tikatu | An interesting frustration...

I've been fiddling around with the Thunderbirds page at FanHistory, trying to set up a timeline of when various sites came and went. I figured it'd be difficult in the case of Thunderbirds World, seeing as the place has been defunct for two years and more. But I was hoping to find some info from The Wayback Machine to help out. I've been able to access various spots in the site's snapshots that at least have some dates on them. Seems that there aren't as many of those pages left as I figured. At least I have dates for when the owner pulled the plug!

Then there's the issue of Tracy Island IR. It was started as a replacement for Tracy Island when that site was accidently deleted. But on questioning Phoenix Sparrow, I couldn't get the date when the first site was started - it might have been six months to the day before the new one was, but she doesn't remember.

And even my own site IR:TNP has some date issues. Since I've basically killed all the boards except the General one I can't find out what day we actually opened at the new site. The issues we had with the first forum script sort of killed all the evidence of when the first post was written there. I've got a letter in my files dated June 28, and something else dated July 6... but nothing that definitively gives that magical day when we moved over.

How detailed do we have to get here? I feel like I should have realized this problem a long while ago, and tried to save what evidence I could of the fandom's history - but who'd a thunk there'd be an actual place to put it all! Not only that, but there are over forty years to consider and I've only been in the fandom for five. How much of that lost - and it is lost - history should be dug up? Or is just the history of what's been going on here, on the internet, be considered?

A difficult question, and one I have no answers for.

One other fronts, the Hubby is home and digging fence posts. And the Girl and I will go in further search of a strapless bra for Saturday - then make brownies for the art show tomorrow evening.

Edited August, 2008: Slightly edited as the former owner of Thunderbirds World wanted this flocked, and I won't do that since it was quoted in

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I don't think you necessarily need to be super specific date wise. If you need to speak in uncited but semi-accurate ballpark dates, that is better than nothing. (And then just toss a {{fact}} at the end of a statement if you're uncomfy with it.)

For me, half the interest is trends and ideas for what is happening. Was there a period where fansites were being actively updated? Was there a period when they died off? Where did they go? For fansites, what did they host? What were the policies of those fansites? How big and active of a community did they have?

If there are things that you think are worth saving, one thought might be to say create an article [[Thunderbirds/Front page text for a thunderbirds fansite dated May 2, 2004]], toss {{Preserving history}} at the top and then get some one to lock it so that some of that history can be saved. (That or screen cap the page on the wayback machine and upload that image.)

? Or is just the history of what's been going on here, on the internet, be considered?

For me, I think you need the pre-internet history. It is important as some of those behaviors were taken on-line. And they're just as important because they explain transition periods. For some fandoms, like Star Trek, this becomes really, really important. Unless you're involved though, it can be hard to see how this all makes sense in a broader context.

I'm not sure where to get info on the pre-internet history, except possibly some of the memoirs and auxiliary materials written early on. I have some of that material, but a lot of it is either expensive or hard to get. This was a primarily British phenomenon, which means the majority of hard-core fans are in Great Britain, Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia. There's also a really large following in Japan as well, with books about them, but they're in Japanese, which I don't read.

I'll keep plugging away at it, and hope that those with more knowledge of the fandom from when the show came out will pipe up - if only to correct my mistakes.

Yeah, the pre-Internet stuff is a pain in the arse. :/ I spent about two years tracking down information once. And another year and half tracking down other information. It gets frustrating.

It is an interesting puzzle, isn't it? I have a lot of the same issues when trying to document my own fandoms (especially The Police, for both FH and for PoliceWiki). Police fandom has 30 years of history, with fanclubs and zines and other off-line activity, as well as on-line activity that dates back to the early 90s. And it's not always easy to pull it all together. I squeed when I found an archive of all the posts for one Police mailing list going all the way back to its inception date in the early 90s, but...there are websites long gone that don't even come up in wayback. Early pieces of bandfic in the bandom that I can't provide accurate details of because it's long gone. LJ comms that were deleted and I didn't think to record the dates of its activity.

Same thing happened with some of the other fandoms I've worked on documenting for Fan History like A-Team...I have a lot of the 'zines, so I'm lucky in that regard, but...many of our early mailing lists? Are long lost, I didn't save digests or archives, yahoogroups purged them, or whatever. And it's sad and frustrating to me because I remember bits and pieces of things, and generally when certain trends were happening, but I can't pull together the reference sources for it.

Which is why these days I'm all about screencapping and saving everything :) Whether or not I'll need it. But information goes missing too easily and that's why something like Fan History can be really important, to help provide a place where these things can be kept track of and recorded for future fans who come along and want to understand how their fandoms evolved.

I understand the squee factor! I was doing some work in the Wayback yesterday and found what I think is the oldest fansite for Thunderbirds online. It's still available, and highly recommended, but hasn't been updated in a couple of years, and the forum is gone. I got the start date for the forum, which puts its creation months ahead of the oldest, still-being-updated site available. Always nice to find that kind of evidence.

Always nice to find that kind of evidence.

It is. Especially as people's recollections can often be colored by what they want to remember moreso than the facts.

(Though the downside? Going through that one old mailing list's archives I found my very first post there, back in my college days. Oh, and I was such a wanky young brat at the time too. Talk about blanking things out by selective memory...

@ sidewinder: I'm really glad people are logging the Police fandom history. I think we're lucky that with the e-mail list etc. a lot of the way-back-when fans are still around, active and talkative.

@ tikatu: All I can suggest re: the international quality of your fandom is to see if people from the old days are online. LJ fandom seems to be mainly teens and twenties, but more and more lately I'm seeing people refer to stuff that happened in their fandoms thirty years ago. Could be worth your putting out a general call for people who remember the fandom pre-internet; maybe try some non-fandom comms like

livejournal_uk and their equivalents in other countries? Or e-mail the webmasters of the more comprehensive sites for personal recollections?

Thanks for responding. That sounds like a good idea, both the contacting people and the non-fandom cons. I'm under the impression that not many people in my fandom have ljs, however, that may just be me not getting out and about more.

I'm acquainted with a couple of people who have been doing some in-depth digging into the history of the comic book side of things, and they've been able to interview some of the actual creative folks involved. Perhaps they'll have some insights as well.

Thanks for the ideas!

*random Fiction Plane love @ your icon* Mmm, Joe. (Looking forward to seeing them tomorrow night, actually!)

But, yeah. Police fandom. I love it and I hate it.

I love that there are these great folks who have been involved with it all these years, who are still around, who are (in many cases) so generous with their info and contributions.

I hate it that there is decades of wank between the different fan groups (esp. the Sting vs. Stewart stuff) which never goes away even when you try to bridge the gap (too many years of sore feelings, I guess. Maybe kind of like the band itself...)

I love it that there's a whole new group of active fans participating thanks to the official site who were never in a "fandom" before. I hate it that the official site is...oh, god. Such a steaming pile of commercial money-hungry b.s.

I love it that some folks have jumped on board the wiki very willingly to share their info. I hate it that there are others who are all "USE MY INFORMATION WITHOUT CREDIT AND YOU'RE IN TROUBLE", when it's...information anyone could pull together off the official discographies and the like themselves. Just because you built the first discography on the internet doesn't mean you're the only person who can do it right.

And yeah, reaching out beyond lj-land is really important for trying to get a fuller appreciation (and contributions) for a fandom. Other websites, messageboards, in-person get-togethers...heck, I'm planning on printing up little stickers or flyers or something I can give out at concerts this summer to try to reach as many folks as I can who have something different to add.

An interesting frustration...

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