Ran,
I haven’t been around for the whole twenty years, but have certainly benefited immensely from Golf Club Atlas. It has been a delight to read your course profiles and those of forum contributors like Arble & Rowlinson. As a result, I’ve seen courses I might never have even heard of otherwise. My knowledge and playing experiences have increased over the years, thanks largely to the generosity of people on this site. I don’t know that my own tastes have changed all that much, but I know far better what I like, why I like it, and most importantly – where to find courses that interest me.
Sometimes I wonder what my golf life would have been like had I not stumbled across this site looking for photos of Yale. I had played Yale for the first time in 1990, and it made an indelible impression on me. But between then and 2003 or so, I had played very few courses that resonated with me. Then I discovered Golf Club Atlas and the repository of information and the network of people with overlapping interests. This includes current posters, those that are registered and rarely post, those that read and have never posted, those that left GCA, and those that have left us. I have friends in every one of those categories.
Looking at the Contributions page, there are five people listed that have passed away: George Bahto, Tiger Bernhardt, Bob Huntley, Bill McBride, & Scott Wood. I had the pleasure of spending time with each of them, especially Bob, Bill, & Scott. I am grateful that this site allowed us to meet and become friends, and running across their old posts sometimes makes me smile. The discussion group allows them to stay with us in some small way. I’m all for pruning away junk threads if it improves the chances of running across wisdom from past discussions. But hopefully we won’t lose what they contributed just because no one has commented on that thread for some time.
What needs to change for the future? On the discussion group, I can think of two things to make it better. More searchability options for the discussion group would be great. Some of those old threads could come to life but they aren’t necessarily easy to find. Also local photo hosting would be fantastic. I realize that there are reasons for not doing this, but how nice it would be for a photo tour links to be stable, and not subject to photobucket or its ilk changing policies.
An instagram page is a good idea. I think people like Andy Johnson are reaching a broader audience through photos. Maybe some just look at the photos and move on, but there’s a level of interest and enthusiasm for golf architecture out there. And you definitely have the photos to do this. Imagine posting a couple of your photos of Huntercombe’s greens along with a link to the course profile. I cannot see how anyone could resist going to GCA to see and learn more.
Podcasts are great, but don’t move too far away from the written stuff. You’re too good at it.
Thanks for the time that you, Ben, Joe, & Chris devote to this. I can promise you it’s not wasted.