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TheVat

TheVat

Valued Senior Member
Just some news, some baffling, given the lack of warning. For many years, SFN was owned by a medical student, now an internist in Tampa, named John Venzor. IIRC, he used to post as "Blike." Now, the ICANN lookup website reports the domain was sold by him, couple days ago, to a Martin Masselo, in Argentina, who may be the registrant representing some sort of web developer company - it's not at all clear who he is or why the site had to be taken down. If anyone has personal emails for Swanson or Phi for All or CharonY, the mods over there, can you contact them and learn more? Or, if they are also in the dark, pass along the new registrants address:

14737@wh.latincloud.com

Why we received no warning of this is puzzling. If the downtime was simply due to forgetting to pay the DN fee (due last Thursday), I wouldn't expect to see a change of ownership appear suddenly at ICANN. AFAIK, revocation of a DN registration is not instantaneous on the billing due date.
 
Sounds akin to the incremental fate of "The Science Forum". It almost tanked once, but was revived. And then the next owner (if there ever was one who bought the lapsed domain) just... whatever. Not sure what is there now, since the browser blocks it as unsafe.
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C C said:
Sounds akin to the incremental fate of "The Science Forum". It almost tanked once, but was revived. And then the next owner (if there ever was one who bought the lapsed domain) just... whatever. Not sure what is there now, since the browser blocks it as unsafe.
_
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I think the owner of thescienceforum dot com was a bit of a crook and I even suspect he sold it to himself and uses the site as a way to send emails privately.

I emailed him wiite a few times suggesting he might consider selling the site to someone rlse since he had no interest in updating the software.

When I clicked on it when it finally went down there were redirects to underage sex sites as I recall.

I very much doubt the owner of SFN is like that but ,as Vat says he is no longer the owner and if he has sold the site without letting the admin in on it maybe he is.

Scienchatforums came to a similar sticky end as TheVat must remember.
 
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TheVat said:
Swanson or Phi for All or CharonY, the mods over there, can you contact them and learn more
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Good guys plus a few good posters. If it goes down for good be good to get them here.
They would fit in Physics forums too, always good to have new blood.
 
Pinball1970 said:
Good guys plus a few good posters. If it goes down for good be good to get them here.
They would fit in Physics forums too, always good to have new blood.
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Do any of these mods post on physicsforums? If so that would be a way to reach them. (I’m not a member there myself.)
 
exchemist said:
Do any of these mods post on physicsforums? If so that would be a way to reach them. (I’m not a member there myself.)
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Plus no one said, "Hey Pin what you doing here?" Unless they wanted to their other PF identity secret.
I do not like the idea of being redirected to a sex site, makes me reluctant to try signing in again.
 
Structure of sentence worse seen I have.

Now, curiouser and curiouser, original owner is again listed by ICANN. So I guess Masello is just some web hosting registrant it defaults to temporarily when the check doesn't arrive.


C C said:
Sounds akin to the incremental fate of "The Science Forum". It almost tanked once, but was revived. And then the next owner (if there ever was one who bought the lapsed domain) just... whatever. Not sure what is there now, since the browser blocks it as unsafe.
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I miss the world where you knew who ran something and they were somewhat accountable. There are now often multiple layers of anonymity (just try reaching the registrant of a site from a Whois search - often quite the crazy carousel).

The site I modded for a while was sold to a web developer named Ted; Ted tired of developing, sold it to a firm that turned out to be a Ponzi scheme, which the SEC shut down, then auctioned off all their domains in large lots, stripped of their old data. I think GoDaddy has it now in their vast storage locker of available domains.
 
TheVat said:
Structure of sentence worse seen I have.

Now, curiouser and curiouser, original owner is again listed by ICANN. So I guess Masello is just some web hosting registrant it defaults to temporarily when the check doesn't arrive.



I miss the world where you knew who ran something and they were somewhat accountable. There are now often multiple layers of anonymity (just try reaching the registrant of a site from a Whois search - often quite the crazy carousel).

The site I modded for a while was sold to a web developer named Ted; Ted tired of developing, sold it to a firm that turned out to be a Ponzi scheme, which the SEC shut down, then auctioned off all their domains in large lots, stripped of their old data. I think GoDaddy has it now in their vast storage locker of available domains.
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This makes it sound more like a simple error over the renewal fee, which has happened before. Bit of a coincidence that it goes down just after the renewal date. It may come back in a day or two.
 
exchemist said:
This makes it sound more like a simple error over the renewal fee, which has happened before. Bit of a coincidence that it goes down just after the renewal date. It may come back in a day or two.
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I hope so, three science sites are about right for my needs.

Here we have a nice relaxed mixture, dot net is more formal but still allows the crazy to be discussed and PF it's mainstream science only with strictly no religion, politics or philosophy.
 
If it does not come back I wonder what the best alternative is. Scivillage is full of all the cranks and trolls expelled from here, so no thanks. The .com site has been taken over by nutters and is consequently nearly dead. Plus the sole surviving mod is Trumpy.

Maybe physicsforum is next best, though a bit narrow.
 
exchemist said:
If it does not come back I wonder what the best alternative is. Scivillage is full of all the cranks and trolls expelled from here, so no thanks. The .com site has been taken over by nutters and is consequently nearly dead. Plus the sole surviving mod is Trumpy.

Maybe physicsforum is next best, though a bit narrow.
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They now have a politics site.
 
exchemist said:
If it does not come back I wonder what the best alternative is. Scivillage is full of all the cranks and trolls expelled from here, so no thanks. The .com site has been taken over by nutters and is consequently nearly dead. Plus the sole surviving mod is Trumpy.

Maybe physicsforum is next best, though a bit narrow.
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The guy on .net who posted Chemistry question after Chemistry question, Hzq.... something? would have been warned and probably banned quite quickly.

I have been a member ten years and I think you would like it. DaveC426913 can give you his view.
 
Pinball1970 said:
They now have a politics site.
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Ugh. I’d try to avoid that, I think. Politics is currently so depressing that I can only face buying a newspaper about very other day.

But I’ve taken a quick look now and it’s a possibility. They seem to have chemistry and Earth sciences, so it’s not all obscure or silly questions about relativity, which is what I feared. Doesn’t seem very conversational though.
 
exchemist said:
Ugh. I’d try to avoid that, I think. Politics is currently so depressing that I can only face buying a newspaper about very other day.

But I’ve taken a quick look now and it’s a possibility. They seem to have chemistry and Earth sciences, so it’s not all obscure or silly questions about relativity, which is what I feared. Doesn’t seem very conversational though.
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I have a decent rep on there .......as a drummer!
 
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