Author Topic: Sad news: website faktaomfartyg.se has been closed down  (Read 13397 times)

Offline spotti

  • Home away from home
  • ****
  • Posts: 224
    • View Profile
Sad news: website faktaomfartyg.se has been closed down
« on: January 09, 2013, 11:30:06 AM »

Creator and webmaster Micke Asklander has decided to close this excellent
website after 15 years due to the heavy work load involved, according
to a Danish maritime web portal.

Lots of thanks to Micke.

Niels

Offline Phil English

  • Top Poster
  • *****
  • Posts: 3,492
    • View Profile
Re: Sad news: website faktaomfartyg.se has been closed down
« Reply #1 on: January 09, 2013, 11:42:39 AM »
Here's what you get now: http://www.faktaomfartyg.se/

I respect his decision to close it down, but if he is tired, one wonders why he couldn't have left the site open but just not updated it. It would still have been a useful historical reference source.

Brgds
Phil


Offline Tuomas Romu

  • Home away from home
  • ****
  • Posts: 372
    • View Profile
Re: Sad news: website faktaomfartyg.se has been closed down
« Reply #2 on: January 09, 2013, 11:57:49 AM »
It must have been quite a pain to maintain a "traditional" website with hundreds if not thousands of separate HTML files. How much easier it would have been with a MySQL database?

Offline spotti

  • Home away from home
  • ****
  • Posts: 224
    • View Profile
Re: Sad news: website faktaomfartyg.se has been closed down
« Reply #3 on: January 09, 2013, 01:16:18 PM »
Some more details from Micke/www.soefart.dk :
The website has grown too large to work with, considering a demanding full-time job and a family life as well.
The contents of the server has been preserved for a possible future project.
The site contained updated and historical data on 5700 ships - primarily ferries, ro-ro's, and cruise vessels.
27000 photos, 13200 interior/yard photos, and further a lot of general arrangement plans/drawings.
Daily readers 4000, hobby folks as well as professionals.
On some occasions - like the pilgrim ferry Al Salam Boccacio disaster in 2006 - more than 15000 readers/day on the site.

Agree with you, Phil, would have been nice to have access still to this vast pool of information even with no updates, however, respect of course for Micke's decision.

Btw: some members with close contacts to Micke?

Niels

Offline Michael Brinkmann

  • Home away from home
  • ****
  • Posts: 204
    • View Profile
Re: Sad news: website faktaomfartyg.se has been closed down
« Reply #4 on: January 11, 2013, 05:00:57 PM »
I'm very sad, that there is nobody willing and able to adopt Micke's lifework.  :-[

Offline WorldOfShips

  • Newcomer
  • Posts: 4
    • View Profile
    • World of ships - Forum
Re: Sad news: website faktaomfartyg.se has been closed down
« Reply #5 on: January 13, 2013, 07:28:01 PM »
This is indeed very sad news  :'(

Fakta om fartyg was a great source for research on ferries and one of my favourite ship sites.

I don't really know if this is the right place to post this, but I'm about to start a new community project recreating a database like FoF was. As I have read on landgangen.se there is no way to get the old database running again and so I started a forum especially for discussions regarding the creation of a new database. I know it'll be very hard to create a database which is as comprehensive as Micke's was but I think we, the ship lover community are able to do something like this.

If you are interested you can visit the forum at forum.worldofships.org or send me a personal message.

Kind regards,

Joey

Offline Henrik Soderberg

  • Administrator
  • Quite a regular
  • *****
  • Posts: 67
    • View Profile
Re: Sad news: website faktaomfartyg.se has been closed down
« Reply #6 on: January 13, 2013, 08:35:14 PM »
Hi all,

Very interesting how a site in Swedish language (only!) can become so big world-wide.

Keeping the site online, but not keeping it up to date still needs work. It's legal responsibility about the text and images on there, as well as the text NOT there as well. And as always on bigger public sites - people complaining, being upset and everything that comes with it... always. Impossible to keep everyone happy. 

I just had a short talk with Micke. Just as I read somewhere, the site data is preserved for possible future projects. I really don't like seeing big informational sources disappear.  We'll just have to wait and see what's coming.

