help or not is entirely up to him but with the number of members who frequent the site I think it is downright rude to not let people know if there is going to be a outage of significant duration.
Of course, this is nothing new. The "transparency" of the entire FPN leadership group.....Administrator and most, but not all, of his group of Moderators..... has been non-existent for many years.
They all have had the attitude that if you don't like what they are doing, you can just go someplace else. Actually, were it not for this FPG may have never come into existence.
Quite frankly, I'd rather be here with no Administrator than be over there where everything is so heavy handed.
But, let's face it, there is a wealth of incredibly valuable information stored there as well as some amazing member-resources that one can not find anywhere else.
It would be awful if it dissolved into cyberspace.

[mulrich]

Weird that there’s no info from the site owner. Hopefully this is a short term problem and when it comes back, classifieds will be restored.

[Sailor Kenshin]

Returns a 500 error so could be a number of things. One thing is sure, it hasn't permanently "disappeared" or "gone", just a temporary outage. Too bad, I was kind of waiting for hanging out there now that I have some time to kill this Saturday (and an interesting recent purchase to chew the fat on). Oh well...there is here, reddit, and FB also (among others).

What sorts of things could a 500 error mean? In the FPN past, when it was down, we got one of those more personalized messages....'Dear friends of this fountain pen nut house...' or something similar.

[Jerome Tarshis]

Although I am not a Web professional, I can say that as a user of Web sites I consider this last to be a good point. In the past we have had an FPN screen that began with "Dear friends ...." and went on to say FPN's Web arrangements were being worked on. The same is true of many other sites that are being worked on in whole or in part: we see a screen that tells us at the very least that the page is under construction. We don't see an error message with a number.

Time will bring further realities, but may not bring a transparent explanation of what happened.

[Dirk Barcode]

Maybe we could make a group here for FPN folks to find each other.

Hey Misfit. Like an FPN lifeboat?
Permission to come aboard?
Happy New Year
(P.I.Tom as Dirk Barcode)

[dneal]

But, let's face it, there is a wealth of incredibly valuable information stored there as well as some amazing member-resources that one can not find anywhere else.
It would be awful if it dissolved into cyberspace.

I wonder if anyone wrote that stuff down. With a pen. In cursive…

[Prettypenguin]

@Prettypenguin: Are you PenguinCollector on FPN?

Yes, I am ! Funny enough, I am also prettypenguin over there, but I lost the info for rhat username in 2012 and never got to post anything. PM me on here- I have something for you.

[Misfit]

Happy New Year. I hope FPN comes back soon.

[Misfit]

Sure, and permission granted. I’ll see if I can figure out the Group formation. @Dirk Barcode

[LizEF]

What sorts of things could a 500 error mean? In the FPN past, when it was down, we got one of those more personalized messages....'Dear friends of this fountain pen nut house...' or something similar.

It means only that the server doesn't know how to reply to the request and none of the defined error messages apply. It could be that the database crashed, or the forum app crashed, or someone hacked something, or some similar problem. It could mean that Wim is operating in emergency mode and didn't take the time to post a message, opting instead to just shut some things down and work on recovery. Whatever else is true, the server (hardware and HTTP server) and domain (fountainpennetwork.com) are both there and functional, just not the forum app. My personal worry is that something crashed and Wim doesn't know yet (because he hasn't been using the site). And if that's the case, unless someone knows a sure-fire way of communicating with him, and has done so, the site could be down indefinitely until he realizes it's offline (or until the hosting service reboots something or whatever).

My hope is actually that he took things down intentionally to do some fixing. We'll see.

[Misfit]

I’ve got a group created, joining by invitation only. So if you want to join the group, it’s named FPN Lifeboat.

Since I made the group invitation only, I’ve sent out some invitations. If you are a FPN member, and didn’t get a group invitation, and want one, please ask here.

[jandrew]

I’ve got a group created, joining by invitation only. So if you want to join the group, it’s named FPN Lifeboat.

Since I made the group invitation only, I’ve sent out some invitations. If you are a FPN member, and didn’t get a group invitation, and want one, please ask here.

Hey misfit ... just another FPN refugee seeking lifeboat

[christof]

I was not very active on FPN for the last couple of years, but still contributet lots of photo and pen history stuff during more than a decade. I would be sorry to see that it got lost. My user name is the same there.

[JulieParadise]

Same here; I am Julie Paradise all over teh interwebs. ;-)

[Misfit]

I'll send more invitations. I'm not sure where they show up. Maybe those who found them can explain where to look for them. I changed the group style from invite only to moderated, so that FPN "refugees" can, I hope, request to join. It's all new to me.

[Misfit]

Same here; I am Julie Paradise all over teh interwebs. ;-)

I sent you, and several others who have replied here, an invitation to join the Group FPN Lifeboat. I loved the post you made on a thread that described living life in a liquid way.

[TSherbs]

I don't even know what a "group" is here. What is a group?

[Sailor Kenshin]

What sorts of things could a 500 error mean? In the FPN past, when it was down, we got one of those more personalized messages....'Dear friends of this fountain pen nut house...' or something similar.

It means only that the server doesn't know how to reply to the request and none of the defined error messages apply. It could be that the database crashed, or the forum app crashed, or someone hacked something, or some similar problem. It could mean that Wim is operating in emergency mode and didn't take the time to post a message, opting instead to just shut some things down and work on recovery. Whatever else is true, the server (hardware and HTTP server) and domain (fountainpennetwork.com) are both there and functional, just not the forum app. My personal worry is that something crashed and Wim doesn't know yet (because he hasn't been using the site). And if that's the case, unless someone knows a sure-fire way of communicating with him, and has done so, the site could be down indefinitely until he realizes it's offline (or until the hosting service reboots something or whatever).

My hope is actually that he took things down intentionally to do some fixing. We'll see.

Same here.

Wow! That is a detailed response. Thanks very much; I know so little about such things.

Good to see you here, too.

[724Seney]

What sorts of things could a 500 error mean? In the FPN past, when it was down, we got one of those more personalized messages....'Dear friends of this fountain pen nut house...' or something similar.

It means only that the server doesn't know how to reply to the request and none of the defined error messages apply. It could be that the database crashed, or the forum app crashed, or someone hacked something, or some similar problem. It could mean that Wim is operating in emergency mode and didn't take the time to post a message, opting instead to just shut some things down and work on recovery. Whatever else is true, the server (hardware and HTTP server) and domain (fountainpennetwork.com) are both there and functional, just not the forum app. My personal worry is that something crashed and Wim doesn't know yet (because he hasn't been using the site). And if that's the case, unless someone knows a sure-fire way of communicating with him, and has done so, the site could be down indefinitely until he realizes it's offline (or until the hosting service reboots something or whatever).

My hope is actually that he took things down intentionally to do some fixing. We'll see.

Most probably already know this but @LizEF is one of the "good guys" (I hope to say it that way is ok) over at FPN. As a Moderator, she is always friendly, approachable, helpful.
Thanks Liz, the input & perspective you have provided in this post is definitely appreciated!

[junglejim]

New Message up at FPN. They have a file with some database corruption and are working on it.