No, we don’t even know his/her real name and the place/country where he lives.
i think it’s a great forum!
It would be easier to improve the minor things that you think are not optimal,
rather than to start building a new one from scratch…
https://board.eclipse.cx could work as an alternative. It’s not as in depth as Win-Raid, but the proper categories and whatever could be made.
I still think a forum is an appropiate form of keeping this type of knowledge structured, but a) I’m older and b) I’m not used to what’s called social media, so possibly I just don’t know enough. I don’t understand all the complaints about the ads either, I have a rather paranoid configured browser so maybe I’m missing something here, but I tried shortly with “Egde” and there weren’t any ads either??
I learned a lot here, and I’m gratefull for all the work done for keeping the content structured, maintaining the forum itself, writing these exceptional guides, developing tools and collecting firmware and tools!
But the forum’s been driven in a special way: At least in the later years not very much as a community and it seemed neither to be an aim to create one. There seems to be a quite clear and wished for distance between admins/ owner and the normal users and not much in between.
I can understand that it’s difficult to have the idea of a forum as a community when the difference to other persons in attitude and knowledge is as large as for the both of you. But on the other hand it’s not getting easier to form one or at least to motivate members to contribute. And that way it’s almost impossibe to form the next generations of admins- now there’s just very few admins left (2 active? Found no possibility to check on structure or groups in this software)
Changes seem to have been announced, not discussed. There’s not a word about a lost admin (Lost_N_BIOS- first time now here in this thread). (I still hope eagerly he’s fine!!!) Even the possibility of the forum closing was not warned for earlier, or given as a thought/worry regarding the future of the forum, it’s just stated. The wish for a constructive solution isn’t clearly expressed, more the disappointement over the changes in the last years and it’s stated that only a worthy person might get the chance to take over.
Well, I think it’s not the most inviting (community alike) way to confront all (or at least the more active) users with: “We announce closing in six weeks! You might come with ideas, but they actually have to be really, really good!!”
The ideal idea of someone worthy taking over this forum without having a working admin team one could build upon and a slightly closer community sounds very optimistic to me? According to the earlier admins requirement is that it has to be an expert?! But such an expert is possibly already active somewhere and doesn’t want to have 2 separate places, of which one at least hasn’t a proper possibility to export the content?
I think the forum could be driven with
- focussing on a few core areas/ subforums and
- an admin team of at least 5 persons and
- a smooth transition from the old team
But that would also mean to separate the admin function from expert level to a certain degree? Would that be acceptable for you?
I’d be thankfull if you could create threads for discussing
- alternative forums where it would be possible to continue with some core content
- ways to continue with Win-Raid in a different form
@lfb6 :
Thank you very much for your statement and your ideas regarding the future of this Forum. I am pretty sure, that you will get soon a detailed reply from the thread opener @plutomaniac , who is the owner and Main Admin of this Forum since May 2019.
Nevertheless I want to take the opportunity myself as the founder of this Forum to thank you very much for your continually Forum support since you got registered in March 2016. You were and are still one of the best and most frequently replying Forum "Gurus". Without proven experts like you, who spend a big amount of their free time to help other users, a Forum like this one cannot survive. No matter what will happen to the Forum, I hope instantly, that the Forum Team and the Forum members can count on you in the future as well.
If you enter "Lost_N_BIOS" into the Forum’s Search box, you will find a lot of other threads, where Forum members asked for him and for the reason for his absence.
Our extremely knowledgeable and busy Moderator and BIOS "Guru" Lost_N_BIOS hasn’t been online here since 01/20/2021, but nobody knows why. Not even the Forum Administration knows his real name and the town/country where he lives (we asked him, but he didn’t want to give us any personal information). All sent eMails and PMs stayed unanswered. What do you think should we do under these circumstances?
Hopefully he’ll be back online one day and tell us what happened.
EDIT1:
This is the current personal situation within the Forum Team:
- Admins: 3 (on the paper):
- plutomaniac, Main Admin and Owner since May 2019 (Problem: He has recently gotten a new full-time job, which doesn’t let him enough time for the Forum.)
- Pacman, Admin since 2016 (Problem: He hasn’t been online here since 09/15/2021 and hasn’t yet replied to any eMail or PM since that date.)
- me, Founder and Main Admin since April 2013, Admin since May 2019 (Problem: I am 77 years old and not able to carry the waggon alone)
- Mods: 1 (on the paper):
- Lost_N_BIOS, Mod since November 2018 (Problem: See above)
EDIT2:
For those, who are interested, here are 2 pictures, which show
a) the daily Forum access numbers within the past weeks/months (left Pic, taken a few seconds ago) and
b) ranking of the 500 "best" Xobor Forums (right pic, taken the day before yesterday)):
We’ve got to admit that its very unlikely that we may heard again from past members, sad as can be and due to recent world events and natural causes, i do not believe in such lack of consideration from
those refereed, to a small “Hello” at least to close colegues or admins in this forum. It is impossible to simply ignore the “little bug” that a tech guy has in it, if u know wot i mean.
