Hihi! Not much to talk about these days since seemingly everyone else moved on...

There won't be much new after the new year
https://4taba.net/news#note10

>>3

I hate to see it. ;_;

These communities are special. They are a unique part of internet history. Sadly, as time goes on they slowly die or become unusable... I can understand the admin for finding it to be a pain to moderate after so many years, but it's sad to see when they feel it's time to step down. Would be nice if they could allow some people who have been part of this side of the internet to assist in moderating, but I know it can be hard to trust total strangers on the internet.

yeah, that's why I'd pick archive and i'm not so strapped for cash that I'd have to put it onto a kissu subdomain or host it out of one of our home machines

The thing is that you need to check the site every day. The spam, sometimes of illegal stuff, outnumbers actual posts this year 20 to 1, if not higher.
Some very slow boards have a "receive mod approval before post is visible" thing going on, notably 1chan, but it would be a waste of effort to write new software for this place that people liked for its old style anyway.
People should just talk about places to find each other or something and maybe once/if this place goes read-only that information can be stuck somewhere? I don't know.

>>6

That's true. I find the most upsetting thing is that from an anthropological perspective, these communities are very interesting glimpses into a very, very, very short moment in the history of the internet on one of the most niche platforms (text/imageboards) that has ever existed. Stuff like this will never really have its time again. It will slowly die out, just like dial-in BBS boards, Usenet and heck sadly even IRC these days since Discord really pulled people away from that. Once it's gone, it's gone. It's not like there will be a permanent archive in some museum for the next 500 years though it would be cool if there was.

I can understand and accept that places close and aren't going to be forever, especially in the digital world. It's just sad to see. I'd love for these places to stay around forever, but yeah it takes a dedicated person or few to be willing to check for spam and maintain it. It is possible, for sure. I mean you can still dial into old BBS boards that have been running since the 1980s because there are true oldfriends who never wish to see these places get lost to time.

I could totally afford to host just about every existing text/imageboard that's still out there for decades...but yeah having to check for spam is irritating, plus fixing bugs. I used to own an imageboard maybe 10-15 years ago and while it didn't get spammed really often, there was still an obligation to check every day just in case and while it was easy, it felt like a chore. Either way I hope this place does stay open for posting for some time (pretty please, admin). Or hopefully it can actually be passed onto someone else to take the reigns. If it just goes read only until the server expires and goes offline, I hope at that point at least the archived content can be put into a compressed archive file and released into the wild (hosted on Archive.org, torrents or for anyone to rehost their own) just so that this little piece of human history - as seemingly irrelevant as it may be to most people - can be preserved as a historical artifact of early-mid 2000's internet.

>>7
>Stuff like this will never really have its time again
Hmm, although that is likely true, it's not a guarantee. Some people are attracted to "retro" stuff which unfortunately does entail this kind of thing. I saw a commercial the other day for a Samsung flipphone.
Sometimes I feel a desire for more of these places to shut down so people can congregate into a few of them and keep those active, but I doubt that would actually fix anything.
It was kind of surprising when this place became semi-active again during covid, although it was mostly contained in a "free thoughts" thread. I wonder where those people went and if they ever think of this place.
It really, really sucks that so many of these places end up dying either directly or from frustration because of all the illegal spam. I wish there was a solution to it that everyone knew about and worked on finetuning together. You can block the urls or words, but they'll find new ones. You can try to do image hash bans or OCR or other stuff but they'll also find a way around that.
The only solution is the 1chan thing where they require a human to approve the post before it gets seen, and maybe that is the only real solution.

But... yeah, the main thing is just the lack of people. Admins would have more motivation if they felt that they were serving a purpose.

I had to rollback a few days due to backup issues.

I'm designing some utilities for Kissu to handle CP and they'll end up being a bit platform ambiguous(with some tweaking). So if it can do the task of automoderation I'll consider keeping things as they are.

At least Verniy is trying.

The current state of things does make me feel a little guilty for only really checking here every couple of months - sometimes close to a year - when I'm in the right headspace.
Growing older, I really lost interest in participating in actually valueable ways on the internet, but it just feels really nice to come back every once in a while to a place that is actually civil, honest and sincere, with mostly likeminded people even, even if I'm just reading through a couple posts before doing something else again.

I really do hope that taba will continue to stay up in a way that allows for communication. My thinking right now is that - since I assume losing the contact to these people that enjoy a comfortable, old-styled place is the greater fear in contrast to just losing one of many oldschool websites - perhaps it might be nice to at the very least implement a very barebones way of communication into the archive, if it really does have to come to that. Something like a small guestbook that doesn't allow links and attachments. The idea being that, that way there would still be a miniscule chance to see each other again on other places, just by sharing and discussing them. I guess it would also be possible to just create a D-word server and create a 24h-limited invite on a certain date, so to only catch those genuinely interested in not losing everything, then use it to further communicate and find a / new places together. Hold your pitchforks though, just spitballing!

how old is taba anyhow

About seven-ish years, I think.