Regards,
Henrik

Offline WorldOfShips

  • Newcomer
  • Posts: 4
    • View Profile
    • World of ships - Forum
Re: Sad news: website faktaomfartyg.se has been closed down
« Reply #7 on: January 13, 2013, 08:50:44 PM »
Good to hear that the data is preserved. It would be a shame if fifteen(!) years of work were lost.

Do you know any way to contact Micke?
I'd like to ask him some questions.

Offline Henrik Soderberg

  • Administrator
  • Quite a regular
  • *****
  • Posts: 67
    • View Profile
Re: Sad news: website faktaomfartyg.se has been closed down
« Reply #8 on: January 13, 2013, 08:58:33 PM »
Hi,

The old email address you have been using before should be working, as he still owns the domain name. If he says "Too much work", it probably includes the many contacts regarding the site as well.

Regards,
Henrik

Offline WorldOfShips

  • Newcomer
  • Posts: 4
    • View Profile
    • World of ships - Forum
Re: Sad news: website faktaomfartyg.se has been closed down
« Reply #9 on: January 13, 2013, 09:04:00 PM »
Thanks!

I'll try it there.

Joey

Offline mblatt

  • Just popping in
  • Posts: 8
    • View Profile
Re: Sad news: website faktaomfartyg.se has been closed down
« Reply #10 on: January 29, 2013, 06:44:50 AM »
The nice thing to do would be to archive (ZIP) all HTML and image files, and upload the archive to Dropbox and make the link public. Then someone (I would volunteer) could quickly write software to parse and export most of the data to http://www.marinetraffic.com/, which unlike Fakta, has an open (wiki) model that scales and doesn't depend on one particular person. For that that requires human intervention, crowdsourcing among the many ship enthusiasts in the world will take care of all the 5700 ships pretty quickly.

http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/shipdetails.aspx?mmsi=311705000 is an example of data for a ship (MV Explorer).

If someone is in touch with Micke, PLEASE suggest that he does just this one thing: zip everything up, and upload to Dropbox. We can thank him one final time and take it from there.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2013, 06:47:59 AM by mblatt »

Offline Pieter_Inpijn

  • Top Poster
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,963
    • View Profile
Re: Sad news: website faktaomfartyg.se has been closed down
« Reply #11 on: January 30, 2013, 09:32:52 AM »
I do miss the Fakta-website every day!
For instance a great feature was that sisterships were to be traced very fast.
Also the updates of new owners and names was fast and excellent.
I hope that his information and photo's return somewhere in the internet.
Had been following the site for at least 15 years and now it is sadly gone........


.........

Offline richard_allen

  • Newcomer
  • Posts: 1
    • View Profile
Re: Sad news: website faktaomfartyg.se has been closed down
« Reply #12 on: January 30, 2013, 04:13:55 PM »
Is there anyway we can engage the owner into a discussion about the future of the site and the info.

What I am thinking is either:

A) A commercial proposal whereby we all pay a small fee to use the side.
B) A co-operative to run that side (not as easy to manage)
C) A joint venture with a site such as ship spotting?

Any of the above should be worth discussing

What do others think?

Richard

Offline WorldOfShips

  • Newcomer
  • Posts: 4
    • View Profile
    • World of ships - Forum
Re: Sad news: website faktaomfartyg.se has been closed down
« Reply #13 on: January 30, 2013, 06:47:18 PM »
Hi Richard,

as I alredy posted above, I have set up a forum to discuss this topic and I already started creating a website which will be a co-operative platform on which everyone can contribute.

I have alredy invested quite a lot of time and money in this project and it would be nice to have you on board.

In the forum you can bring in your ideas and you are directly involved in the creating process.

If you are interested please visit my forum at the following link: forum.worldofships.org

Kind regards,

Joey

Offline Pieter_Inpijn

  • Top Poster
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,963
    • View Profile
Re: Sad news: website faktaomfartyg.se has been closed down
« Reply #14 on: March 27, 2013, 08:49:04 AM »
Great news: the site is operational again!
See: http://www.faktaomfartyg.se
.........

 

SMF spam blocked by CleanTalk