Internet historical musings re:ponds:
With the "great renaming" that took place in 1987, the "rec" usenet designation began. This eventually led to a newsgroup called
"rec.ponds". When I got my home internet service in 1997, I began visiting rec.ponds daily, "meeting" ponders from all over the country,
sharing their experiences and knowledge. Unfortunately, the structure of the usenet allowed unrestricted access to trolls, and eventually
rec.ponds fell victim. Due to this lack of moderation, rec.ponds eventually became fodder for trolls and spammers and general mentally
challenged goofballs to the point where it died from non use. It is still operating but it is 100 percent smut, having absolutely nothing to do
with ponds. Incredibly the world has produced thousands of mentally ill computer literate geekoids with nothing to do all day long but fill
old newsgroups and abandoned websites with filth and insane rantings. Rec.ponds was reborn as rec.ponds-moderated in 2007 that is ok
and has a few old timers still posting there, but nowhere as many posts as used to be in the day.. Jan Jordan still posts there. Kathy
Thirtyacre does not.
Gardenweb had cranked up in October, 1995, and again I was able to join at the same time as rec.ponds via my home connection.
The Internet Pond Society (IPS) was created in 1996, and I frequently visited it often as well. Roger Zutterling was the webmaster, and
later on was also webmaster for Watergardening.com. Members that often posted at IPS included, Pamela Ingle, Greg Bickal, Michael J.
Singleton, Jan jordan and Alan Farmer.
By the year 2002, IPS had faded away, with most of its members also posting at Watergardening.com..
Watergardening.com (Greg and Susan Speichert ) was started up April 14, 1997. When I joined it was a simple bulletin board with no
images or logos, but soon was redone with Roger Zutterling's help into a nicely appointed website forum.
For several years, I divided my online time between GardenWeb and Watergardening.com. Now Gardenweb had a webmaster by the
name "Spike" that ruled with an iron fist, and regularly banned members for imagined or otherwise rediculous reasons, and many of them
migrated to Watergardening.com, and after a while I dropped out of regularly visiting Gardenweb. BTW, Gardenweb is now owned by
General Electric.
Watergardening.com was the fun place to be for several years, but by 2005 cracks began to appear in the attention given it by it's owners.
Over the next two years the site deteriorated until it was abandoned by the Speicherts by 2008. After the Speicherts abandoned
Watergardening .com it became a hacked porn site. By that time most of the regular members had migrated to American Ponders.
Watergardening .com is now owned and operated by Aquascape (Jason James, 9 November 2009), after changing name servers 10 times
over three years. Incidentally, Watergardening.com also was listed a "American Water Garden Society" or AWGS, but were both the same site.
I must mention three other forums, one of which I have participated and the other two I have not. Koiphen was created by Justin Pennington in
January 2004, and is still successfully operating. It's focus is on koi.
The next site is jb-forums.com created by Johnny Brewer in 2000. There was quite a story about how this form came to be. I notice that
they now have only 33 members, at least one of which is also a member of AP.
Last, there is Newtcity.com, owned by R J Linburg, created March 25, 2003.
American Ponders was created January 16, 2006 by Gerald Esten and Sean Stevens. This new site grew as Watergardening.com shrank
and is now my preferred place in the internet pond scene. It's hard to believe it's been four years already and now boasts 1,382 members.
