Floppyshop Online — The Atari ST & Falcon PD Library, Reborn and Fully Searchable

[exxos]

So the usual stupid comments have started already, no great surprise is it really.

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For what it's worth, if anyone finds issues with anything I release, posting on here is always the best way to reach me rather than on a news site where I may not see it promptly. That should probably go without saying, but apparently not. Though as a general rule, if something needs that much explaining to someone, the explanation rarely helps anyway.

Every time I engage with other sites in this community I come away wishing I hadn't. So that will be a site I will no longer visit now as well. Always the same.. every..single..time..


:sigh:

[Darklord]

Well, I'm assuming it was "post fix" but I used it, did a search for any BBS Express! ST stuff,
found some files and downloaded them without any issue.

Looking forward to going through more of the disks - thanks for resurrecting this. I'll say it
again, "Well Done!". :cheers:

[exxos]

Looking forward to going through more of the disks - thanks for resurrecting this. I'll say it
again, "Well Done!". :cheers:

:thanksyellow:

I wish that LAPD could have been recoverable. There was a lot of great stuff in there.

[Higgy]

Knowing that there are many Amiga users here :o is there something similar on the Amiga?

When reading magazines, say Amiga Format's PD review section they will give the disk number of the PD house. It would be nice to find the disk.
It's the sort of thing I imagined people have done but I've not come across it.

I know 17 bit software released CD compilations of their PD disks.

[exxos]

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Same old same old isn't it. Do something great and essentially get the middle finger for it.

Let me be honest about why this actually gets under my skin, because it isn't really the fact that someone uploaded the library somewhere else. On its own that wouldn't bother me much. It's everything else that comes circling around with it - the digs, the sarcasm, the framing, the general attitude that arrives alongside it. That's the part that wears you down. One thing on its own is nothing. It's the whole package, every single time, that does it.

And for a bit of context - the Floppyshop site isn't new. It's been up for a number of years. In all that time nobody reported a single bug with it, and I've used it myself a fair bit recently with no problems. The reason I did a relaunch announcement is simple: hardly anyone seems to be aware the site even exists. That's been obvious for a while, and the reaction rather proves the point - people genuinely didn't know it was there. So announcing it was the right call. It's also worth noting the recent server updates affected various parts of my site and threw up a number of new bugs that took time to work through, and honestly that's still an ongoing job in the background. So a fault appearing shortly after all that is hardly surprising, and it was fixed quickly once flagged.

Look at the previous page for how feedback is supposed to work. A bug was reported in Firefox. No digs, no drama, just a clear report. I fixed it within hours and confirmed it. Simple, efficient, done. That is exactly the kind of thing that's actually useful and I acted on it immediately.

Then compare that to the rest. I asked people to report issues on my own forum, because that's the place I monitor most and it means faster fixes. That is not an unreasonable request - it's me trying to make bug reporting more efficient so I can fix things quicker. And for making that request, I get a sarcastic remark about announcing a "non working website." The site was working when it was posted. The bug appeared afterwards and was fixed within hours. So I'm actively trying to streamline getting problems fixed, and somehow I end up racking up insults for it. Seriously, what is wrong with people these days.

Then there's the reply pointing people to download the raw CDs elsewhere "without any strings attached" ending with "you are welcome." Look closely at what that's actually saying. The "you are welcome" is explicitly framed around not having to come to my site. That's the whole point of the comment - here's how to get the files without visiting exxos. Think about how deliberate that is.

There's also a reason downloads on my site sit behind a forum account. A lot of this material has questionable copyright status, and putting it behind a login rather than serving it blindly to the entire internet is a deliberate and responsible choice. Other sites host this stuff wide open to anyone. I don't. So the "no strings attached" framing isn't the flex it's presented as - it's pointing people at a version with less care taken over it and calling that a favour. And needing an account to download files is hardly unusual anyway, half the internet works that way. The Floppyshop download has been on my forum behind an account for several years now and in all that time nobody complained about it once. Plenty of people already have an account and had no issue at all. If someone wants a huge archive but can't be bothered to spend two minutes registering, they probably don't care much about the files in the first place.

Here is the part people don't seem to grasp. I do this free stuff for a reason. It drives traffic to the site, which improves visibility, which drives more traffic, which gives me a bit of motivation and the occasional sale. That is what keeps the lights on and lets me keep contributing in the first place. When someone deliberately routes people away from the site so they "don't have to go to exxos," wrapped up in a cheery "you're welcome," they are working directly against the very thing that makes all of this possible. It does nothing for the site, nothing for rankings, nothing for visibility. It just chips away at the traffic the whole thing depends on.

And it ignores that the raw CDs were never the work. Those have been on mirrors for years and I've never hidden that. The work was correcting the catalogue errors, cross-referencing the disks, reorganising thousands of entries into a proper searchable database, and making every file individually downloadable. That took myself and my girlfriend many days of effort. It is not a simple archive dump. Pointing people at the raw disks elsewhere isn't offering an alternative, it frames all of that work as if it wasn't needed.

I honestly don't even think there's much real malice behind most of it, and that's almost the worst part. People genuinely don't understand that they are helping construct the demise of the very community they claim to care about. Here I am trying to keep the lights on, and some people are doing their level best to turn them off, all while thinking they're doing everyone a favour.

And no doubt, in time, someone will simply copy what I've built and host their own version elsewhere - again, so people don't have to come here. It generally seems to go that way. If it happens, it'll just prove the point I'm making rather than disprove it.

So it leaves me wondering why I bother these days. Been thinking about this for a while and it isn't a snap decision. Every time I put something out - hardware, software, documentation, archives - the pattern is the same. Someone always finds a way to have a dig or undercut it. Always. It's not about any one person or any one incident, it's just how it goes. The same memo, reliably, every single time. And so many of these comments could just be worded better - the difference between a passive-aggressive remark and an actually helpful one is usually just tone, and people reliably pick the former.

So going forward I'll be keeping the forum and store running as normal, but I won't be starting new projects or putting new work out into the wider community beyond that. Not out of spite - just a realistic assessment of how it always ends. The enthusiasm has to come from somewhere, and it's been running on empty for a while now.

The forum is here, the store is here, everything already online stays online. That's not nothing. But it's where it ends for now.

[exxos]

As per @mikro's suggestion a while back, I added a database "dump" to the index page - it's hidden, but search engines and crawlers should be able to find and index it.

I'd forgotten to add the newer "list view" button to the page as well, which is now done. That view should be better still for crawlers to index and for people to actually find the files they're after.

I tried to script and strip the main program names per disk for quick viewing, but may not be perfect, and clicking + will give full disk view.

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The new page also has search. You can technically use the original search page or the new one.

[Darklord]

Improvements and upgrades, yay! :)

[rubber_jonnie]

Not sure where the strings attached are, plus archive.org isn't always the easiest place to find stuff.

Typical of the miserable a-holes that see any attempt to do something nice as an affront and can only bite the hand that feeds them...

[exxos]

Not sure where the strings attached are, plus archive.org isn't always the easiest place to find stuff.

Typical of the miserable a-holes that see any attempt to do something nice as an affront and can only bite the hand that feeds them...

Yeah. I try to drive traffic to my website, which ultimately helps overall community in various ways and then people try and deliberately drive traffic away from the website. They are literally biting the hand that feeds them, which just makes no sense at all. I mean it's like trying to support a community which is hellbent in trying to destroy itself at this point.