Monday, January 12, 2015

Farewell To The Flu Wiki

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# 9562

 

Flublogians are no doubt aware that the venerable Flu Wiki website has been down for several days, and last night it was announced via an email to its members that, after a decade of operations, the Wiki was no longer. 

 

One of the first of the flu forums – and for a long time arguably the largest and best – the Flu Wiki was for many of us our first online  `flu community’.  

 

Started by DemFromCt, Melanie, Pogge, and Revere back in 2005, for the first few years, the Flu Wiki was Flublogia.


Format changes, the untimely deaths of two key members (Melanie Matson in 2008 and Pogge in 2014), and I suspect the the general movement of the internet away from forums and to newer social media outlets like Twitter & Facebook all took their toll. 

 

But apparently the site’s domain and url were lost during the chaos that followed the demise of their long-time Sys-op Pogge, last summer.

 

Bronco Bill  emailed members last night to explain what happened, and after a brief farewell to the site, wrote:

 

We do have a Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/groups/93263609767/, so if you have a Facebook account and wish to participate there, please feel free to do so. That page was set up as an extension of FluWiki, but could be so much more now.

 

There are apparently hopes by some members that they may be able to revive the Flu Wiki in some format or another, and I’ll report on that if it happens. 

 

In the meantime the Flu Wiki will be remembered as an early pioneer in Flublogia - one that embraced the the science of influenza and encouraged sober and solid news gathering – and that provided a safe and sane forum where community-minded individuals could talk about influenza, and influenza preparedness.

 

My profound thanks go the newshounds of Flu Wiki, who have been an invaluable resource for this humble blogger over the past decade.