Please keep our Gasroom going Doc 🙏
This request is to @drcongo . You have no doubt created the best football forum in the UK and we will miss it very much if allowed to disappear from our everyday lives.
Please reconsider even if as a new subscription only forum.
I am sure others will be hoping for a positive outcome and we sincerely appreciate what you do/have done for us doc.
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Side note: Sorry for the downtime, we've been under some kind of attack. I think I've now mitigated it.
With regards to the future of the Gasroom, this is the sort of thing I spend my time doing to keep it up. I know a lot of you find the gasroom useful / fun / life-changing (delete as applicable), and I know a lot of you appreciate the efforts that go into keeping it running. I now also know that a lot of you don't, and the number that do appreciate it is declining as they get hounded off the site by those who don't.
On top of everything that's gone on here, there's also the Online Safety Act to consider: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/12/20/death-of-a-forum-how-the-uks-online-safety-act-is-killing-communities/
The OSA is an incredibly badly written (thanks Tories) piece of legislation that becomes law on March 16th (thanks Starmer) and makes no distinction between global platforms like Facebook and a one-man-band like the Gasroom. Complying with it would require expensive technical considerations (like scanning uploaded files, private messages etc.) as well as actual staffing. Failure to comply holds the threat of up to £18M in fines and a possible prison sentence. As outlined by the owner of the LFGSS forums, the biggest problem with this stupid legislation is that it's possible for it to be weaponised by disgruntled users. Until recently I was, perhaps naïvely, thinking I could probably ride it out and trust gasroomers not to try to bankrupt me and send me to prison, but as mentioned above, our more empathetic users have been leaving and the risk to me personally increases every time that ratio shifts.
Like many of you, I would love the gasroom to continue, especially for those for whom this is something of a connection back to the club they love when they're unable to get to games through distance, health, or any other reason.
There's still potential for a re-born Gasroom 3.0 under new management, I'm happy to hold on to the domain and re-point it at a different server run by someone else. I can't hand over the DB though as that would be bit of a legal minefield, so Gasroom 3.0 would need to be a new platform, with new owners and the post history on here will be erased. I'll try to hold out long enough to allow this to happen so that nobody is left without their scheduled match day threads. Sadly, I suspect the future will need to be via a hosted platform like Discourse where they charge enough that they can accommodate the OSA.
Sorry this post isn't good news, but if we can find a way to get its successor up and running, then it's not the end of the road and I look forward to being just another poster who can be banned just like anyone else.
As they used to say in the comics 'Cripes'.
Can't say I fully understand the legislation around all this...but fully understand your plans (legal and emotional) to get out of Dodge @drcongo
Thanks for all your hard work.
Thanks indeed. It’s been an absolute godsend. I sincerely hope that (a) you will soon have an enormous weight off your shoulders and (b that a Gasroom 3.0 proves to be à practicable proposition.
Not sure how that grave accent got there.
It's a very grave situation, @micra.
Thanks, Doc. It was great while it lasted.
I wish I could help with something @drcongo but my IT skills are stuck in the ZX Spectrum era.
Thanks Doc for all you have done, very much appreciated. As has been said before, design wise it is the best football forum out there.
With a historian's hat on, I feel that I should try and download everything on the Women’s thread, as there is data and information on there which is nowhere else. The FA Full-time site has wiped data from some seasons.
Thank you for the explanation @drcongo
Thanks for the background @drcongo - sounds like a tough situation and regardless of what happens, thanks for sticking so long with what I can only imagine often being an utterly thankless task, the maintenance and admin probably being enough as it is, let alone taking shit from those who don’t understand that nothing truly comes for free.
Just to reiterate that I am happy to chip in with an actual contribution (beyond waffle, pedantry and and meandering verbiage) should Gasroom 3.0 take shape.
This really sad news, for you for all the years of work you've put into making the site so good, for the Wycombe fan community and for forums generally. But thanks for making the Gasroom such a great place over the past decade. Many, many people really do appreciate it.
With all the associated risks for anyone running a successor it sounds very much like a potential end for an independent Gasroom (as well as countless other hobbyist forums) and the end of a glorious era. Many thanks to the original Gasman and to @drcongo for the time and money they have put into the Gasroom over the years, and thanks to everyone who has contributed and made it such a delightful place to visit and waste countless hours.
I’m sure @drcongo will tell me why it’s an awful idea but could we set up a Gasroom subreddit?
Ah, this is sad news indeed ....Communities like this are rare gems. I wonder if an email newsletter based on something like Substack might work as a sort of Gasroom 2.5. It wouldn't cost money and it'd at least allow for anyone to keep the community together and the lines of communication open if/when a better solution appears. At the very least, we /I could run the two prediction competitions, have a matchday thread and a weekly open comment section that way ...
If people think that idea's worth pursuing, I can open a thread.
This is absolutely mad. Sadly so many laws are being drafted and approved by parliament without sufficient MP scrutiny nowadays. The OSA is clearly a prime example. What a huge shame
Thought I would pop by to say thanks to @drcongo for making the Gasroom a great place down the years. And goodbye I guess.
