With the passing of CA still very close, it might be a little too soon to bring up the subject.  But the thought came to me, so I figured I would put it here.

Do any current or past moderators have any knowledge on running this forum and keeping the site up?  Anything like administrative accounts, hosting location, support contacts, etc.  There have been times in the past when a problem occurred and the site was down or had other trouble.  I would hate to see the site go down and be gone forever because no one knows how to get in touch with someone to help.

I'm happy to help if I can.  But my technical knowledge of this forum is basically zero.

I had wondered the same thing. CA seemed to be admin'ing the site basically solo so I hope there's some way to get access to it. Would be such a shame if slinging.org went down.

I can help also, possibly with the technical aspects too, but I can't take anything big on for a few months at least as very overloaded at the mo with the end of my PhD.

  I believe we've all thought about this.  Of course we are all still grieving c-a's sudden passing.  But what happens now?  Chris owns the site so its future is in his hands.  He'll either run it himself again, appoint someone new, or shut it down.  I hope he opts for keeping it up and running because there is no other resource like it.  Plus we are a community here, almost like a family.  I would miss slinging.org much. 

I am happy to join a mod team so that we can keep this place going, I think it shouldnt fall to one person to do it all. 

Does anyone have a way to contact Chris? Is there a way to make a complete back up of the site in case he chooses to shut it down?

This is the email from Chris's website: chris.harrison@cs.cmu.edu

This is his website: https://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php

I may be able to help with the technical aspects but I'm not sure I will have enough time available to do a good job.

Wow!  Is that really him?

My office is also in Oakland (Pittsburgh).  I'm only in the office once a week now (mostly work remotely since COVID), but that CMU address is literally just half a mile away from where I work.

Where did you get that information MMF?


If we know that's him, I guess I'll volunteer to reach out to him and start up the conversation.

It is definitely him. This article used to be on this site:
https://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Research/Sling

I found it a long time ago using Google.

Cool.  That's good enough for me.

Okay guys, I'll send him an email to let him know what's going on and report back.

I'm guessing you werent able to reach him. I thought you would be successful. He just published this: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3536221.3556620

He cited himself from CMU there and here is CMU's website: https://www.hcii.cmu.edu/people/chris-harrison

Whoa!  I forgot to post an update here.  Sorry guys!

I was able to reach Chris.  His email has an automatic reply stating that he's on sabbatical currently, so communication is slow.  He did respond to me though.  In the last email to him I asked about a few members possibly being set up as administrators for the site.  I haven't heard back on that email yet.

But have no fear, communication has been established.  Nothing has been determined yet though.

Good work.

We're back in business for the moment.  Rat Man and I have been elevated to admins so that new members and things like that can be processed.  I just created 6 new accounts so we should have some new folks here soon.  NooneOfConsequence might be elevated as well, but we're still in communication with Chris on that.

Chris will continue to assist with technical issues if they come up and will also keep covering the costs of the forum.  So a big kudos to him.  No major changes coming at the moment, but we're now in a position to keep going.  If there are any questions, drop them here and we'll do our best to get them answered.

Cheers everyone!

Good job attacking this issue right away. You've insured the continuation of the forum.

Huge thanks to all of you for keeping it going!

Excellent news!

Awesome!!!