I finally got approved there and found the info I wanted but I really like this place more. It was definately the place to be in 2009 though.
Same here. I had a fantastic few nights out in London with a group of guys who I would never of found without CPF.
Not logged on CPF for ages, just tried and can’t log in. Can’t reset my password as I think it was linked to an old email address.
Many forums are running out of time and relevancy. In the grand scheme of things, isn’t everything?
I’m trying to use CPF, but it won’t let me post or send messages. When I try, a window pops up and tells me my message is too “spam like” and try again. But no message will work. I can’t ask them about it, because of that - what to do? I have a lot of lights to sell, and of course I’ll post them here first, but I would like to post there too.
Any suggestions?
I’m not sure there’s enough traffic over there anymore to bother with.
I haven’t been able to get in for quite some time, I just quit trying after a while.
This is all deliberate on Reddit’s end. No system for retaining information, so the same posts and questions come up over and over, information gets repeated, thus driving up overall engagement. Reposts are a significant part of how the site works.
And while the supposed purpose of the voting system is whether or not the comment/post “adds to discussion” it inevitably always becomes a popularity contest for fake internet points. This serves to increase engagement as well - you want your comment to be upvoted, and that means communicating in a way that is popular and appealing, not in a way that adds to discussion. Those two things can both be true, but aren’t always, and it is only the popular comments that rise to the top (and the ones that are first), regardless of the value they add to the discussion. I will admit there is an allure to fake internet points that makes me want them even though they’re worthless - the addictive nature of social media. But it leads to groupthink.
I find it interesting that even though CPF is “dead” and kind of a ghost town, I still find old posts on there with useful information when I google something. And BLF of course. Stuff shows up from reddit too, but it’s generally much less reliable and sparse on detail, less likely to actually give me the answer I’m looking for. Good for beamshots and memes, though.
I also started at CPF in 2004. Visit them quite often, especially the SKYRC-MC3000 thread.
Still have some old friends there.
Makes sense unfortunately. Thanks for that interesting insight.
I think both this site and CPF have their merits. Now that Mr Ed runs CPF folks over there can freely discuss this site without fear of the previous admin citing some regulation prohibiting such behavior.
A lot of people logged off at CPF when the new owner took over and never came back. However, a lot of “haven’t been here in years” members are logging back in on occasion.
From the research I used to do there it seems as though it was at it’s peak until LED’s became the norm. When I say the norm I mean the ‘350 lumen number from Sprawl Mart’ was the norm. The bulb lovers seemed to fade away and this site was where the excitement about LED’s drifted to. Like said above, the SureFire, Elzetta, Malkoff fans still reside there at CPF.
It seems to have turned into more about discussions than ideas. Not a bad thing to this guy. But again I can see why this site appeals to some over that other one. I’m also a member of Johnny Mac’s “the flashlight forum”. It’s like this one to a degree yet has nowhere near the traffic.
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Homie woke up after 4 years of hibernation to necro a 2 year old thread with last activity 6 months ago lol
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In my youth we had another story with the same meaning, but much shorter, “bees and flies live in the same place, flies see garbage, bees see flowers”
Not sure what gives some an idea that cpf is dead, lol, it is not, it is actually getting more traffic, things changed there with new management, certain mods were removed, and overall environment is much less toxic, if alt all, it used to be pretty crappy, so much that i did not even log in for months, did not post much either, if i had something interesting I would discuss it here first, or exclusively, now it is a lot better place than it used to be.
lol, what do you think this is, fb?
6 months is not exactly an eternity for a discussion. besides, what’s wrong with kicking a dead horse? lol
i don’t see anything wrong with @bykfixer’s post, and it’s possible that you don’t either, but i think he took what you said the wrong way 
your comment is an amusing observation, though, so i don’t see a problem with what you said either.
and yeah, he almost certainly logged in because CPF was down for a bit.
here’s one more comment from the peanut gallery (i posted this on CPF):
i don’t personally have a problem with either forum. i think they’re both great. i like the users on both. i think the family friendly thing here is unnecessary and not necessarily to my taste (e.g. the word censorship/replacement), but that’s a minor gripe. i have not run into (or afoul of) the administration of either site, so i have no real comment on that.
since i’ve been “active” in online flashlight stuff (only a few years), i feel that i’ve seen more interesting, technical discussion on BLF, but that probably changes over time.
i will say that discourse is superior to xenforo, though. and ime, BLF’s hosting seems better than CPF’s. CPF is often sluggish for me but not terrible. other xenforo sites i frequent are snappier.
i think we’re extremely fortunate in this hobby to have two independent, (mostly) thriving discussion communities. many online special interest groups have one, and most have zero. if trash like facebook, reddit, IG, et al. were the only places to talk about flashlights online, i wouldn’t even bother.
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Every forum that contributes to the general knowledge about its base subject has merit. Individually, people have the discretion to decide whether the content or atmosphere of any particular forum benefits them or not, and will participate accordingly. Cross posting is common on internet forums. Nothing wrong with it, and one could argue it only contributes the overall balance of experience and opinions presented.
That said, @bykfixer is a well respected longtime contributor on CPF, and it’s great to see him here…didn’t even know he was a “member” on BLF.
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Does that mean “won’t be chased off for talking about lights under $500”? 
/runs
Tend to agree, also that necroposting is generally frowned upon mostly when it’s like “yeah, I agree” or “hey, I have this problem too, can you help me” when the OP was last active 4 years ago or something, with nothing else added to the conversation, not someone who’s actually resuming a discussion.
It’s probably more of a configuration thing. It’s really quite difficult to make a website responsive even if the hosting is decent. It requires tuning a ton of arcane variables and configuration files across the underlying OS and the entire webserver / interpreter / database stack, and it’s always very specific to the particular website and its unique load and traffic patterns. Or if they’re running on a more managed and easy hosting package then they wouldn’t even have access to a lot of those settings even if they wanted to tweak them. The old BLF forum took me years to get right, and I ended up implementing multiple non-standard caching mechanisms that added major complexity to the Drupal setup. The current Discourse setup was an absolute dream by comparison because it implements most of the same caching strategies that I manually arrived at for the old site, but it integrates everything in a much more coherent system with less tunables to mess around with.
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Is it just me or is pushing the back button sometimes sluggish?
Hmm it shouldn’t normally be sluggish, but depending on how your browser behaves it might in certain situations be reloading the entire code of the website, which would be a bit slower.
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Thanks, I know this is a super late response. Congrats on your family too. I must have been tired when I posted this or something. Reading it now puts myself in a bad light IMHO. I apologize for that, that’s not my normal demeanor. I can’t see it how it’s written in a context that doesn’t come off a little rude reading it now. But yeah, I think I was trying to say that I started their but have come to prefer this site. Probably because people here don’t act the way I did originally posting that way. Ooof.
So, here’s to my foot in my mouth. Lol Appreciate the replies though genuinely. The upbeat welcoming attitude is what keeps me coming back. And again apologize for taking away from that atmosphere.
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