The State Of Tree of Souls

[Eltu]

Hi everyone!

As I mentioned a couple days back I wanted to make a post on the current state of ToS and its future. But first allow me to quote this post I made a bit under a year ago since it still stands very true:

Originally Posted by Eltu

Tree of Souls is emptier now, and it's far from the cornerstone of my life it once was - but I like to think of these things as experiences and time periods of your life rather than static, never-changing things. For many individuals, I think the community served its purpose, they moved forward with their lives, and as for me it turned into fond memories. As I remember I was quick to point out in the far past when someone made a dramatic point of leaving, I never wanted to force anyone to stay or keep people around simply for the sake of it - everything has its time and purpose, and I know that for me and many others, Tree of Souls in the years following Avatar fulfilled this purpose.

All this being said, of course the forums will remain around for as long as is ever possible. I know there are still a few people around, and personally, my goal remains the same it ever was - to make sure everyone is always welcome and always have a place in the community no matter what.

As the Avatar sequels will undoubtedly bring a few old friends back into the fold, Tree of Souls will remain (in its upgraded version!) and I will be here to do my very best to welcome everyone. It may have been ten years, but I'm sure we will be around for ten more.

For anyone who is reading this - I would love to hear what your experiences in the last ten years have been! Perhaps you didn't join ToS until later, or perhaps you were here from the very start, but nonetheless I would invite you to share anything you would like. I might do the same myself, but for now let me just express my gratitude to everyone who made this community the amazing place it has always been.

I am still beyond grateful and amazed at this community, and incredibly happy that it still provides a place for people to come together. And, rest assured, I will always do all that I can to ensure that it stays around for as long as possible.

But let's look a bit more at specifics!

As several of you pointed out, ToS is in many ways representative of an era of the internet that is slowly fading away. This is exactly why it needs to stay around. We have seen independent internet communities being gradually less active, their role being taken up by large social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and so on). I don't think all these services are universally bad - I personally frequent quite a few specific subreddits for instance, and I connect professionally through Twitter - but what's happened is that these large services have started accounting for all online communities.

In my mind this is a sad thing, since all these individual, self-hosted and self-managed internet communities are a huge part of what makes for an open and diverse internet - and there's a certain sense of togetherness that's, if not unique, at least very prominent in these places.

So what does this mean for Tree of Souls? Not as much as it might seem, just that I'm dedicated to to keeping the forums here indefinitely.

As was also pointed out, I think it's good to keep in mind that there probably won't be a huge resurgence of activity when Avatar 2 finally comes around. But that's OK! I'm sure at least a handful of people will drop by once more, and it will make for a wonderful time.

The good news is that we do have the new version of ToS fully working (save for an expired certificate) as well, which should be a far better experience overall. If you haven't already you can check it out - and even make a test account! - here:

New Tree Of Souls

What remains is actually moving all old accounts and posts from the old to the new forums.

HumanNoMore is the one currently still managing the server hosting of the site, but I may be able to also look into doing the old to new migration on my end. For this same reason there's also various maintenance tasks I can't easily do right away, but nonetheless: let me know if there's anything you'd like to see fixed or changed even on the old version and I can look into it. Looking into the future, we'll of course want to simply move all posts to the new and improved forums and keep all improvements there.

Finally, let me once more thank you all for being here. ToS was and will always be a monumental part of my life and I'm so happy to be a part of it. Oel ngati Kameie.

[Woodsprite]

This is pretty big news. Dang. I'm intrigued.

[Ja'k Dawsiin]

i am glad to hear there is still activity behind the curtain

[Fighter-of-Wars]

Sorry I'm bringing up an older post..

I fully agree with what you said, Eltu, about how forums fading away and social media taking over. I often reminisce of days past of spending hours on multiple forums having discussions with people I felt I had a greater connection without even knowing there name or face versus participating in social media platforms.

I truly miss it and the convenience of social media is a curse more so than a blessing. I feel I never develop the same level of friendships with people on those platforms as what I have over forums.

I guess I'm just trying to say Thank You to what everyone is doing to help keep this place going. Even though I don't frequent it as much as I once did a decade ago. It still makes me smile knowing its here and I can log in and relive those days as if it were yesterday.

[Ja'k Dawsiin]

i much prefer forums to social media.

i have both tumblr and instagram accounts, but neither have any feeling or community to them. sure, people push the like button and leave little comments, but it just all feels so impersonal and rushed. ugh so many trolls and just plain vile posters.

i am an active member and moderator on fanforum.com since 2016, and there have been some lively and great times there, still is, but you can feel the members slipping away to social media, and not enough new members becoming permanent fixtures in the community. it is very sad.

[Wind12]

Been awhile, but srane, the forum times will always be remembered fondly, it seems the discords are popular now and there are alot of great Avatar fans on tere, but I will never forget the forum times.