“HISTORY – an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.”
Ambrose Bierce from The Devil’s Dictionary
“To remain ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain a child. For what is the worth of a human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?”
Cicero from Orator
“What’s past is the Prologue”
William Shakespeare
Welcome to my blog
Blogs tend to focus on specific subjects. My focus tends to encompass my own learning as I make my way about in the World. Living in Portland, Oregon, there tends to be a quite a few stories regarding the Pacific Northwest. Show what you know?
My years have allowed me to visit many places around the world. Travel can push you to learning a lot about that world. The ‘learning’ doesn’t end with the travel. One story leads to another and so it is here on this site. There is a wide array of topics already covered. Easiest way to navigate through the topics is to use the sitemap here. I hope you find some of the entries as entertaining as I did in writing (and maybe visiting). Good journeys.
Virtual Tourist lives on?
May the spirit of Virtual Tourist live on in this and many other blogs found here and there.
PREVIOUSLY ON THIS CHANNEL
Long ago – 2001 or so – I looked to travel to Slovenia. There was not a lot written up about the country at the time in English print or on the internet. A website did feature traveler’s opinions, however – Virtual Tourist. Virtual Tourist, VT, was literally the pre-Trip Advisor web site where travelers shared opinions about sites, experiences, restaurants, and accommodations – the latter two to allow the website to live.
The best feature of the site was the interaction between people around the world, either through the forums or interactions between those who submitted material and those who responded. Another feature offered a ranking system for people who signed up – write more and get “clicked” more, up you went. The ranking system was good initially, but maybe a downfall as time went on. People joining later had little chance at moving up the ranks without seriously campaigning for “clicks” on their submissions. Many of the upper tiers put out quantity versus quality to enable their stay at the top.
The site enjoyed a good run through the Aughts, but time caught up, Facebook sopped up many of the forum appeal – as did dating sites for those so inclined – and the website was purchased by Trip Advisor. TA did make it easier to download things to VT, but the site grew stale with the years – my feelings is member ratings game had a lot to do with it. Finally, TA did away with VT – the founders were made richer until they were not. TA seems useful and more direct at opinions regarding food and hotels, but really fails at sites to see, a place where VT shown – IMHO.
MY VT APPROACH
I approached Virtual Tourist as a place to put pictures of my travels, at first, but then the nature of the site changed my approach to travel and my thoughts about how to travel, finding myself widening my horizons – probably an experience shared by others in the VT community. My writing and approach to Virtual Tourist increased with the years – earlier submissions were mostly simply photographs with a bit of explanation. With time, the explanations increased along with my interest in what I was seeing. As one thing is learned, another is uncovered.
My final standing was somewhere in the top 100 of VT contributors – I really do not know my final rank. Rank was made from “clicks” which was a social feature of the site – though supposedly one clicked for value. I know I had the webpage most “clicked” upon by far. It was for a page I had done regarding French forts on the Maginot Line of northeastern France. It literally received more than a million ‘views’ than the next highest page. I want to say the ‘views’ were because of the outstanding writing and photographic ability, but it was purely a nature of SEO’s – search engine optimization.
The town I selected for the travelogue was Bitche, France, an old military town on the northeastern frontier. The magic was the word “Bitche” – VT actually blanked out most of the letters of the town’s name – which obviously came up in searches for whatever. People clicked and so on. Lessons learned on both sides of the click.
THE PAST BECOMES THE PRESENT
Some old VT stuff may find a second life here, but this will include mostly new material in this venture. Hopefully, you are as fascinated and entertained as I am in writing. My old motto on VT was “Travel to learn; learn to travel”. Let the games commence.
VT vanished from the internet in 2017, although its internet presence had waned years prior. As is talked about when you think about blogging on WordPress.com versus WordPress.org, the content one put up on VT disappeared in a blink. I saved some of the stuff written, but a lot was gone. One thing about travel and history is one story constantly leads to another, so there is no end. Some topics will cover military history – I was an Army officer in an earlier life, after all – while others will be slightly off the history theme and delve into my alpine interests.
For a complete rundown on all posts use the sitemap page.
So come along for the ride and enjoy.
Thanks for the Bloomberg link. I never knew Tilman had fallen victim to a Ponzi scheme, or that he had spent another million trying to unravel the case. (I think he can probably afford it, actually.)
I agree that the VT rating/ranking system lost its appeal over the years. Their big mistake was failing to make newer ratings be worth more than older ones. Giampiero claimed they had an algorithm that did this, and it would have been quite simple to program, but in fact they never bothered to do it, so the whole system stagnated and became a source of frustration for people who took it seriously.
The Ponzi story was indeed one of drama. Very sad, even if he can afford it. I am sure his lifestyle was affected in someway. He deserved his money, fleshing out the original site into what it became during the Aughts.
Ratings have a place initially, but long term – algorithms or not – are maybe not the way to go. Especially when so much of the stuff offered was fluff, especially in the period when only one picture at a time could be downloaded. I should know, some of it was mine, because I wanted the site as a place to put travel pictures and the only way was to put up a “tip” for each picture.
Yes, I remember that phase when we could only post one photo for each tip. Now I sometimes use my old tips as the basis for blog posts, and sometimes I find myself combining five or six tips to make one blog post (with updating, of course).
Congratulations Mark for embarking in a new blog adventure!
Before VT was deleted, I saved all of my stuff published there but I am not willing to use such material again.
Nice community it was, I’m grateful it left a few lasting friendships.
Cheers Ant. I saved some stuff, but probably should have done more. The friendships do endure though as you say!
I hadn’t heard about what happened to Tillman – thanks for that link. I’m sorry he got stung like that. VT was a wonderful concept, ahead of its time in many ways 🙂
I saved most of my material as quite early on I developed a habit of drafting in Word before posting, back in the days when the site would regularly crash. That was OK early on when, like you, I was just writing a brief tip to accompany the single permitted photo, but as I got more ambitious I wanted to hone my words before publishing – and I certainly didn’t want to lose them after working on the text for a while!
I agree the rankings, while a good idea initially, eventually soured the site. I ended up ranked pretty high, but I like to think that was because of the work I put into my pages. However, it was definitely the case that members chased ratings by rating others (I was guilty of that myself when I first joined, as I wanted to make my mark) and it also distorted what people would write – e.g. spinning something out over several tips when one would have done!
Don’t feel guilty about the ratings game ;-] It was set up that way. The spinning thing got rather tiresome. It was nice when 5 pictures were allowed. This setting seems a lot more fun, though the VT apprenticeship helps a novice like myself. Here, instead of the ratings game, we have Yoast SEO optimization to worry about. Or to upgrade to a better WordPress program allowing better picture presentation than the basic I am on 😉
Are you on .com or .org? I dithered a while but went for the latter on the recommendation of some friends (others though are happy with .com) and because of the increased flexibility. My Wishful theme is a free one and I like it, but of course there’s domain registration to pay for and other costs. Worth it though for the fun I’m getting out of it!
.org – VT proved what you have can disappear like that. Theme is free, but everything else is like you say. It is interesting learning new things, though. Constant ‘edits’ of blogs already posted is my story so far :-0
Mine too!
I also only recently found the “like” button :-I
🤣🤣