ACF before the Y

[Exit Stage Left]

ACF soldiered on for a while. It had grown out of Bikereader. http://www.bikereader.com/BikeReader.html
So it was attractive for those who liked longer pieces, and they tended to straddle ACF and YACF. But a forum is a technical artefact, and ACF became unstable. It was frequently down, and that was its downfall.

It always fancied itself as the literary salon of cycling, and it might have occupied that niche if it had a stable platform, but it didn't.

[Legs]

Goodness. He's not impressed by the similarities, is he?
http://www.anothercyclingforum.com/yetACF.html

Bluddy heck!    Is this a real person expressing his true sentiments, or is it just a piss-take?  If the former, I think he needs some serious counselling. 

[red marley]

Yes a real person who is a member of this forum and friend to several here.

[Jurek]

Thanks for that jo. You took the words out of my mouth.

[Si S]

Yes a real person who is a member of this forum and friend to several here.

That was kind of the point of my post.........too subtle?

[Exit Stage Left]

Phil Chadwick was my route into ACF. He alerted me to the discussion about the DVD I'd made of LEL 2005. Around then I got access to Broadband, and that opened up ACF.
I'd been writing stuff for Arrivee, so ACF was a natural progression. I had very little contact with Sam, but he was very encouraging. ACF seemed to be an intermediate stage on the way from moderated fora to here.

[Kim]

I think you can't blame those of us who weren't there at the time for being a little curious.

That's fair. 
And it's not come up for quite a while now.  I'm totally over it and can't be bothered any more, but I think it's legitimate discussion now. 
Like history.  It's so old it's begining to appear in some GCSE history text books.

As someone who wasn't around at the time, but came to be involved in the YACF community, it's occasionally handy to know what brush you're being tarred with by those who are conspicuously absent from it.

Those who erase history are doomed to repeat it.  (TBH, I've been on the internet long enough to reckon we're doomed to repeat it anyway, but that's no reason to give up.)


I don't know Sam, so can only judge him by what he's written.  It seems quite similar to the semi-coherent ramblings of other forumites that I find tedious but others appear to find entertaining.  He may well be a jolly nice person, but I've yet to meet him^[1].  I do know that many people I consider friends think highly of him, yet I'm also familiar with the principle of "The friend of my friend is not necessarily my friend; the friend of my friend is quite often a tit."


_{[1] We may have passed each other on a bike ride at some point.}

[Legs]

My point stands, particularly in light of reading your linked thread, Si S.  I have no axe to grind at all with Sam, but he quite clearly needs help getting over his issues.  That he has friends on this forum is a positive thing. 

[hatler]

What's left of ACF - http://www.anothercyclingforum.com/

... and an explanation of the migration - http://www.anothercyclingforum.com/curious.html

I liked it there but it was run by a "benign" dictator who didn't like the way things were going [the use of smileys!].  He threatened to pull the plug and YACF was set up as a "lifeboat", which was necessary in the end.

Most people jumped ship to this place which was very similar in many ways and it's evolved from there.

It's possible to get an idea of who the 'jumpers' might have been by looking at the member listing here and sorting on Date Registered, so that oldest members are at the top.

There are many people still here who jumped, and the ethos cultivated at acf is still broadly apparent here, which is nice.

[SteveC]

Although I wouldn't call myself a 'core' member of YACF, I've been around since the days of the C+ forum, then when that got disrupted by being merged with the other magazine forums I migrated to ACF. I didn't get involved in much of the acrimony but eventually was 'banned' (I don't post that much and with most of my contacts having been removed or having left of their own volition there was less reason to post so I presume I got labelled as 'not active enough'). So I ended up in YACF.
Someone mentioned Ravenbait up thread. She started her own forum a couple of years before YACF. I was recently re-reading some of the postings there and I had forgotten how wound up people got over the way ACF was being run. We're all much more mellow these days.

[mattc]

Does no-one remember CF before the Y and the A ??

[Mr Larrington]

What's left of ACF - http://www.anothercyclingforum.com/

... and an explanation of the migration - http://www.anothercyclingforum.com/curious.html

I liked it there but it was run by a "benign" dictator who didn't like the way things were going [the use of smileys!].  He threatened to pull the plug and YACF was set up as a "lifeboat", which was necessary in the end.

