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www.userfriendly.org seems to be gone, RIP Erwin, Dust Puppy and Co :(

userfriendly.org

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Re: www.userfriendly.org seems to be gone, RIP Erwin, Dust Puppy and Co :(

#61

Post by kstrauser »

oliyoung wrote: post #56
kstrauser wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among other things, almost all stories used to have at least a couple hundred comments. Today there are stories on the front page with less than 10. The last nail in the coffin for me was their utter refusal to remove absolutely abhorrent comments. Not stuff like "I voted for someone different than you did", but bullshit like https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11756830&cid=561389... (CW: extreme antisemitism).…

> at least a couple hundred comments. for context, that's when a "a couple hundred comments" was as big as "a couple of thousand/tens of thousands" of comments is now. Slashdot was the centre of the (tech) internet for a long time.

Definitely. Given how much smaller the Internet was at the time, a lot of the people actually making the Internet -- Linux developers, webmasters, hardware designers, network protocol authors, etc. -- were packed into that one amazing forum and debating what to do next. It was amazing in its heyday.

Re: www.userfriendly.org seems to be gone, RIP Erwin, Dust Puppy and Co :(

#62

Post by mauvehaus »

donatj wrote: post #52

I heard this was coming a couple weeks ago. I don't know why you'd shut the entire website down, rather than just put it into hibernation? I mean I don't know what is hosting situation is, but I can't imagine there's a ton of traffic on a comic that hasn't had a new post in years. Seems like it would be worth keeping it up just for old time sake. It would be reasonable enough to host the entire thing for probably a c…

Because he's been posting reruns for approximately ever in internet time and the community has been the soul of the site for even longer. To be frank, it wasn't a webcomic you stuck with for either the art or the humor. Every now and then, there was a funny strip or storyline, but it's not something that needs to be endlessly rehashed.

It seems the community has moved to another forum, so there's no real reason to keep posting reruns on some more-or-less static hibernation mode site.

I hung out there sporadically for a few years and moved on. It was a small-ish community that was by and large friendly and supportive (I mean, like almost 20 years ago, can't speak for what it's like today). At that time, the regulars knew each other, at least digitally, and sometimes IRL.

People may have come for the comic, but those that stayed stayed for the forum.

Re: www.userfriendly.org seems to be gone, RIP Erwin, Dust Puppy and Co :(

#64

Post by dredmorbius »

There were a number of early webcomics, with UF being among the more prominant.

Others I recall:

- "Cafe Hugo", I believe. Tagline included "vague enneui", possibly also "coffee, puns, ..." or something like that. Mostly college students / recent graduates and their life at a cafe. All traces seem lost.

- "Westward Ho!" was a very short-lived, and I think intentionally limited, comic about a young woman engaged in finding mutually-beneficial relationship and/or fighting for justice on the fronteir. Well executed and largely in good taste given the premise.

- "Help Desk", featuring Ubersoft (guilty of Unholy Business Practices). A mention here: https://comics.fandom.com/wiki/Help_Desk And apparently still online: https://www.eviscerati.org/comics/hd/2022/02/unprofessional-...

- Avalon High -- a very soap-opera-ish comic about students at a Candian high school. Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20110707193859/http://www.avalon...

Re: www.userfriendly.org seems to be gone, RIP Erwin, Dust Puppy and Co :(

#65

Post by hkt »

yayachiken wrote: post #55
an_mp_speaks wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the one!

By the way, if you liked the old-school "ISP shenenigans and Unix jokes" web-comic genre, make sure to check out https://www.gpf-comics.com/ It's still going, IMO still not stale (without going into spoilers: the setting really helps), even though it is also scheduled to wind down (tying up all loose threads) in the next 1-2 years. As a teen I read web-comics like GPF, Userfriendly, Sluggy Freelance religiously, whic…

I feel older for the same reason - it sucks watching the internet of my youth slip away.

Re: www.userfriendly.org seems to be gone, RIP Erwin, Dust Puppy and Co :(

#66

Post by phamilton »

One of my first bits of code I shared online was a scraper for userfriendly.org that would download every comic since the beginning of time.

It was incredibly bad and inefficient (I didn't sleep between calls and just brute forced the image name which led to 90% 404s). Within a few days, UF announced that anyone doing wget scraping would get IP banned.

I was just a kid, but it was so jarring to see something I did cause problems. I learned a ton about being a good netizen. Thanks UF and sorry for the trouble!

Re: www.userfriendly.org seems to be gone, RIP Erwin, Dust Puppy and Co :(

#67

Post by 1970-01-01 »

HEADS UP: We're Going Dark by Illiad 2022-02-24 11:04:32

Hello all, long time. We'll be shutting down the website in the coming days. It may be at the end of this month. If not, it won't be much later than that.

Many UF community members have moved over to Hedgehog, which is run by Klaranth. You can find the site here.

All the best,

Illiad

https://web.archive.org/web/20220225062754/http://ars.userfr...

Re: www.userfriendly.org seems to be gone, RIP Erwin, Dust Puppy and Co :(

#69

Post by kawsper »

yayachiken wrote: post #49
an_mp_speaks wrote: post #22

This gives me a chance to ask about a different webcomic that I read in the early 2000s, but have totally forgotten. It also took place at a small development company or ISP. There was a dog who was a system administrator, and he might have been in love with a cat? All the characters were animals, I think, and there were the usual 90s-early 00s Linux/Microsoft jokes.

Hackles? http://www.hackles.org/

I used to read that when I was a child, I am glad it is still online. I am also happy that they managed to finish the story :)

Re: www.userfriendly.org seems to be gone, RIP Erwin, Dust Puppy and Co :(

#70

Post by eadmund »

kstrauser wrote: post #54
folkrav wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never really frequented Slashdot, I've taken a short look at it right now. What's going on with it that's so sad to look at? I feel like I'm missing context...

Among other things, almost all stories used to have at least a couple hundred comments. Today there are stories on the front page with less than 10. The last nail in the coffin for me was their utter refusal to remove absolutely abhorrent comments. Not stuff like "I voted for someone different than you did", but bullshit like https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11756830&cid=561389... (CW: extreme antisemitism).…

That filth you linked to is scored 0, which I think means it is not visible by default. I think it is preferable to leave stuff like that available-but-hidden rather than to delete it altogether. Free speech is a virtue.
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