Who owns ukcaving.com?

I am new to this forum, but I like to know where I stand.
Why is the forum a commercial web page rather than an org.
So who are the owners or how is it owned.
Do the people posting have any financial interest?

I noticed that people were donating money to cover costs.
So the site comes with a degree of good will from the caving community
and is incredibly well used.

dave_the_cave said:

I am new to this forum, but I like to know where I stand.
Why is the forum a commercial web page rather than an org.

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IIRC someone else snaffled .org and/or .co.uk so .com was all that was available but I'm sure details are available. However, when I visit somewhere I don't normally need to know who owns it in order to make use of it so I fail to see how knowing background info about a forum enables you to "know where (you) stand". 

Its owned by a bloke who does a lot of hard work to keep it as good as it is, which is damn good.
I think the financial situation is outlined in the donations thread.

tt.

tubby two said:

Its owned by a bloke who does a lot of hard work to keep it as good as it is, which is damn good.
I think the financial situation is outlined in the donations thread.

tt.

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And a jolly nice chap he is too

Cheers Bubba

Yes I agree!! (even though I've never met him....) Three cheers for Bubba!! 

dave_the_cave said:

Who owns ukcaving.com?

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Me

dave_the_cave said:

Why is the forum a commercial web page rather than an org.

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Because a .com is easier to remember than a .org, that's all. There's loads of .coms that aren't actually companies.

dave_the_cave said:

So who are the owners or how is it owned.

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Me, myself and I.

dave_the_cave said:

Do the people posting have any financial interest?

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No.

dave_the_cave said:

I noticed that people were donating money to cover costs.
So the site comes with a degree of good will from the caving community
and is incredibly well used.

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I asked for donations coz I'm skint - a number of people have been kind enough to donate. It's a nice way to run a site imho. Better than adverts, etc because it keeps the place independent .

Incredibly well used is relative - it's probably the busiest UK caving forum, but it's still quite a quiet forum in the grand scale of things. That said, the number of members and posts are going up nicely and I think the place is developing well.

So, why all the questions? Why do you need to "know where you stand"?

Just interested really.

Thanks for the big-ups everyone else



[/quote]

cap 'n chris said:

IIRC someone else snaffled .org and/or .co.uk so .com was all that was available but I'm sure details are available.

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I don't think I ever tried to get the .org.

The .co.uk was taken at a later date by somebody on this forum, can't remember exactly who now. Really this site was started up as a bit of an experiment and a place for Eldon members to natter - I never really expected it to get to where it has done. It seems that I have ukcaving.info, though I'd forgotten ever having it!

Domain name registration is easy to lookup on the internet.

Of the ukcaving combinations, Bubba has .com and .info, and someone else has .org.

bubba said:

a place for Eldon members to natter

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I dont think the Eldon want to natter (last post on EPC 15th April Bogs important announcement)

Seriously though keep up the good work Bubba (donation on its way)

Just tried to make a donation why does the donation payment go to bouldering uk?

As an aside; there are no real rules regarding domain suffixes, .com is intended for commercial and .org for organisation but these are now historic oddities of the net.
The Yanks would dearly like to keep these for themselves and instead make us use .co.uk and .org.uk (and generally .xyz.ISO_COUNTRY_CODE) but the 'net is not administered in any single country so there is no way to enforce this sort of thing.

Perhaps the first step would be if they dropped .com in favour of .co.us !!

The 'net is still in its infancy...
I anticipate that over the next decade or so this will tighten up, my guess (nothing more) is that one day you will have to actually be a UK registered company to register .co.uk or .com (and possibly even US registered for that)
Anyone who owns a .com or .co.uk domain is advised to hang on to it.

I suspect that there are very few permutations of caving.anything left

Also: does anyone out there think that .biz .me .info etc etc are worth the bother?
If all you are after is an alternative address for your site then the easier solution by far is to set up subdomains; ie www.domain.sub web.domain.sub cave.domain.sub  xyz.domain.sub etc

I also have to say that the original thread question is a damned odd one to ask when visiting a forum for the first time, apart from the domain suffix there is nothing commercial here (apart from Andy Sparrow's book ).
Commercial organisations don't ask for donations - they charge you!
Perhaps Bubba should change his tag from 'administrator - forum hero' to 'CEO'

Mark said:

Just tried to make a donation why does the donation payment go to bouldering uk?

