Thanks for the new Mazzy Star forum

[Emma]

Hello all,

I changed the Private Message setting. The PM feature is now available to any user who posted once on the forum.
If you are still having problems accessing the PM feature, you can send an email to mazzystar@free.fr.

Hermesacat, I don't know why Sorcerer's forum was closed. I first thought he wanted to move his site to a different hosting company. It is only later that I realised that the site had disappeared for good.
Could it be a money problem? I remember he posted a message about the site's hosting costs. At that time, I did not realise it was an urgent matter and I did not respond. If money was a priority issue, I think he should have reiterated his request explaining that lack of funding would lead to the closing of the site. I suppose that most members would have accepted to contribute financially.

[MikeRMD]

Again thanks Hermescat for letting people know about the existence of this site Emma has kindly started. One of the people that used to be on MS Boulevard was updating and correcting the Wikipedia page for MS and sure wish we had his/her advice now. As I mentioned in an earlier post here the first thing that comes up when you google Mazzy Star is Wikipedia and so that's why I suggested Emma try to get her site info there. I guess they have their own problems with spam etc and so have to limit entries but Emma and we who are on this site are not in this to spam people. If anyone has any suggestion as to how to get this site mentioned on the MS page on Wikipedia let Emma know. I read recently that Popular Science closed down their online comment section due to spam, misinformed writing, racism, sexism, and 'basically unsourced nonsense and garbage'. The internet is a great tool but spammers and the like spoil it some for us.

Cheers

[Allan67]

Thank you Emma for creating this awesome forum, I've been wandering around the web looking for all the Mazzy fans, hopefully they will all regroup here.
Been strange ever since Mazzy Star Blvd closed, then Zarik and Sorcerer's forums closed and then Colin closed the Hope forum, which I understand, all those spam posts were out of control.
I found the link for this forum on the *F* Yeah Mazzy Star blog and I also posted the link this morning on https://www.facebook.com/MazzyStarOfficial, hopefully other wandering Mazzy fans will see it.
Really loving the new Mazzy, reminds me of all that Among My Swan made me feel 17 years ago.
Thanks again Emma.

[alas]

Thanks for starting this forum. It was strange not having a way to communicate with fans via the internet. (How in the world did people keep in touch with their favorite bands in the '70s? Fan clubs via postal service?)

That said, it's good to read from previous members - and the way I found out about the site was through a youtube comment. Since people are going to post bootlegs of Mazzy's shows, it may be good to insert a plug: If you attended this show and want to post a review, go to mazzy dot free dot fr and let us know how it was.

[Vinckske]

Hi everyone , it's great to have this new Mazzy Star forum , thanks Emma.

[Hermesacat]

It's good to see Forum members from fan sites that closed this year are finding their way to Emma's new Forum here. Luckily, shortly before hopesandoval.com closed its Forum, Emma had made a post there linking to this new Forum where she offered a link to a music site preview-streaming the new album. Fortunately, I bookmarked mazzystar.free.fr, so was able to find it again after Hope's site closed its forum without warning. As alas says, it felt strange not having a fan forum anymore. Thankfully, Emma filled that gap.

It's too bad Sorcerer wasn't considerate enough to give advance warning before shutting down his site so fans could have made plans for creating & using a new forum. Since a few people here have been speculating about it here's my take on what may possibly have happened with mazzystar.tk :

Sorcerer had designated me a "site administrator" at his new site, somewhat arbitrarily, as he didn't discuss the idea with me, or what it might entail. It was the two of us who primarily maintained & updated the popular bootlegs-with-download-links thread at the Mazzy Star Boulevard forum. In broadest terms, my impression is Sorcerer's site came to an abrupt end likely largely due to him being a poor communicator (explained below), & his apparent dislike of the results of his own poor communications.

As a few others here have noted, Sorcerer made a post at the forum saying he wanted to move the site to a new domain, partly to evade hordes of spammers who were descending on the .tk site with ad spam. He thought the .tk domain was more vulnerable than others to spamming. The new domain would cost $. His post requested those who might be interested in donating $ towards a new domain site to contact him by private message, but gave no hint as to what kind of money might be required.

When I saw his post about donations, I thought he's not going to get a good response by that approach, a poor way to communicate about it, imo. So I sent him a message saying he should probably be much more up-front on the issue. To begin with, I said he should inform everyone of what he'd written to me about it. He'd told me Godaddy was offering sites for just $35 for 5 years. In other words, 7 forum members contributing just $5 each could pay for a new site for 5 years. That sounds painless, & it shouldn't have been hard to line-up contributors if only he'd explained that in the forum. I also suggested he incorporate a "donate" button on the forum page so people could easily donate via paypal, for instance. He could keep all forum members apprised of how close we were getting to our $35 (or whatever) goal, & how many more contributors were still needed, hopefully generating a "we're in this together" feeling among members. He replied saying he would do as I suggested, but he never got around to doing any of it. Privately, he may have resented the poor response to his initial post I assume it received, & may also have resented my attempt at constructive criticism about it.

The main page at mazzystar.tk continued for months to have a men at work picture with the message
"Under Construction, come back later", with mention of the up & running forum in small printing low down on the page. Not the best invitation to the site or the forum, imo. I suggested he replace the men at work image with a photo of the band instead, preferably a pic of some incarnation of the entire band, & not one of just Hope & David, & that the page should better emphasize the forum being already up. He said he would do this, but didn't.