But unfortunately thats life as we know.
@Fernando Thanks a lot for your kind reply! And thanks for offering a little of the forum ‘internals’. I wasn’t aware of that Win-Raid is on rank 1 of all Xobor forums, but the numbers for traffic, posts and members are anyway abstract to me.
And that numbers alone don’t explain the amount of work, too. This forum is still the only one I know that has this structured approach with well maintained guides, and regarding specific themes like for example ME I think it is one of the first- if not the first- addresses. Seen several forums lately with a short version of the ME cleaning guide, refering to Win-Raid ‘if you want to know the whole story’.
Together with the ‘felt’ traffic and with the high quality of the forum one doesn’t need the concrete numbers to know that it’s too much for just 2 persons to keep this running with this quality! You wrote about your age earlier and the work you’re still doing is impressing.
Regarding Lost_N_BIOS: I had a few conversations via PM and know that he didn’t want to be recognized, not wanting to give his email, not giving a location or even a distant address to send somthing to. I know there were some questions, at least all I read were answered with 'hasn’t been logged in since…" This is a very neutral statement.
I personally would’ve appreciated just the sentences you wrote now for example in the “Lost is mod now” thread. It’s the most probable explanation and it’s the most probable assumption that you didn’t know more than us other users, but not expressing something leaves always room for interpretaion/ questions?! And given that chances are slim that he just disappeared on a whim an ‘official’ mentioning would’ve felt appropriate at least for me.
(And thanks for the “Guru”, still apprentice! As written- learnt a lot from forum/ community, then giving somthing back by answering some posts and sharing a little seems to be the correct thing…)
Update of my last post:
After having done a view into the Win-RAID Admin Software I have realized, that the all-time record regarding the amount of daily Forum accesses has been broken today (without any DDOS attack!).
This indicates, that a lot of Forum visitors and members are copying and pasting Win-RAID Forum information they think they are loosing soon.
Here is the picture:
this post is about the future,
but there is no future if people are forced to use Windows 10 or 11,
because these are mass spying authoritarian systems of tyranny.
You need to keep the forum open to help make drivers for installing Windows 7 on new hardware for humanity to have a future…
Would a subscription model where the forum users pay a monthly fee help change your mind?
I greatly appreciate the time that you spent on this forum. Thank you, Dieter and Plato.
I agree and, to compound on what Dieter said, thank you very much lfb6 for your support and knowledge sharing all these years. With the fear of sounding like a broken record, people like you make such places happen.
Yeah, you answered your own question there. 
Trust me, ads exist…
Would it be possible to quantify the amount of time/years you (and probably others) have felt that way?
I’m sorry but, if I understood properly, I have to disagree. I do not in any way consider myself more knowledgeable than our members, and I’m sure Dieter feels that way as well. Everyone knows something small, maybe better than others, but a community is formed only when all this is combined. There is a suggested bare minimum level of knowledge, as explained at the welcome page (e.g. "please know what a command line is - don’t tell us that you double click something and it closes automatically in a black screen"), but to my knowledge, the forum team did not discriminate based on that.
Could this have been handled in a better way externally? Certainly. Maybe it wasn’t worded in a good way at the OP but suggestions were and are welcome. If the forum team did not care about this place, the administration could have been given to various people (no questions asked) but would that be the same "good" (maybe someone disagrees with that word) place or something far worse and unrecognizable (check a reply afterwards for a very simple example of that might mean)? For example, if a frequent and helpful user were to tell us "hey, I can do it" we’ll be happy to see what can be done. Why? Because we have an idea of what they stand for, what they have contributed and a hope that they share the same passion that originally formed this forum and not "this site has many hits, how can I take advantage of that?". That’s what I meant, even if it could have been explained in a better way. Public relations and communication is not everyone’s area of expertise. Mea culpa.
Not in my book, don’t know what the requirements were before 2019. But "passion" for the topic at hand was always a requirement.
Good idea. However, it might not be needed at this point. There is a plan in discussion to transition this forum elsewhere. It’s very promising and covers all the requirements I (poorly ?) explained at the OP. I’ll keep this thread updated when more concrete news are ready. While there is still hope for such a great solution, the forum will not go down, even if it takes longer than the end of the year to complete. Hopefully that early statement provides some reassurance to everyone while the details are ironed out in the coming weeks.
Everyone is still an "apprentice" lfb6, that’s the point! We all learn, noone is "be-all and end-all".
No, we are against that model. It does not provide knowledge to everyone, only to select few with certain "characteristics". By the way, this is what I meant above by "unrecognizable". There are a lot of things/practices in Win-Raid which are taken for granted by most members. But these are choices/opinions, not given. We are trying to preserve that (and other similar things) and yes, that requires some vetting of new admins beforehand. That’s what "people we already know & trust" means. Everyone should remember that.