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I also run ukbouldering.com, but the payment should have still gone to ukcaving.com - still, not to worry, it all goes to the same Paypal account....

Thanks a lot by the way

Some domain suffixes are enforced btw - .ltd.uk is - you need to prove you have a ltd company before you can purchase.

Well thanks for the replies

Actually I am releived that it is currently owned by one person.

A forum has value because a community uses it. So I would definitely
prefer it to be owned by the community or not to be commercial.
Forums are the natural replacement for the notes/news groups that preceded it --
with the potential for full multimedia communication.

However after all the various dot-com money-making schemes that have been dreamt up.
I am rather suspicious of middleman plays.

Advertisers like forums because adverts can be much more specific.
A well used forum can earn money through adverts e.g. the discrete
google ads at the bottom of a web page http://www.google.com/ads_by_google.html.
But less discrete possibilities can occur if the forum takes on the character of a magasine,
with published articles reviewing of kit and recommendations.

This forum is very successful by caving standards, but it is still in its early days and who
knows how it will turn out. In fact I could not beleive how good it is. But the very success
of this forum will prevent truely non-commercial forums from developing
(e.g. BCA's unvisited forum)

Commercial or not, the popularity of a forum depends, like any interest group with a disparate membership, on how the members get on with each other. After all, there's absolutely nothing to stop any one of us leaving the forum forever. The fact that we stay here is the true measure of the forum's success. Another like-minded forum may get set up. Whether people join that as well is going to depend on whether it has anything to offer that you can't find here.

Dave, if you have read the replies you will see that this forum is truly non-commercial. It is privately owned by one bloke who has hitherto paid for the whole damn thing himself and has only recently asked for a few donations to help out. This model is a quite common one for forums of this nature.

I personally believe that there are two reasons why this place does better than the BCA site (which is visited - sometimes by porn spammers  :thumbsdown: ). The first is that it is older and thus better established, the second is that the BCA site is seen as more "formal" and related to the organisations rather than just being a place to chat about 'oles.

Unobtrusive ads are one thing, huge banner ads are another.

The BCA forum was set up after this one, and I don't think the UK caving community is big enough to support a lot of forums. As PB says above, another forum is only going to succeed if it offers something different. Ukbouldering.com has still been pretty succesful, despite the fact that ukclimbing.com already existed with a huge membership. Why? Because it fills a niche market, and it's properly moderated.

uk.rec.caving is practically dead now, surprising considering the negative attitude they gave this place when it started up

This forum is very successful by caving standards, but it is still in its early days and who
knows how it will turn out. In fact I could not beleive how good it is. But the very success
of this forum will prevent truely non-commercial forums from developing

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Dave:

I'm not really sure that this matters. If a BCA forum doesn't succeed because this one is so popular, then surely this just means that the BCA forum wasn't needed in the first place? And are you implying that UKCaving is NOT truly non-commercial? What's the difference between UKCaving and BCA? Surely both forums have to be paid for, and provided neither owner is making money doing it, what is the difference?

There is space for more caving forums, but probably only at a local level, where the subject matters are purely local, and are going to be of little interest to people in other areas. There is a nice little active and well-established forum at www.undergroundkent.co.uk, for example, but you need to be a member to view the posts! So unless you want to sign up, don't bother checking it out.

This forum is tops 

Other forums don't stand a chance.

Re: community owned projects .... Remember. "A committee of one gets things done". "A committee of two finds things to do" etc.. A forum owned and run by a one man band is fine by me - that way someone is actually in charge rather than expecting some other bugger to do things - it means that the system works and is kept working. I vote for things to continue being as good as they are.

Perhaps the original thread author is planning to launch a commune-stylee cavewebkibbutz?...

Remember. "A committee of one gets things done".

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I vote for the Capn to run Mendip on his own. :tease: