Reggae: Past, Present and Future

Kim posted this as a comment on the Q&A with Garth Epling, so I assume the question is for him. I believe Garth took over as webmaster of the RotR website when Primo went to work for Reggae Rising. (I stand corrected, Garth was not webmaster.) I should point out that one reason Kim might be concerned is that he shot the bulk of the photos in the now-missing RotR online archive. You can find some of his Reggae photos here.


What happened to all of the content on www.reggaeontheriver.com?
The festival now has no web based institutional history, no testament to any good memories shared.
The 2 pages left on the website don't inspire me to hope that the Mateel will rebound from shooting off their feet.
Black background with red copy?
And a page of apologies.
After 23 years that is not the way to treat our history. What would it have cost to keep the content of the website available to anyone who wished to browse through years of good times? Surely the necessary band width isn't so expensive that the Mateel needed to dump everything in order to trim the expenses.
Who exactly made this IMHO foolish decision?
And how does it help the Mateel?
If one wants the Mateel to be long lived, I think we should be continuing our web presence.
What is this saying to the world?
It seems to me to be a further devaluation of the name of the festival itself!

Kim

Garth replies:

Fear not, the complete Reggae on the River archive is still stored on the host site. The Mateel has not abandoned its web presence as demonstrated by the frequently updated www.mateel.org website. The Mateel and ROTR websites are updated solely by volunteers at this point, and plans to resurrect the ROTR discussion board are in the works (again, through volunteer efforts). I assure you, this is not the end of www.reggaeontheriver.com.