To all users of the forum,
We will be shutting down the forum at
https://forum.historic66.com/ on May
24th, 2018.
As a replacement, we will be providing our users and visitors with static
FAQ content on
https://www.historic66.com/faq/ and move the questions and
help area to our new facebook group at
https://www.facebook.com/groups/historicroute66/ .
The reason for this move is twofold.
- First and foremost there is new legislation ("GDPR") in Europe coming
into effect on May 25th that is next to impossible to comply with for a
forum based on phpBB. The combination of software that's nowhere near up to
the extreme requirements of the regulations, the risk of monster fines (up
to 20 million EUR) is just not feasible for a small operation like we are.
- The second reason is a slowly declining participation of new users in our
forum. Forums are on the way out, social media have been replacing it
rapidly, and esp. for younger populations a forum isn't what they seek any
longer.
We do fully understand the irony of a law that's being sold to the public
as having the goal of protecting your privacy forcing us to make you give
up the safety we were offering and move instead to Facebook, which is not
particularly known for caring a lot about the privacy of its users.
We have looked at alternatives, but could not find any that would work out.
The legislation has a lot of press coverage -not always equally accurate-,
but in the end, the requirements of it are just not possible to be met with
the current versions of phpBB, nor is there any hope for a new version that
would allow it. Moreover, the legislation does require things of us that
are just not compatible with running a forum. Just as an example: it would
force us to wipe parts of discussions on a simple request of a user,
orphaning the rest of the discussions and removing the value that old
discussions have on forums for future visitors.
We have had prior changes in the past, and they each time turned out for
the better:
- The website started in 1994 and had a contact form for a while.
- The form was enhanced to become a guestbook in 1995
- In the fall of 2004, we couldn't fulfill the needs anymore with a
guestbook, and we migrated to a phpBB based forum
- And on May 24th, 2018 we'll move the forum to a facebook group.
So we ask you to visit our new facebook group, sign up and we'll see you on
the other side on or after the 25th.
There are obviously other facebook groups already active on various Route
66 topics. We, however, hope to create a friendly, open group where newbie
roadies can ask questions and get help as we have been doing on our forum
for quite some years. I sincerely hope we can retain the current moderators
during this move as well.
The website
https://www.historic66.com/ will remain active, although it
will have some minor changes by May 25th as well to conform to the GDPR
requirements. It's only the forum part that will send you to the facebook
group at
https://www.facebook.com/groups/historicroute66/ from then on.
Hoping y'all understand,
Thanks, The Forum Management