Does anybody have any news about Robert Ellsworth ?? I haven't seen him on this forum in some time now, and he usually has PLENTY to say. My concern is that he's fallen victim to an accident or health crisis. Any information would be greatly appreciated, and THANK YOU in advance.

Thought I still had his email address but it got lost when my old laptop turned into a doorstop (freak crash during a backup scrambled some files). Find his last post and there should be buttons for PM or email. The PM notification or email will be sent via RYPN via email. Or look up his profile. You have to be logged in to do any of the above.

[edit] I believe he's alive and well posting on Quora as of today.

Last post, July 16, also last visit (you can find this out in your own "user control panel" by searching by author, if you know the spelling of the person's user name): viewtopic.php?p=346146#p346146

Postings here dropped off this summer, lots of things going on, but also some odd trolling of the knowledge guys (I'm not in that group) who no doubt were annoyed. But hopefully posts will pick up now.

I have learned a lot from OVERMOD (R.M. Ellsworth)'s posts here and on Trains forums. I do hope he's ok.

If he's the same Overmod at the Trains Magazine forum, he's still posting.

https://cs.trains.com/members/overmod/default.aspx

Thanks for these replies. I have to admit (even if it gives them pleasure) to being rather irritated by the trolls, myself --- does this mean I'm knowledgeable ?? Maybe, but not about anyhing worthwhile. Truth be told, we have a lot less trolling here than on other sites that I won't mention.

I've got his mailing address --- Maybe I'll send him a Halloween card.

Thanks again fellas.

While a lot of what he posts here is outside my knowledge base and some is miles over my head, I do enjoy reading his posts. Hope he's not mad at us and comes back.

I'm back. The reason for absence was partly an ICD problem which resulted in being stuck in West Palm Beach for a while, and on return my phone would not sync properly with the computer I use to access RyPN. Not a problem with anything here.

I appreciate all who were concerned about this.


RME

First the Trains Forum goes belly up for almost two weeks before returning to operation.

Now I am getting Security errors when trying to access Trinaboard.com for the past 4 days or so. Seems as if they have left some aspect of their site go out of date.

"net::ERR_CERT_DATE_INVALID"

The ex-Kalmbach railroad forums are effectively moribund until they get a complete security workover (which will likely not be until the entire Forum package is updated or replaced).

Kalmbach adopted the 'Telligent' package for managing their 'communities'. This has the extensive back-end and e-commerce-enabled architecture to track user preferences and enable joint-partner marketing opportunities to aid Kalmbach's revenues from the 'free' forums (to paraphrase some of the things that Kalmbach Media was saying back in 2018-2019 about their expectations).

There is, in fact, an improved and updated version of the software, with online technical support and 'porting' assistance for older versions. If anyone is interested, this is "Verint Community" and I have a link to the technical videos if someone wants that.

Part of the Kalmbach systems, apparently, was a security model that involved only an e-mail address and assigned password to work. There were at least two separate 'instances' of this -- the one you used to log into to comment on Newswire and the Classic Trains 'photo of the day', for example, was not the same as was used to log into the 'forums'. This got more complicated late last year when new credential login for "trains.com" was requested, and many forum participants in fact did establish and then sign in with new credentials.

Anyone who has done 'web security' will know the disasters inherent in a signup that requires only e-mail and password to register. The sheer amount of moderation can only be appreciated by watching the 'people online' panes every couple of minutes -- you see the most amazing things appear, some of them quite attractive-looking but likely not interested in the state of preservation of anything more than bank accounts, and then you see them disappear in a matter of seconds to minutes. Every so often one gets 'through' and spam links are exposed. I assume these are being handled by the 'ban' function (which is extremely well-implemented!) but it's an endless job and an almost thankless task to keep going through it.

For whatever reason (Firecrown says it is because they are 'revising access to content') the need to log in to see content in the pages 'being edited' has been disabled. They seem to have done this (at least according to Customer Service) in a way that completely disables the log-in system... at least the part of it that allows 'posting' access to the forums. Those already logged in can continue to post 'indefinitely' -- but if for any reason a user is logged off, they're effectively logged off forever. So the number of active posters drops lower and lower, and no one really seems too concerned.

A 'logical' short-term fix would be to hard-code specific combinations of user e-mail and password into the instantiations to give 'proven' posters continued ability to contribute. That they have not taken this very simple and, to me, obvious step indicates that most of their concern lies elsewhere.

Thanks for the insights to the Kalmbach problems.

Unanswered is what is taking place at TrainBoard.com

Well Trains forum logged my off - I did not request it.

TrainBoard.com is still in the throughs of their certificate problems.

Getting signed out - the Trains Forum will not accept the e-mail and password I have been using for the last 21 years.

I got logged off Monday. Thanks for saving me from trying to figure out why I can't log back in.

The 'error' I am being given when trying to use my historical log in is -

"An unexpected error has occurred. Please try again or contact customer service."

The 'error' is that the login mechanism is looking for the database, and not finding it because it's been disabled. According to Firecrown 'customer service' there will be no fix for this until a new 'forum' package has been set up.

It is my regretful conclusion that Firecrown is unwilling for some reason to 'upgrade' to a corresponding version of Verint Community, probably because of the cost of licensing the software and having to port an uncertain amount of customized back-end software that may, or may not, be compatible with the 'community' package. There was some discussion that other 'free' forum or BBS packages were being considered, which would not be able to render the vast past history of threads and posts; the discussion went so far as to indicate that a small version of the current forum software that only supported reading and search of the past history would be preserved for that, with all new traffic being only in the new software, whatever that turns out to be.