Goodbye to Finalfurlong forum

dvds2000

dvds2000

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Teds just posted and emailed all the members saying finalfurlong is closing on March 1st.

For those who are members but haven't read the thread yet, it is here

http://www.finalfurlongracing.co.uk/forum/index.php?showtopic=19997

Ted has been running FF longer than we have been here, and as most will know, we regulary used to have inter-forum competitions with them and TRF.

Sad day for racing forums when a long established and respected forum like that has to close its doors.

I don't use racing forums much these days (and obviously this is the one I do when I have time!) but when I was more into racing I always used to go and read over on FF, as I'm sure many of the members on here did.

If you are a member over there pop on and maybe say thanks to everyone who helped run the place over the past 18 years, it won't save it, but I'm sure the people who were behind the scenes will appreciate you thanks, I know I would if it was here that was closing.
 
I earlier posted my regrets (and thanks).

It's a sad but understandable decision to close.
I shall miss the place -- being a member on there before I joined TH. ("Hoofhearted" on there).
There were some wonderful people over there, some now sadly passed on such as Andy and HappyHippy amongst them.
I had great times on there in the heyday; all good things come to an end I guess. Sad day.
 
I hope some of the refugees find a home here, the ex-Neigh contingent have been a shot in the arm.
 
Not sure Final Furlong do refugees though! And I certainly wouldn't put FF in the same bracket as Neigh

Can't say I'm surprised it's bitten the dust, I know Ted had come perilously close to calling time on it before now. It lasted slightly longer than I thought it would, but the decline was irreversible for a host of reasons.
 
Home for a decade, thanks for that Ted (and Trig on the off chance he might see this). Some good times, some great times, and some not so good.

Hey, at least you'll have time to get those shoes repaired, and maybe have enough coin in your pocket to get yourself a f;ckin hotdog. :)

Cheers
Chris
 
Sad to see them go even though not visited in quite a while. Used to love the inter forum comps, the comps Ted and co ran like the naps comp and the time we had greyhounds which ran at Monmore. Hope some of them manage to carry on posting here.
 
icebreaker said:
I earlier posted my regrets (and thanks).

It's a sad but understandable decision to close.
I shall miss the place -- being a member on there before I joined TH. ("Hoofhearted" on there).
There were some wonderful people over there, some now sadly passed on such as Andy and HappyHippy amongst them.
I had great times on there in the heyday; all good things come to an end I guess. Sad day.
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Did you have the same username on TRF, Ice?
 
Ted put an awful lot of effort into FF and kept it going for a very long time. Thanks Ted if you look in.

Also thirded.
 
This forum thrives because of the utter contempt we have for each other. God forbid I wouldn't log on to educate you guessers.
 
dvds2000 said:
Lack of activity, if Ted ok's it I'll copy the post here so anyone who isn't a member any more can read it
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Having to register to read threads was one problem plus if you didn't log in every 3 hours your account was deleted. Two reasons why the place died a death.
 
At least a dozen reasons why it was failing as a forum and ultimately was always destined to do so from about 5 years ago.

The bottom line is that the content was ****. Once you accept banal one liners, and complain at anything more taxing, then you're on a slippery slope. There was never anything on it of any interest, insight, or remotely thought provoking. If you trade in no more than 140 characters then you compete against Twitter. Game over. You speak to any SEO expert or on-line marketeer and they'll all tell you that 'content is king'. If you can't generate the content you'll lose interest. Dead simple

Periodically Ted would appeal for better contributions, and a few folk would promise to raise their game, ultimately though they never sustained it for more than a week! and then they'd all agree that the answer was to run yet another competition. It had nowhere to go. The forum didn't so much lose members as the members lost the forum. They killed it themselves, albeit there were other undercurrents that can't have helped its broader appeal
 
Part of what I wrote on FF:
'Here lies the body of FF, murdered by person or persons known. Persons who join racing forums but contribute little on the racing side. Persons who say that racing forums should just be Chit Chat. Persons who pick on one or two people and troll them mercilessly until those people decide it's not worth the aggro and move on. In the end these trolls move on themselves under another name on another forum and sneer at the places they have left. Some of them even sneer at the racing sections of their current forums because no-one treats them like God in the way they do on, say, OHR. These trolls never do any of the competitions and contribute nothing of a non-corrosive nature.
I have long thought that these places should just be for racing and other sports betting.'
 
That's spot on, Archie. I really believe the true start of the demise was on the old FF turquoise board, when it was suggested we had an 'anything goes' area. Should have stayed with racing only. Don't get me wrong, it was fine for a while, indeed interesting getting to know a little more about people you'd been conversing with, but that was it, a little was enough.

