Aditnow.co.uk

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TunnelWade

New member
Maybe the gentleman in question who ran AN no longer wishes to be contacted or doesn't have anything to do with the mine exploration community?
So maybe moving forward. That option is no longer viable.
So, together collectively if NAMHO has the 'funds' let's get another website operational? Otherwise it's just pillowtalk. We attempted the replicate such a website and admittedly yes it required more funds than we had.
Albeit starting from scratch will take time. Let's put measures in place to safeguard the information for any such future occurrences to be avoided. The majority of information and so on could be collected again over time. (Admittedly some lost, but thats how it is sometimes)
So NAMHO, over to you.....
 
tomferry

tomferry

Well-known member
I am happy to assist with areas I no well . I no a few people with large data bases of information .


Namho - I also say get the ball rolling. Obviously I understand contact with Simon is a massive decision maker , on the direction to take regarding information.
 
Wayland Smith

Wayland Smith

Active member
Whatever you know, or think you know will never replace the information that was on the two mining forums.
Has anyone (NAMHO) contacted Miles to see about obtaining the data from his forum?
 
T

TunnelWade

New member
But there is still several Discords and Clouds that hold an abundance of information within collective groups. In North Wales alone there is 6 clubs that have a wealth of knowledge and are extremely busy in the underground scene. They just remain anonymous not wishing to engage with the politics of these forums or NAMHO. So rather than being held up on the recovering of information from websites that have now passed. NAMHO have said they have the funds and backing so why not get the ball rolling. Reach out to the parties/clubs that do wish to share data and engage then start building it up again. Whilst under NAMHO it could be regulated better and safeguarded to avoid this issue again in future years. Yes , some information will be lost, but as time goes on....(we are all getting older) more information and documentation is going to be lost.
 
Jim MacPherson

Jim MacPherson

Member
I'm a little edgy about the passive/aggressive tone of a few of the contributers on this thread.

SimonRL set AditNow up and ran it for many years and clearly was confronted with a number of issues a few years ago which eventually required a major rebuild of the site.

From a personal perspective I started using AditNow by chance and eventually (about 2016) decided it would be a good home for the photos my Dad took of mines in the 1960's to 1990's, the alternative was to bin them. They may or may not be a useful historical record and include some sites that physically can no longer be reached. Over time I did add more from some other friends of my Dad including Harry Parker and Cyril McChesney, I have all of those photos and a miserable bunch of my own.

I'm not sure I want to start again although I expect PDHMS can deal with Harry Parker's sprawling collection and NMHS are doing others, what is potentially not recoverable is all the commentary that AditNow users added, I have no "ownership" over them (usually erudite, sometimes funny and very often gave new avenues to research and explore) to the bits and pieces that were put on to the site and many users put up a great deal more information than I did. Like UKC there were the occasional tangential lurches.

I would like Simon to be able to resurrect the site in as complete a way as possible and I would be saddened if he ends up hacked off with some of this thread's commentaries but one of the pleasures of AditNow was the help, support and cameraderie from many users that Simon was able to engender with the work he (and others) put in to build it site up.

Sorry to sound a touch grumpy.

Jim
 
pwhole

pwhole

Well-known member
I've still got all the thousands of photos I uploaded, so I can always do it again if I have to, though I'd rather not. Personally I'm still hopeful a solution is in the pipeline, as it really was a superb resource for everyone. One thing is clear though - many of the larger cave/mine organisations have significant resources at their disposal, that don't really get used much, and if cost is an issue in setting up a new site (and it may not be much in relative terms, just difficult for individuals with no profit coming back in), then maybe they could be persuaded to stump up some development funding. And I think a member subscription, should it ever resurface, would hopefully guarantee its future.
 
RobinGriffiths

RobinGriffiths

Well-known member
My tupenny's worth after reading this thread with interest.

Whatever happens, I would personally say there needs to be a mechanism whereby what, if anything replaces AN can be a going concern without being relient on a person or group of persons. Otherwise we just end up losing a resource for the third time.

Namho is an option, especially for Mine, Photo and Document curation, but maybe a mining forum is not so good a fit? I think forum users would be wanting to fly a bit closer to the wind than what an official mining body would be happy with.

Maybe some sort of separate trust is another option?

With regard to Jim's comments. I don't think there's been anything particularly aggresive in the comments above, but I think there is a sense of fustration almost 3 years in, that we don't really know if we should kick our heels and wait for a new iteration of AN, or get on with setting something new up.
 
LJR

LJR

Member
Aditnow was very good because many of the photos were uploaded during discussions and so had context and folk could add extra snippets of information to enhance the value of the photos.
A bland database is OK but it really needs a forum bolted on for discussion.
 
