The Crash Of 2016...Ten Years On

[Mel O'Drama]

On 12th September 2016, Soap Chat - and around two decades' worth of discussion history - unexpectedly crashed and disappeared forever.

Hours later, the new site rose like a phoenix from the ashes... being rebuilt from the ground up by members.

As this week marks the tenth anniversary of the new site I thought why not remember how the crash affected members at the time, what (and who) we miss about the old site and what's been good about the last decade. For members who have joined since 2016, it's also a chance to ask as much as you like about the current site's pre-history.

Feel free to jump in and wax nostalgic.

 

[Frank Underwood]

I've been a member here since 1999, so it was pretty devasting to see all of that history wiped away.

I went through many screen names back then too (my original was McSween, but my longest-used screen name was Sid Fairgate).

I was only 15 when I joined, and I was bored one day. I decided to have some fun, and since you could post as a guest back then, I decided to take on the persona of a well-known troll on the site named Francis. I just said the most outrageous things and laughed as everyone took the bait. It went on for a while until the thread was finally locked. I would never do that today, but that's one of the reasons I miss the pre-crash forums. It was fun to look back at those posts and see my evolution from a teenager to a 30-something.

Now I'm 43 and still posting. I still enjoy it, but there was truly something exciting about finding these forums and experiencing them in their heyday.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Selfishly, I miss threads like Sue Ellen versus Jesus -- Who was Better? and my 'The Lout and Miss Shepard' sonnet extolling her virtues.

 

[Michelle Stevens]

Wow, ten years since the crash, how time flies. I joined in 2011 but actively lurked since 2001 or so around the time of the Ultimate Dallas forum. I miss so many of the people who no longer are around, from either the current forum or the former. I made some good friends along the way. I certainly remember when this site started rebuilding and slowly old, familiar names started to return. Soap Chat to Telly Talk.

I just hope this forum continues to exist. It's still a great place to discuss the shows we enjoyed. To me the forum format is more useful in discussions than how Facebook and the like are set up.

 

[Barbara Fan]

I thought it was Sept 12th - I was in Portugal on holiday and Howard keel wouldnt post! calendar pic for that day

I still cannot understand how a whole forum can disappear in an instant

Its beyond me and fail to understand why at least part of it didnt remain

And I feel sad that all the nostalgia / history posts had gone whether it be the death of BBG and Larry Hagman or tributes after 9/11 as the forum was so busy at those times

At least we are still here (older and wiser)

 

[Crimson]

I wasn't active at the time of the crash, having left a few months earlier. I heard about it only second hand from another member; she was rather miffed at seeing years of posting history wiped out and I think she never returned. Without the crash, though, I wouldn't have returned. I had left quite definitively -- having changed my email and password and then deleting the email account, making recovery impossible. (A tad dramatic). The crash allowed me to eventually register the same user name and email I had previously used.

I still cannot understand how a whole forum can disappear in an instant

Well, since you brought it up -- has there ever been an official explanation? I've heard only fragments of rumors. An entire forum being wiped out with no backup seems ... improbable. But perhaps it's just the nature of a forum about soaps that I hope there's melodramatic malice behind it all rather than a boring technical glitch.

 

[Michelle Stevens]

And I feel sad that all the nostalgia / history posts had gone whether it be the death of BBG and Larry Hagman or tributes after 9/11 as the forum was so busy at those times

Indeed! I remember all the excitement when the DVD's of each season were released from 2004-'11 and of course when TNT announced they had a new Dallas series in 2011. At the time the (former) forum was full of discussion on each episode during the 2012-'14 run.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

A lot of people didn't come back because they were afraid it could happen again. Some thought it wasn't an accident or might've been an economic decision made behind the scenes. Who knows?

 

[Angela Channing]

When I first started posting on the original forum it was called The Oil Baron's Club and was only about Dallas. It was a while before there were subforums for Falcon Crest, Dynasty, etc.

When I first posted I remember getting into a disagreement with @Sarah because I had said something negative about Sue Ellen. I wasn't aware of the unwritten rule that you couldn't criticise Sue Ellen while Sarah was around (which was almost always). Sarah was the first person from this forum who I met in real life (when we were on a TV show called Loose Lips) and we got on just tine in person.

There are so many forum members that I miss: Sarah, Danny, Sue Ellen Rules, amongst many others. None of them post any more and it's a shame that I can't go back and read some of our previous interactions.

What made the forum so attractive in the early days was that Dallas hadn't been on TV for a while and it was before the DVDs were released so we would ask and answer questions about the show that we can now just whiz through a DVD to find the answer ourselves. This was particularly useful when the Falcon Crest subforum appeared because the final 2 seasons of the show were never broadcast on terrestrial TV in the UK so there was quite a lot I wanted to know about the episodes I had never seen at the time. When the Falcon Crest subforum was created, back then each subforum had its own moderator and I was delighted to be asked to take on that role for Falcon Crest.

Happy memories but more memories to make in the future.

 

[Jock Og]

It was a sad day when the original forum crashed. Having been around from the latter part of 2000 I had participated in so many discussions over the years, mainly DALLAS and FALCON CREST. We pulled together as a community and rebuilt the forum home, to what it is today.

I too was very previliged to be a moderator on the FALCON CREST forum, in its first guise 25 years ago. @Angela Channing there was also another moderator, Pamela. There was even a website planned, devoted to the Channings and Giobertis et. alia.

 

[Willie Oleson]

This thread was mysteriously predicted in the The Colbys On The X-Files Boat discussion.

What made the forum so attractive in the early days was that Dallas hadn't been on TV for a while and it was before the DVDs were released so we would ask and answer questions about the show that we can now just whiz through a DVD to find the answer ourselves.

As @Michelle Stevens mentioned the DVD releases of the various soaps have always generated a lot of discussion.
TV series on DVD had just become a "thing" in the early/mid-2000s (and almost never as complete box sets) which made the first DALLAS DVD particularly novel.
The discs also made it possible to discuss the episodes in detail and approach the soaps from a more philosophical point of view.

I vividly remember the look of soapchat with only one thread saying "hello?" posted by Ome. It seemed only natural to reach out to him if only to find out what the heck was going on. At first there was still hope to retrieve the soapchat data but apparently it was completely gone, sort of what they expected from the millennium bug.
I was shocked to see that our community had vanished in a puff of smoke - I had become a very active poster since the 2010s - but I didn't feel terribly sad about old discussions no longer being available.
A discussion forum, like life itself, is always about the latest developments. What's the point of reading old threads when a) it doesn't make sense to reply to someone who hasn't been seen for 10 years and b) opinions and attitudes may have changed drastically.
On the other hand I was glad that some information could be re-posted, like the Dallas Versus Knots Watching thread, and the results from the soapchat music top tens which Ome had stored on his personal computah.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

I thought it was Sept 12th - I was in Portugal on holiday and Howard keel wouldnt post! calendar pic for that day

That may be right. The new site was up and running on the afternoon of the 12th (Ome's "hello" post was at 3:07pm) so it's possible the old one died in the early hours of the 12th (British time). I hadn't realised it had all happened quite that quickly.

I'll edit the first post to reflect this.

To me the forum format is more useful in discussions than how Facebook and the like are set up.

100% agreed. I've tried looking at a couple of Reddit threads after searching for a particular topic, and found it really frustrating the way each reply was separate and had its own replies. It would feel like posting in a vacuum.

Without the crash, though, I wouldn't have returned.

I'm glad something so good came out of the crash. Discovering the MCU without your guidance doesn't bear thinking about.

Well, since you brought it up -- has there ever been an official explanation?

A severe issue with the hosting site is as much as we ever found out, as far as I know.

Happy memories but more memories to make in the future.

I really like this perspective.

This thread was mysteriously predicted in the The Colbys On The X-Files Boat discussion.

There was also some jokey speculation that a specific topic started just before the crash (I forget which now) was what got it cancelled.

I vividly remember the look of soapchat with only one thread saying "hello?" posted by Ome.

Yes, it was very strange.

It was a bewildering first couple of weeks all round. A number of members re-registered with new usernames (some permanent, some for some temporary fun), so there was a new game of trying to work out who was who even as we enjoyed their content... a concept that's since been purloined by The Masked Singer.

What's the point of reading old threads when a) it doesn't make sense to reply to someone who hasn't been seen for 10 years and b) opinions and attitudes may have changed drastically.

You're right that replying to something someone said many years before doesn't make sense, but I think the changed opinions and attitudes are what makes the history genuinely interesting, especially if the change is an outcome of an open minded discussion.

I'm also quite big on nostalgia, so looking at old threads is the forum equivalent of flicking through an old photo album and pondering at how someone has changed, or fondly remembering someone I haven't seen in years.