Don't really know Ivo personally but believe they're OK.
Ascot certainly is fine.
Don't know the last one.
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Anyone else wonders about what happened to long-lost forum members?
- Thread starter Sad Sprinter
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Ascot certainly is fine.
Don't know the last one.
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Whistler40145
Established Member
One member who suddenly disappeared was Darren R, participant on several quizzes.
I contribute to a watch and clock forum who's demographic is, shall we say, past the average. Quite a few posters have died over the years and the forum places a small "Deceased" flag under their forum name. It always catches my eye when researching a particular subject and, having found a piece of very useful information, note the contributer is no longer with us.
D6130
Established Member
In the event of a regular contributor passing away - for whatever reason - how would the Forum know? It's not exactly like a subscription organisation - such as the Friends of the Settle-Carlisle Line, of which I am a member - which, in most cases would be informed by friends or relatives and then publish a list of deceased members in their quarterly magazine.Oh blimey. I don’t think we’re going to start do that!
District Dave's does similar, I noticed an In memoriam written below a username when I came across a thread a while back.
brad465
Established Member
Ivo was a regular on challenges I remember, from what I heard (happy to be corrected), he may have had a falling out with the forum/some of its members.
@DaveNewcastle is another member I notice has been inactive for a few years now. While he comes up in searches if you know his precise username, and his posts still show up, search suggestions don't seem to recognise him either.
It later transpired that @RichmondCommu didn't actually die; they made it up.
Their post claiming to have died was:
However they also claimed to have died previously:
RIP Richmond Ram - JA606 Article No. 244085
Hello everyone, Nine days a go our Dad Andrew died from a heart attack. Whilst our Dad wasn't a regular poster on this forum, and indeed when...
www.ja606.co.uk
(bold = my emphasis to show similarities)
This took a lot of investigating, and various other inconsistencies were found as a result.
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Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
Quite some time ago, that former contributor's name was mentioned on this website in passing, but doubts were cast if the person in mind was the same as this one.
I remember @VTPreston_Tez being a schoolboy contributor and the thread that he set up called "End of the Station's Word" on the Quizzes and Games forum many years ago is still going strong.
@Ivo was the website member who launched the Settlement Association quiz on this website in 2011, which is still going strong. He seemed to have home connections to the Thorpe Bay area of Southend and we often conversed via the former PM website system and the last that I heard many years ago, he was considering writing a book.
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J-2739
Established Member
Wait, wha-It later transpired that @RichmondCommu didn't actually die; they made it up.
Their post claiming to have died was:
However they also claimed to have died elsewhere:
RIP Richmond Ram - JA606 Article No. 244085
Hello everyone, Nine days a go our Dad Andrew died from a heart attack. Whilst our Dad wasn't a regular poster on this forum, and indeed when...
(bold = my emphasis to show similarities)
This took a lot of investigating, and various other inconsistencies were found as a result.
It later transpired that @RichmondCommu didn't actually die; they made it up.
Their post claiming to have died was:
However they also claimed to have died elsewhere:
RIP Richmond Ram - JA606 Article No. 244085
Hello everyone, Nine days a go our Dad Andrew died from a heart attack. Whilst our Dad wasn't a regular poster on this forum, and indeed when...
(bold = my emphasis to show similarities)
This took a lot of investigating, and various other inconsistencies were found as a result.
What on earth..?
He wasn't Mark Twain, was he?It later transpired that @RichmondCommu didn't actually die; they made it up.
Their post claiming to have died was:
However they also claimed to have died previously:
RIP Richmond Ram - JA606 Article No. 244085
Hello everyone, Nine days a go our Dad Andrew died from a heart attack. Whilst our Dad wasn't a regular poster on this forum, and indeed when...
(bold = my emphasis to show similarities)
This took a lot of investigating, and various other inconsistencies were found as a result.
And if I recall correctly they still kept popping up here occasionally under new accounts/usernames.
Yup.
brad465
Established Member
Had this member been doing other outlandish/suspicious stuff on the forum, that would soon see them banned, prior to this incident? I can't think of any other reason why someone would go to the trouble of faking their death on an online forum.Yup.
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
As far as I'm aware, no - RichmondCommu routinely posted interesting, polite, and very well reasoned stuff, and it seemed to me was a well respected part of the railforums community - until suddenly all the stuff about multiple accounts and faking his own death on multiple forums turned up.
Could well be, yes. Sounds a bit more plausible than faking your own death for no apparent reason.
Even if they were going to get banned, faking one's death seems a little OTT!
Doubt it, unless they were hacked on several forums at several different points in time by the same person who posted similar stories...
ChrisC
Established Member
One question as matter of interest after reading this thread. Are people eventually removed from the forum list if they have been inactive for a long period of time. I’m thinking about something like 5 or even 10 years. It was mentioned earlier about how there’s mostly no way of knowing if someone has died. Just thinking there could be hundreds of members who sadly died some time ago but are still listed as members of the forum.
Sad Sprinter
Established Member
It later transpired that @RichmondCommu didn't actually die; they made it up.
Their post claiming to have died was:
However they also claimed to have died previously:
RIP Richmond Ram - JA606 Article No. 244085
Hello everyone, Nine days a go our Dad Andrew died from a heart attack. Whilst our Dad wasn't a regular poster on this forum, and indeed when...
(bold = my emphasis to show similarities)
This took a lot of investigating, and various other inconsistencies were found as a result.
…well that really is interesting.
People have mentioned @Ivo, I joined the forum long after he left but have come across his abandoned profile before and funnily enough, he was the inspiration for making this thread.
I also notice “tbtc” has recently gone off grid
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
Anyone other than me remember @HST Power and @Kingfisher200262?
Last seen today at 08.53 so still logging into the forum.
I assume it is possible that some 'long-lost' members are just browsing and reading these days rather than posting?
I think that's quite likely. Seeing as there's no need to sign in to browse it's possible some 'lost' members are still invisibly looking at the forums.
I'm a member of a few forums and it's normal for regulars to fade away over time. People get new jobs, retire, get into/out of relationships, lose interest and hundreds of other things over the years. Sometimes they come back, sometimes they don't. It's just the way things go.
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
I now do just that on a different website that I used to follow on certain localised threads to keep up to date with information, as many employees of transport organisations make postings on there. I actually gave up following another one, as brass band contest posting seemed suddenly to take the place of localised public transport matters (on the east side of Greater Manchester).
weepingwillowb
Member
A US forum I was a regular on had a similar experience about 10-12 years ago. Someone passing themself off as female registered the handle 'barefootprinter' and began posting perfectly normal chatty posts. After a few months, 'she' broke the news that 'she' had been diagnosed as having cancer. A couple of months later, someone registered 'barefootprinter1' as a handle, and posted to say that 'barefootprinter' had suddenly passed away - I can't remember what connection this second poster claimed to have with the first (in fact the two must have been one person). A link to a newspaper report of a funeral was posted, but a couple of the regular posters thought that something wasn't quite right, and began looking into it online. After a week they found that it was all a big lie, and there was no poster that had died and the newspaper report was unconnected to any poster.
Why would someone create a fake story and a fake death? My guess would be the enjoyment of having the power to be able to manipulate others into believing a big lie, perhaps.
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Ask John Stonehouse or the Canoe Man
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