Most people jumped ship to this place which was very similar in many ways and it's evolved from there.

It's possible to get an idea of who the 'jumpers' might have been by looking at the member listing here and sorting on Date Registered, so that oldest members are at the top.

There are many people still here who jumped, and the ethos cultivated at acf is still broadly apparent here, which is nice.

Or were thrown overboard over the Easter weekend of 2008.

[Basil]

Or were thrown overboard over the Easter weekend of 2008.

The night of the long knives

[Von Broad]

What's left of ACF - http://www.anothercyclingforum.com/

... and an explanation of the migration - http://www.anothercyclingforum.com/curious.html

I liked it there but it was run by a "benign" dictator who didn't like the way things were going [the use of smileys!].  He threatened to pull the plug and YACF was set up as a "lifeboat", which was necessary in the end.

Most people jumped ship to this place which was very similar in many ways and it's evolved from there.

It's possible to get an idea of who the 'jumpers' might have been by looking at the member listing here and sorting on Date Registered, so that oldest members are at the top.

There are many people still here who jumped, and the ethos cultivated at acf is still broadly apparent here, which is nice.

Or were thrown overboard over the Easter weekend of 2008.

Quite.
There were many of us, being utterly clueless as to what was going on behind the scenes [of which there was obviously a considerable amount], suddenly found ourselves locked out and our accounts deleted. Why that happened I never quite got to the bottom of [quite honestly, I never knew who to ask anyway!]

Still, I'm very thankful for this place, as I was the original ACF too at the time.

[Martin]

El Presidente lost the plot big time; I think there was even censorship of dots... before the big Pogrom

seen him IRL a few times mostly on my perm which goes thru his Manor; a normal bloke to all intents and purposes

ACF did produce 2 significant things

1. A coming together of minds from C+ and UKRC (stll goIng  https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/uk.rec.cycling) who are mostly still of This Parish
2. A truly awful jersey; I snapped up the yacf version (and then sold it as it was way too small!)

[Bledlow]

Or were thrown overboard over the Easter weekend of 2008.

Quite.
There were many of us, being utterly clueless as to what was going on behind the scenes [of which there was obviously a considerable amount], suddenly found ourselves locked out and our accounts deleted. Why that happened I never quite got to the bottom of [quite honestly, I never knew who to ask anyway!]

IIRC I was one. Had been away for a while & engaged in other things, then one day thought I'd drop by ACF - boom! I discovered YACF months later.

[drossall]

There were many of us, being utterly clueless as to what was going on behind the scenes [of which there was obviously a considerable amount], suddenly found ourselves locked out and our accounts deleted.

I was clueless about what was going on and didn't get locked out. However, there were fewer and fewer people to talk to, so I drifted over here to rejoin the old crowd.

[Charlotte]

PS I see a few names from the old C+ forum is Gunner rodgers, ravenbait, flying monkey et al on here?

Sadly, no.  I'm still FB friends with Ravenbait (aka Sam) but I've no idea about Gunner Rogers or Flying Monkey 

[andrewc]

FM is a regular poster on Cyclechat,  usually in their version of POBI. He's also on Twitter @murakamiwood

[Cudzoziemiec]

Gunner Rogers was quite a character. I never could work out if he was genuinely military or not. Somehow I connect the name Si Davies with him, though I've no idea what the connection was other than Gunner calling him Sid Avies.

[Riggers]

Still wearing mine

Me and My Bike (Ready for L'Eroica) by ian, on Flickr

"Hhhhmmm" he muses. Wonder if that shirt still has as much 'slack' in it now?

[Rhys W]

I liked Gunner Rodgers's habit of deliberately mangling people's names for comic effect. 

[Basil]

Gunner was always a very heavy user of smilies etc on C+. 

[Arellcat]

"Ruddy nora!" and such phrases were well known of Gunner.

I still have my C+ parody 'Cake Stop' vest that I made myself.  I have my ACF jersey, too.  I tend to wear it to special events like Pedal on Parliament, though no-one would ever know on account of it never being warm enough up here to wear less than about four layers on those chilly April mornings.

[mattc]

Does anyone remember a thread about
Inheritance being morally equivalent to theft (i.e. unearned dosh),
which I think was started by "redcogs" or similar handle, on some cycling forum ~2006 ?