I've been avoiding the place for a couple of weeks now. Debate turned to vitriol far too quickly and no one needs that, least of all the poor guy trying to run it out of the goodness of his heart. I will always be thankful for the chats and exchanges we had on here. Stupid comments (by all, very much including me) were met with gentle steerage rather than abuse and that made the Gasroom quite special. We've been through some amazing times at the club over the lifetime of the Gasroom and I hope that this place will serve as some form of archive to those mad events.
Signing off with a heavy heart but grateful for the good times.
Thanks for all of your efforts over the years @drcongo, it really is very much appreciated !
Like others have said, this forum is top notch compared to other clubs, which are just full of annoying adds etc
I was kind of hoping it would all just blow over and carry on, but I totally get your reasons for doing so. Many thanks again.
Personally I had no idea at all this new legislation was a thing. Ignorance is no excuse, I know, but then I don't contribute to any other online forums and don't use Faceache / Twitter / X / etc.
I can now fully understand why you simply can't continue to run this site, @drcongo.
Sad news indeed.
Edit: What's a subreddit or a substack? I've had a substack overflow cause my PC to crash but I suspect that's not the same?
Forgot to say - I'm not viewing that March 16th date as a hard cut-off - I really don't want to shutter this without somewhere else for us all to go to. As much as I hate Reddit, @Chris's suggestion might be the best option for keeping something running without some heavy costs. I'm also talking to one person who may be able to set something new up, but there's probably a fair bit for them to think about first.
Substack's a subscription newsletter company/service. It lets you compose an article , emails it to a mailing list of subscribers and hosts a comment section underneath any given article for you. So it'd allow for a regular discussion forum of sorts, plus emailing out prediction threads and match day threads consistently , and it wouldn't cost money in any meaningful way. (The company makes its money by taking a cut of the subscription earnings of political journalists and internet celebrities , but hobbyist newsletters are free and plentiful ) . It'd be bare-bones compared to the work of the good doctor, but it'd allow the conversation to continue and the community to stay in touch..
This is such sad news. As I have mentioned many times this is the only social media I indulge in. No Facebook, twitter, instagram and not even WhatsApp. Thank you @drcongo for all you have done hosting and managing this forum and thanks too to the vast majority of fellow chairfolk who have contributed to mainly well reasoned debate and discussion. I will miss you all.
I was so concerned today that Gasroom2 had gone for ever leaving the group high and dry and me not knowing where to turn.
Thank you @drcongo for being the unsung hero of the group for so long. I completely understand why it may be time to terminate the site in its current form.
I hope we can all pull together to keep together in some form down the road.
2025 ey? What a time to be alive.... censorship and bullshit is taking over the world.
There are still many gasroomers like myself that appreciate no end what you do.
I hope an answer can be found and the gasroom can continue in a similar format for us diehards to enjoy and take solace from the stresses of day to day life.
I hope it is appreciated that this site is an avenue of escape for some of us.
When life gets tough.... the gasroom Is where I come to decompress. To take my mind off reality.... to be in a safe place with like minded FRIENDS.
LONG LIVE THE GASROOM!
@drcongo you are a legend 🙌 👏 ❤️ 💙
You are going to look a right ninny this Friday when WWIII starts and all the internet is destroyed.
Except 'The definitive ex-player news thread'. Nothing can destroy that.
Just a thought.........Bargepole?
Thank you @drcongo for creating such a fantastic forum for us all. It’s hugely appreciated by many.
I'm optimistic we’ll find a solution for a Gasroom 3.0, fingers crossed. As mentioned before happy to chip in with a monthly fee if that helps.
First is a heartfelt thanks to @drcongo, 💙. You sustained one of the best communities there is. I am sorry for your loss as well as I am for my own loss and everyone else's.
@railwaybeth has explained to me how a Substack would work similarly to Reddit but the admin and moderation burden would be less because you would only be handling a single comment section at a time. What you wouldn't have is everyone wouldn't have the right to start a thread, but it certainly would be possible for anyone to suggest titles / subjects for a new thread (newsletter).
It would seem a bit less immediate than what we have at the moment but at the moment I think we mostly only have immediate chatter on the Match Day thread and it might have been a bit of an advantage not to have had such immediate comments during the Great Bloomfield Debate.
It would be a terrifc shame to lose this community entirely for all armchairpersons, chairboys and chairgirls and chairlift enthusiasts.
Thank you@drcongo you deserve a medal.
I have set up this as a backup https://www.reddit.com/r/Gasroom3/ but hopefully we won't have to use it.
Well that didn't work
Don't post a knob pic next time
That's a relief as just one look had me in a state of panic Mr Mainwaring.
A short note to add my thanks to @drcongo for the site he has hosted for a good few years now. As you say, it is a vital tool for those of us unable to visit the ground on a regular basis to remain feeling part of the club. It would be such a shame to lose it.