Does anyone remember an online pipes forum from about 20 years ago, around 2003-2005? I don’t remember if it was pipesmokersforum.com or pipes.org. The main moderator was a chap named Melvin who smoked Penzance. Nostalgia. Long gone.
Pipes.org?
- Thread starter JoburgB2
- Start date
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It was the early days of online forums for pipes and tobaccos for me, for sure. But definitely a turning point, and an exponential increase in my learning curve about this hobby. I had maybe 3 pipes and smoked 3 blends from 1981-2004. Since then, added 30+ pipes, and maybe 100+ blends? If that’s possible. Always learning. Been visiting this site since 2016, but only just started participating a few weeks ago, and so glad to have it.
A search of "pipes.org" on this Website revealed the following thread, dated March 29, 2024, by rokerdepipe, and titled "Remembering the Choices of Old Sites." Here is a link to that thread.
At the bottom of rokerdepipe's initial post is an attachment titled "pipesorg.png" which shows an image of the pipes.org homepage. The site's Moderators were Melvin Schwartz and Jim Beard.
At the bottom of rokerdepipe's initial post is an attachment titled "pipesorg.png" which shows an image of the pipes.org homepage. The site's Moderators were Melvin Schwartz and Jim Beard.
Yeah, that’s him. I was a good board with many knowledgeable collectors. Definitely not the wild west of the unmoderated ASP.
I remember Melvin, the second worst moderator on the Internet, and I only say 2nd worst because I haven't experienced all the moderators on the planet, so there's a small possibility of there being someone even more unfit.
I think the site is still around, just no ju ju.
We also had that 'Wild West' forum set up by a couple of boys from here called I think 'Political Pipe' or something along those lines. The nearest analogy I had for that place was it was like a Wild West saloon bar with people getting hurled through windows and shot up in the street. It was a no holds bar anything goes sh*t festival. It got so crazy and went in ever decreasing circles of insanity that the forum ultimately vanished up its own backside! It made you appreciate Kevin and the grown ups who run this place!
Oh yeah! I’m pretty sure that was the first pipe-related forum I was on. Melvin definitely had his shtick, but I learned a lot.
Jim's contribution was as solid as Melvin's was destructive. I haven't looked in a couple of years, but if the site is still around, the section on maintenance had some really solid information. Since Jim wasn't toxic like Melvin, that part of the site ran well.
Melvin's toxicity drove people away and kept the forum from growing. Plus, the format, with the sometimes two day delay for your post to be screened before being posted really destroyed any flow or spontaneity.
What finally killed the Pipes.Org forum was the decision by the site owner to migrate to a new platform. In the process the forum was uncoupled from the rest of the site and effectively disappeared. I figured out how to find it and connect to it and sent a message detailing the problem. It was over two weeks until the issue was fixed, by which time the already ailing forum was dead. An attempt to revive it under new moderators failed.
Melvin's toxicity drove people away and kept the forum from growing. Plus, the format, with the sometimes two day delay for your post to be screened before being posted really destroyed any flow or spontaneity.
What finally killed the Pipes.Org forum was the decision by the site owner to migrate to a new platform. In the process the forum was uncoupled from the rest of the site and effectively disappeared. I figured out how to find it and connect to it and sent a message detailing the problem. It was over two weeks until the issue was fixed, by which time the already ailing forum was dead. An attempt to revive it under new moderators failed.