The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

First of all I want to thank you for your work administering the forum and thus allowing all of us to share information about our hobby here. It is very much appreciated.

This open message was triggered by the recent creation of the UK sections of this forum. Please don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with these sections, even though I personally did not see a need for them. I am a bit surprised how easy it was to have them created. It only took a couple of comments of one or two members in one single thread to make this happen. This is encouraging.

Over the last several years there were many discussion requesting the resurrection of the Archives section of this forum, especially the Featured Phonographs part. Many forum members have asked for this and several - including myself - have in discussions or PMs offered to help with the work associated with keeping the Archives organized. Unfortunately we never received any response. From my point of view the Archives section is of much broader interest and in the long run much more valuable to the hobby than a specific UK section. It could grow into a real treasure trove of information not available anywhere else. So may I please ask again respectfully to resurrect the Archives section and Featured Phonographs archives below? If there are specific reasons why this is not possible, then please let us know the reasons. If the constraint is workload, then please consider accepting offers for help.

Thank you very much.
Andreas

Nobody has mentioned the Archives section to me since I've been "in office". What would you like to see done with it? Currently, it looks like it's just a collection of links to featured phonograph threads and a couple of manuals.

Sorry, I forgot that you only recently joined the Admin team. There were many such requests and discussions over the years, often in discussions about forum spammers.

The intent with the archives section was to provide lasting documentation. The Featured Phonographs section there was supposed to give a quick overview with pictures and links to all Featured Phonographs by type. Currently I have to search the whole forum in order to find this information, that's why there aren't many new Featured Phonographs anymore.

There was also an initiative by MordEth started over 3 years ago to collect scans of all kinds of manuals and documentation from forum members and to share them in the Archives in an organized manner. You can find these discussion topics on the first few pages of the forum. There are many such scans etc hidden in discussion topics and nearly impossible to find. It would be great to combine such things in the Archives easy to find for everyone.

Again, based on many such requests in the past I assume that this is something many members are interested in. I certainly don't want to cause a lot of work if it's just me, so let's wait for others to chime in.

Thanks again for all your hard work supporting us.
Andreas

HMV, I too would like to see Alang's request implemented, as I believe others would. Having the manuals and such consolidated would be great but I think of even more interest would be to consolidate the "Featured Phonos".

This has been unattended for quite some time and could be a lot of work though. I would certainly be willing to help, if that's even feasible given that I'm pretty "technically challenged". I'm guessing there might be others too, again if technically feasible.

One simple suggestion might be that you invite the membership to bump any thread they feel merits archiving for your evaluation. That might be of some help to you.

I too thank you for your work administering the forum, and for your patience which must get tried at times! It is very much appreciated.

I'd be more than happy to add things to the archive if there are some members willing to help find links to threads that should be added. I will start a new thread in the archive forum for this purpose.

Thank you very much HMV. That's a great idea and hopefully a good way to get this accomplished over time without too much work for you. I really appreciate all your hard work around here.
Andreas