-
Some interesting insight, cheers. I'm not surprised if it's starting to creak a bit, can't imagine it's been updated much in the last five years. The blog does show that he did certainly put a bit of thought & work into it. I've been the same with projects though, start all energised & keep it up for a bit, then lose interest as time goes on as the cost of maintenance builds up.
Didn't realise the bot situation. Wouldn't have thought it'd be that bad, it being a relatively niche site, but I never really hung around the forums.
I do remember there being some other site with a similar idea - being able to post pictures of bikes with some annotations - can't think of the name of it for the life of me though. It was a bit flash, but it was nowhere near the functionality of PR.
Aye, the community & that catalogue of builds is a huge loss. Always worth remembering how lucky we are to have @Velocio!
You are reading a single comment by @GideonPARANOID and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
GideonPARANOID
slothy
Coomer – the guy who "runs" it – posted on the PR forums maybe 6 months ago (I forget exactly) that he's been very busy, but now promises to come back to it after a short vacation. That was his last post, maybe he never got back from the vacation. That thread was bumped up nearly 500 times (not kidding), and meanwhile it started to dawn on everyone that he just deserted the whole thing. There was also an infestation of bots during Coomer's hiatus, creating random threads and "talking" with other bots, quite amusing/terrifying actually.
Anyway, the site was down quite a few times this past half a year, and the updated/added bikes thing never seemed to operate properly. Sometimes weeks would go by without any bike updates, then in one big burst you got all of what had been added during that time.
There was a little bit of discussion about creating something similar because obviously PR was abandoned completely. That discussion may be taking place somewhere I'm not aware of, now that PR is dead. It's a shame too, the community had put so much time and effort in to displaying those thousands of bikes and imo the interface was a good one.
I can pretty much guarantee there's a market if someone cares to set up something that works as well as PR did. The most important things imo, would be to spend a lot of energy on spreading the word that there's a replacement, and have an insane amount of patience to build the community back up. It's a massive catalogue of pictures, parts lists and bike appreciation that's been lost.