Another issue was the relentless spamming by ad spammers. I started noticing so many spam posts, & went into the administrator section & saw from the log there Sorcerer had recently been deleting spam. Then I figured out on my own how to delete spam & ban individual spammers. So, I started doing that, & told Sorcerer I'd figured it out & was now doing it. He'd never explained what he thought my duties as a "site administrator" should or could be. But it seems he got used to me helping out re. the spam problem.

Shortly thereafter in summer, two things put a damper on my spending much time at the site, I broke my arm badly & had surgery for it, plus it became what turned out to be the busiest collection of weeks this whole year for projects I had to work on, & I temporarily didn't have a lot of time or inclination to be doing administrative chores at the site. At some point I sent Sorcerer a message explaining this. I'd also started receiving in my email inbox an automatic notification each time some one new signed up to join the forum. To combat spam, Sorcerer had instituted a new requirement that new members be approved by him or me.

He didn't inform me about this change. I just started getting these messages in my inbox. I was so busy with other responsibilities, I didn't investigate the new system, & just ignored the notifications, thinking Sorcerer could handle it. When I was starting to have more free time again & was intending to soon start attending to some of the new member approvals myself, I wrote to Sorcerer, & among other things asked him how we could tell a legit new member from a spammer (I'd noticed some ad spammers that I'd banned earlier had left comments in their sign-up form saying B.S. stuff like "I'm a huge Mazzy Star fan!"). Sorcerer never replied to that message, & the next thing I knew he'd pulled the plug on the site.

I also recall a prior message I'd sent him saying if he was having trouble settling on a photo to use on the site's main page (as the men-at-work picture remained up) I could maybe send some to him. He replied saying that was a good idea. But I was still preoccupied around then, & put off the photo project while thinking it should be pretty easy for him to choose one on his own, plus it's easy to change photos later.

So, he was a poor communicator, imo, about the donations issue, & about what tasks I should be doing at the site. If he decided he needed me to do more tasks, & that my being temporarily absent from doing any was unacceptable, he should have communicated that instead of just closing down the site without warning, never to be heard from again, or so it seems. And maybe he didn't like hearing any (constructive) criticism re. his communications efforts, or lack thereof. Although he claimed he agreed with some of my suggestions, he never followed up on any. Odd how a tech savvy guy like Sorcerer who suggested he knew lots about setting up web sites found that being webmaster of a Mazzy Star fan forum (he didn't even get the rest of the proposed fan site off the ground) he couldn't tolerate the gig longer than a few months. Anders lasted 15 years. Another small thing I found odd was in our messages I'd always sign off with my actual name, Bob, while I still don't know Sorcerer's name. The man was secretive, & as a lousy communicator apparently was unwilling to share his real name even with someone he'd designated a co-administrator at his site. After the site disappeared I sent him an email asking what had happened as I had the email address of his that was associated with the web site. He never replied.

This post doesn't need to stay on this forum indefinitely, & I'll likely delete it at some point, or else edit it down to virtually nothing. Anyway, mazzystar.tk is just a bad memory by now, & I'm not sure it deserves this long write up describing my take on it. I'm writing this for anyone who might be curious about what may have happened, plus maybe I wanted to get this stuff off my chest. mazzystar.tk is dead.
Long live MAZZYSTAR.FREE.FR !

[Homeostasis]

Like everyone else has said, thanks Emma for making this site. It felt awful that after a 17-year gap between LPs, two long-established MS/HS forums vanished just as the new album was coming out. It was just a vacuum out there. Even stuff that I knew existed (like the TK forum) never showed up on a Google search. By the time I stumbled across the URL, the site was gone. It's nice to see so many familiar names - and some new ones - already on this site.

And speaking of Google rank:

One of the people that used to be on MS Boulevard was updating and correcting the Wikipedia page for MS and sure wish we had his/her advice now.

That would be me.

There's not much we could do through Wikipedia. Wikipedia sometimes allows fansites in an external links section if there's a complete lack of any official activity from a band online (which in Mazzy's case, there is), but even then they'd only allow a whole website (with news, discography, tour section, info, etc.), and not a forum. This topic is actually the first result you get when you type Mazzy Star free forum into Google. I guess we just need to be patient. A first page result on Google isn't something anyone gets in a couple of months. It'll happen eventually.

[opalstardream]

Emma,
Thanks for your message. Tried to message you, but got a "not authorized to PM" message, saying I was too "new" to do it. Maybe when I'm a little older...
I understand you wanting to be cautious as this forum starts out, and will stay in touch and check back regularly to see what direction you go in. As Hermesacat said, "officaldumb" is over-rated! Mazzy Star Boulevard was for us fans first, and the music I acquired from there (and contributed to) is priceless...
I'm hoping you can have a place for us all to share with everyone the music and magick of Mazzy Star.
Thanks, David.

*If you have never heard Of Morcheeba, check out "The Sea" or "Trigger Hippie" on youtube.
Their style is "Trip Hop", and singer Skye Edwards can put you in a trance...

[MikeRMD]

Hello David (opalstardream),

Emma mentions in an earlier post that PM's will work when you have posted once on this site so you should be 'old enough' now.

Cheers,
Mike

[MikeRMD]

Hello Homeostasis,

Thanks for taking the time to edit/update the Wikipedia Mazzy Star page. We lost a lot of 'lore' when MS Boulevard closed down although Hermesacat has posted links to archives that may have some or most of it. Hopefully between this site and others we can have such 'lore' available to those who seek it.

Cheers,
Mike