RUTLAND OSPREY PROJECT 2020

Karen, might I suggest that you speak to or Email Ms Hickin as you clearly have a much better grasp on the technicalities than I do!! I think the stumbling block is that the Osprey site used Ospreys .Org which is owned by another party.
I found Ms Hickin more receptive than others and did warn her that my call might not be the last as many others would be upset by the loss of archive material.
Her Email is:- hhickin@lrwt.org.uk and I contacted her on 01162487358 which is a line for the CEO.
Good luck,
Mike

Of course the irony is that this thread is ruined too.

It seems that in order to preserve that domain everything else has been thrown under the proverbial bus.

What should have been done is that the old Rutland site should have been frozen in time and left as read only.

Job Done.

Karen W said:

Thanks Mike for Ms Hickin's email address for I am planning to contact her and of course will update all on any news!

Thank you Karen. I had a feeling you would! It also seems that both you and Tiger have the same idea re. 'read only'. 

Just came here for what I thought would be a quick look only to discover I have stepped into a nightmare. Thank you everybody, especially MIKE and KAREN for trying to sort it out As you rightly say KAREN how short-sighted and ignorant on part of IT person not to realize that past, priceless data should somehow be included in or somehow linked to, the new site

I sent this e-mail to Harriet

I have been a fan of Rutland Ospreys since 1999. I have not always agreed with their policies but there has never been anything quite so shocking as the latest website makeover.

The diaries have been removed and this has caused a swath of chaos right across the internet. Every link to these diaries has been broken and will be impossible to put back again.

The case of the search for 9 (98) in the desert is a particular case and point. Money was donated by the public to recompense Farid Lacroix for his expenses. Now this riveting story is no longer available to the public.

Overall these diaries, during the osprey season, would be consulted on a daily basis for all sorts of reasons by osprey fans. Now they are not available any more.

This really could have been done in ways that did not have such tragic results.

I would hope that these diaries can be restored in some form or other.

If I might be a dull digital publishing person as well, it’s a massive missed search engine optimisation opportunity for the new website. All those links, properly redirected, would give it a substantial boost.

I sent this email to Harriet, Sunday morning -

Good Morning Harriet

Thank you for your email to Mike [edited] explaining the current situation however many people, including myself, remain unsatisfied with the loss of access to historic osprey information for surely there is absolutely no need for this.

At this moment, I cannot fathom out what on earth your IT Consultants/Developers were thinking of when planning\launching this new website for to suddenly make an era of information inaccessible is unthinkable not to mention bad PR for Rutland Ospreys.

As you correctly state there is a huge amount of osprey data and I am sure the Trust also your IT Consultants are aware that many other people and organisations around the world that follow Rutland Ospreys require and view this data throughout the osprey season. Many people, organisations, including the Trust, have written their own material incorporating hyperlinks pointing to information all of which is held on the old site / domain osprey.org.uk. For this reason, as well as volume, this information cannot be copied over to the new website or moved elsewhere for this action will break the hyperlinks – the information needs to remain where it is.

So the current situation is with the old website osprey.org.uk being unavailable that the public now, as well as not being able to access any osprey information, have all their other materials rendered useless as the hyperlinks are broken. Not an ideal situation, is it?

The simplest solution and what could have been done is for the information on the old website “osprey.org.uk” to remain in its entirety but made read only thus requiring no further management, only the domain name registered, and all historic information would be available.

I cannot understand why this was not done - carrying out this simple action is not expensive and as well as preserving the records/evolvement of Rutland Project from 2007-2019, this action would permit global access without requiring any management from the Trust allowing it to move on with its new website – a win, win scenario

Look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards
Karen

CC Tim Graham, COE (sorry don’t know his email address but would you please forward on)

Thank you Tiger and Karen for expressing these views which I am sure we all share.

Unfortunately Mike, I don’t think it will make one bit of difference!  

There has been no acknowledgement which comes as no surprise as I did interpret the closing statement on her email quote “If you have any more concerns please email info@lrwt.org.uk” as dismissing herself of any further involvement of the situation. 

I have written her again also requesting a copy of Tim’s Legacy blog about 03(97), as she did advise that they have access to the blogs.

But it is early days – lets see what happens before the season commences!