ChrisJC

ChrisJC

Well-known member
It seems there are a few topics to be resolved here:
1. Will Simon give access to the Aditnow remains to NAMHO? This seems to be the key point - can AN be reinvigorated or are we starting from scratch? There's an insane amount of information on AN, in addition to the photos, so I sincerely hope it can be re-used.
2. There needs to be a debate about how to handle the various access levels that AN had. When it was privately run, ultimately it's a dictatorship, which makes it easier to resolve discussions about who is allowed to see what. NAMHO is a properly constituted body, so would have to have well thought out rules about that.
3. There were a lot of rubbish photos on AN. People just uploaded everything without much consideration to 'repeats', or 'interest'. So a lot of housekeeping will be required.
4. Policy on sensitive sites, and access when it's not allowed. Again, AN could hide such information behind access levels. NAMHO would have to have a strategy for dealing with that.
5. Permission to re-use AN uploads. I am sure that 99% of the uploads were by 1% of the users, so it wouldn't be too onerous to ask for permission.

Chris.
 
ttxela2

ttxela2

Active member
ChrisJC said:
3. There were a lot of rubbish photos on AN. People just uploaded everything without much consideration to 'repeats', or 'interest'. So a lot of housekeeping will be required.
Click to expand...
I guess by some measure there were but hopefully any housekeeping would have a light touch, as well as the recording of physical features and artifacts there was also quite a strong social interest. A photo of a group eating sandwiches in a parking spot may not be of much interest now but give it a few decades...
 
RobinGriffiths

RobinGriffiths

Well-known member
With regard to Chris's 2 and 4. That's why I suggest a separate trust, which could be a member of NAMHO, or affiliated in some hands off way ??. I think if it was NAMHO run it would have to be totlaly above board regardless of access levels.
 
Jim MacPherson

Jim MacPherson

Member
ttxela2 said:
I guess by some measure there were but hopefully any housekeeping would have a light touch, as well as the recording of physical features and artifacts there was also quite a strong social interest. A photo of a group eating sandwiches in a parking spot may not be of much interest now but give it a few decades...
Click to expand...
Not least for a record of the people involved for example Eric Richardson around Nenthead, he generally managed a benign smile, and the helpful contributions of people to put names to faces 20 years or so after the event and Legendrider's interest in older cars, which helped date a Beckermet photo.

I also think ChrisJC's point 5 is quite optimistic given the hoops NMRS jumped through to get permissions to digitize their archive, though much of that was on vellum.

Jim
 
tomferry

tomferry

Well-known member
Jim MacPherson said:
Not least for a record of the people involved for example Eric Richardson around Nenthead, he generally managed a benign smile, and the helpful contributions of people to put names to faces 20 years or so after the event and Legendrider's interest in older cars, which helped date a Beckermet photo.

I also think ChrisJC's point 5 is quite optimistic given the hoops NMRS jumped through to get permissions to digitize their archive, though much of that was on vellum.

Jim
Click to expand...
Regarding point 5 I disagree .

If only 1 member has posted on a file and you cannot get hold of him it’s simple . You don’t use the file . If we want to move forward you can’t expect everything to happen .

If everyone had negative remarks nothing would get done . I

Simon can still make a site could be tomorrow or 10 years . No one is saying you cannot have 2 sites, also I am sure you could join both ??? Then maybe photos will be backed up in 2 places incase this happens again and we wait another 3 years .

I am a bit confused why anyone would be against getting a new site after 3 years ??
 
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vanoord

vanoord

Member
AN may come back, it may not. Quite a lot of the site has been rebuilt and the database is functional with the mine details, images and documents, but the log in doesn't yet work for the database side.

Quite a lot of effort was put into finding a way of rebuilding the website sooner, but unfortunately that didn't happen.

A lot of the issue is time: without going into details, people's lives change and that alters what they're able to do. Specifically, I don't think there will be any work on the website before next year.

From a *personal* point of view, I think it's unlikely the mine database will be passed onto any third party: it was created on the understanding that it would be used on AN only and it may be difficult to see what was contributed by who. We turned down a lot of requests for (paid) exports of the database and while there might be some debate if a body like NAMHO wanted it, it would require a bit of thought.

The photographs: yes, there was a problem in later days with the database being overwhelmed by poor quality, dull and repetitive images. That caused increasing problems with the size of the database and consequent hosting problems/costs. That would also have to be solved in the future.

Chris - if you want me to have a chat with Simon about anything specific, let me know and I'll mention it. But again from a *personal* point of view, I'd like to see a (significantly) stripped down version of the site resurrected publicly rather than something else - but it's not my decision to make.
 
Outdoor Miner

Outdoor Miner

New member
Nothing lasts forever on the internet, but Aditnow was such a valuable resource and as a newbie to mine exploration really pivotal for me when I was getting into exploring mines three or so years ago. The database was superb and yes, some of the pictures were a bit shonky, but then again, not everyone is a photographer. Hopefully something can resurface and we can all contribute to build it back up. There's nothing quite like a contributor-driven database of mines when there's so many people exploring fantastic places.
 
E

Edwardov

Member
If you are just interested in location data, there is a lot out there available already. I’m sitting on a lot of GB-wide location data related to mining. Some of it I can share, some of it I can’t. The latest count is 330k locations of varying accuracy.

One source I can share is the GB1900 dataset which is publicly available. Some volunteers digitised all text on historical maps and the locations and text are georeferenced.

This is a filtered and processed version of digitised locations related to mining that I created. Due to the size of the dataset this is just the mine and quarry names. Including the shafts etc it is just too huge to stick on a web map and I have had to drop some location attributes.

 
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