Jefferson County Webboard

At one time the longest running webboard/discussion area in the North Country of Northern New York.

Through many software versions, conflict, owners, administrators, and changing membership the Jeffcowebboard had continued to flourish and grow, with the guidance of those who have ran and helped to run the webboard as well as the members themselves and a partnership with Newzjunky], but after the exodus of those who believed and fought for it interest waned, compounded by other social sites like Facebook. It withered and died.

History
The webboard was originally created by 'Marc', who ran the Jefferson County Mailing list, a local mailing list group for general discussions mostly centering on Jefferson County. A genealogy and history mailing list was eventually split off.

The Jefferson County NY General Discussions Webboard (as it was originally called) was created by Marc sometime in 1995-1996 as a logical extension of the Jefferson County Mailing List. At first the webboard got little traffic, much less than the mailing list, which was moderately popular.

During the decline of the Grapevine, a very popular webboard which had nevertheless deteriorated into complete anarchy, the creator of the Jeffcowebboard publicized the board there and people began trickling in; likely because of the more structured format and more civil discussions.

Over the years many people have come on board as administrators and moderators to help and guide the discussions and traffic associated with the system. New pieces of software have been used, each time the number of users have forced the administrators to upgrade to better and better systems (usually at the outrage of some members) and many improvements and accompanying sites were tried and, if successful, permanently added (like this Wiki). Eventually a dedicated host was paid for as well as the Jeffcowebboard.com domain name.

'Marc' eventually retired from running the system and took on a secondary technical support role, and later went on to other pursuits when he was no longer needed. A number of new administrators have taken the reigns over the years, from Jasonknny to Lex to MEL, and many other co-administrators and moderators had come and gone.

More and more members continue to flock in, with the help of the vigilant administrators and moderators who have promoted and organize the webboard. Word of mouth by members, the partnership of the extremely popular and well-known Newzjunky.com, and links to and from other sites and search engines had also done much to make this webboard one of the most popular and talked about in the area at the time.

Various controversies were discussed, facts and politics and local events hashed over, surprising information revealed, troublemakers and questionable characters had caused mischief and amusement and some kicked off the system permanently, prominent figures have visited and posted; sometimes under cover of aliases, and occasionally the Jeffcowebboard had broken news or been the subject of news itself. The Watertown Daily Times was at odds with the Jefferson County Webboard and webboard-related matters even made headlines in the Times.

Eventually interest waned, both by the admins and moderators as well as the users, and most left for other social platforms until all that remained were a few members and moderators, the domain name and hosting was eventually allowed to elapse and the system died.

Unknown users eventually created a new JeffCoWebboard on a free forum hosting platform and it runs, albeit in limited form, to this day. Jefferson County Webboard Clone