There was also a period where a lot of 'horse lover' types started to dominate the place, as a result the form students started to drift away. Once the horse lover types moved one, it was pretty quiet and seemed to stay that way. I don't believe the members on FF had any desire for it to be similar to this place. I know many were happier that it was one of the quieter racing forums, but it got far too quiet on the racing front towards the end (certainly when I left anyway).


If some members still want it, why not just keep it. Why doesn't Ted just hand the reigns over? Ted?

I've also just realised what has happened recently as well, Archie, without looking at FF for a long time. Saw that coming a long time ago, and is also why I quit OHR.
 
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Oh I see Archie, you think the reaosn why Final Solu.... sorry furlong, failed is because of me :lol: Good luck with that one.

Pity Ted exchanged a few emails with me encouraging me to come back and stir things up a bit isn't it? And FWIW, I'm not producing anything publicly here that I hadn't shared with Ted privately. He was more than aware that the forum was on the slide, and equally resigned to the fact that the day would come when it would close, as he felt he'd tried everything but simply couldn't attract new members. The bottom line is I haven't posted on anything on there for a few years, so you had plenty of time to recover it. Why couldn't you? Because I'd driven all your knowledge off the forum .... oh pleeeeeaze. Talk about living in the Egyptian river. There was nothing to the place, unless you wanted a roll call of comeptition selections, which had all the stimulation of a shopping list. End off.
 
Warbler said:
and then they'd all agree that the answer was to run yet another competition.
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Heh, for some reason the above reminds of that "Speed" send-up episode in Father Ted when Dougal was driving around in a milk float with a bomb attached. The cabal of "solution-expert" priests, after much headscratching and analysis, came up with the rather magnificent -- "Say Another Mass".


Grass, yes indeed, that was my handle on TRF also.
Tho', I'm ashamed to say I haven't posted on there for such a long time. My interest in horses just seems to have diminished in recent years -- nowadays they are little more than pixels on a screen to me even though I am betting heavier than I ever did ( but it is more betting Prices than backing horses). How times change us -- time was when horses and form were my entire existence.
I must revisit TRF soon .............. before it too goes extinct. :)
 
Didn't all the 'horse lover types' go to that **** site Atacanta?
 
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icebreaker said:
My interest in horses just seems to have diminished in recent years
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I think that's nearer to the truth, that and the growth of mega social media platforms. So long as you're competing in the 140 character end of the market, you're always going to be on the backfoot. I understand Archie might be sore, and I've got nothing against bad tempered posts (for all the protestations to the contrary, they usually generate more views than the normal stuff), but if he seriously thinks that a person who hasn't posted there for 3 years has single handedly ripped the soul out of their membership, then perhaps I shouldn't seek to deny him such a palatable explanation if helps him understand where it all went wrong. Final Furlong had been on the slide long before.
 
SlimChance said:
Didn't all the 'horse lover types' go to that **** site Atacanta?
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If memory serves me right, Atacanister was born out of a TH spat? At about that time TH was wobbly with many members regsitering with FF as a precaution (self included - despite Archie getting his chronology wrong - I haven't popped up here, I've been here much longer than FF). Some started posting and stayed on FF for a bit before those who left TH formed atacanta? I've only ever spoken or communciated to a few former TH who left FF about why they did (well three to be precise!) two cited the extreme right wing views that the site supported as their reason and having no wish to be associated with them, and the other was banned albeit had no wish to return when I think they might have been allowed to
 
Warbler said:
I understand Archie might be sore,.................... but if he seriously thinks that a person who hasn't posted there for 3 years has single handedly ripped the soul out of their membership ......................
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I think that a person who has been such a stalwart member on FF for so long might feel sad at its demise, and should be allowed comment that might be otherwise construed as intemperate. FF going is like the death of a dependable old friend to quite a few of us.

However, I am inclined to find myself in full agreement with reasons you earlier suggested for its decline. A daily diet of selections posted in competition threads was sheer boredom; also posters putting up a "daily pick" name of a horse without any supporting text for their reasoning is just a killer kiss-of death. Finally, the phase it went through of racecourse injuries and fatalities recording and memorialising might have appealed to "horse-lovers" but was a complete turn-of to some of us. It got soit became a bit "Dead Horses Society" at one stage -- something you know I railed against on there.

Anyway, it's gone, and I regret it. I loved that place for a long long time, and will miss it.
 
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