Thank you Jan as well for all your contributions to this forum. They’ll be put to good use. 
@plutomaniac Thanks for the answer. And sorry, quoting doesn’t seem to work here?
Well, interesting idea, but wouldn’t that be more than one person? I suppose an admin team of 2 persons is too small for this forum on the long run. So even if this ‘I can do it’- person would be available, there’s still an admin team of 3 persons whereof afaik one person already earlier announced that he’d like to take a step back. So aren’t you possibly searching more for a little group of 3 or 4 persons that could run the forum?
I would’ve expected searching for team enforcement quite a while ago. IF you were thinking same way regarding new mods this type of thinking (ask if you can contribute) would be slightly unexpected at least to me. All forums I was member of were working opposite way: If team enforcement was needed members who were deemed fit were asked by the admin team. I myself would therefore never get the idea to ask if I could contribute, since not to be asked means ‘no need- everything is fine’ or ‘I’m not a candidate’!?
IF this would be a sytemic misconception it would feel bad for both motivated users and the admins: "No one want’s my contribution" vs. "No one wants to contribute"?
That’s really good news! But does this mean ‘to a new owner’ and / or ‘to a new team’, too, or will there be the same 2- person- admin- team as before? In this case will this (relatively small) team represent a sustainable concept?
What can we do now? Just wait if this is gonna work or are there things that could be done parallel? How can we contribute?
Edit by Fernando: Quoting code corrected
The idea is to find a new main admin and then let them manage the rest on their own. Their team, responsibilities etc. Check the next reply as well.
No, that’s not how it works. Same way as in other places, people are asked (me in 2014, Pacman a bit later, lordkag a bit later, Lost_N_BIOS etc). Sure the mod deficiency was more obvious after Janurary, when Lost last logged in, but there was no point in looking for mods when the primary issue was with the admins. And most people (including me in 2018-2019), do not want to transition from mods to admins. For good reason of course, more time involvement, more responsibility, daily micromanaging etc.
Currently, Win-Raid has some bigger issues to overcome, before thinking about these "details" (wish they were details but anyway…). Meaning, the transition of the forum software and DB to a format which will allow migration and future control. Our current plan/discussion involves that as a first step as well, so we need some time to have a cleaner picture of what the near future will look like for this forum. To answer your question more directly, it will probably be a merger of sorts, we’ll see when we know what we’re dealing with.
First, thank you for offering help, suggestions and for the will to contribute. It may sound annoying, but for now, wait. The aforementioned plan in discussion is very promising, both from the website migration standpoint and its future sustainability. Even if it fails (it shouldn’t, all parties will do their best for that to not occur), the site won’t go down overnight. It will be communicated beforehand. To sum up, the current situation/plan is vastly better than last week’s future prospects. So we need to let it play out. Sit tight and if we need some help from our users during this process/plan, we’ll let you know.
This really sucks 
if any of you guys want to find me around I’m on the overclockers.co.uk forums, xtremesystems from time to time, and when I actually get the time a YT channel I started with gobs of content I intend to put on it but not enough time to do it, and the more old fashioned facebook, just search “Dave Steven Edwards”. I’ll set my profile pic to the same one I use here for a while so anyone that wants to find me on FB can. If enough of us band together we could even start our own tech community on FB [like]
Been reading a few more posts, still playing catch-up here but is the main problem people to mod and organise the forums? If thats what it is I can help out, possibly bring a few other people to mod onboard as well.
Ok, I’ve just done a bit more reading of this thread and if ad placement on it is something you really don’t like there is a solution to that; Adblock for Firefox, its also available for other browsers AFAIK. Adblock is free with optional donations to the devs and wipes the internet as a whole pretty much totally clean of ads. Below is a screenshot of what the forums look like for me using it.
That’s right.
I add that one of the victorious outcomes of Win-Raid would be to delegate the big work to adapt Windows 7 drivers on all architectures for an indefinite time (Why not ?).
Nothing prevents from taking inspiration from >Leshcat< to keep the project alive.
Windows 10/11 are a disaster about privacy (sign of the times).
Hi guys,
I want to bring to your attention an issue that has plagued the forum for probably quite some time. In Oct after an upgrade to Chrome I lost all the saved passwords so I could not log on to the forum anymore. All the attempts to get a reset code with “forget password” did not work. I checked spam folder and everything in between and nothing. This was my second account, as a year ago same thing happened with my first account, which I could not revive. I tried to make a third account to let you know about that, unfortunately I ran out of email addresses, as the site remembers them: “emails accounts already in use”. I was contemplating to make myself a third email, but I tried one more time today and suddenly it worked. I suppose this can be the case with many other users, maybe happened to Lost_N_Bios as well, as there’s really no way to tell to any admin to check.
Also I did not get any notification since early summer, when other user were tagging me with @. Something is/was definitely wrong with the messaging server.
Cheers,
Xnet