noobie here,with a question

[RG_]

Originally Posted by garyspk

Our pal RG has made "Paddled At School" facts an art.

Wow. The unexpected compliment. The best kind! Thanks, Gary.

I missed this very interesting thread after the first post or two, but it's obviously something that I want to add to, given the topic.

As the briefest background, I ran a site for a few years devoted to factual school paddling, and kept it free of all the spam, porn, personal ad junk, and such, and, not surprisingly, it flourished quite well. It's been gone for a few years now, but that's another story.

I'm thinking about getting back in now, though, and going a few steps beyond what was done in the past. At the time my old site went away an owner/producer at another site, one that I respect very much, offered to host it and cited some advantages for both parties. The offer was quite intriguing, but there were other things going on in my life that just made it impossible at the time. But that was then.

Like SAH and some others, in addition to exhaustively researching American school CP information, I have a passion for realistic videos, photos, and anything that involves a re-creation of such things. So if I revive my site (almost a certainty at this point) I plan to expand it beyond the old level of service to include realistic depictions of school paddling, i.e. meaning as realistic as possible. In preparation for all of that I've been slowly setting up a small studio that could be pretty freely manipulated to make things as realistic as possible. I'm still in the experimentation stage, but I'm a light year ahead of where I was a year ago when I was just speculating about it. Of course, the old stuff - message boarding, researching news and other materials, in-depth interviews with (verified) those who experienced paddling at school, and more I already experienced in doing when it's time to go.

And also, to use the word that Gary applied, I am much more interested in the "art," in principle (the art being the total factuality and realism), than the revenue. That doesn't mean that I can foot it all out of pocket, but that my goal is much, much more focused on the product than on the money.

At the moment I think that the best overall strategy, for a number of reasons, is to partner with an established website that is in tune with my own goals. There are only a few. Unfortunately, the site that made the offer before is now experiencing some significant problems and is not really a viable option anymore. I used to have occasional behind-the-scenes conversations with the owner, but as far as I can tell he's gone off the radar screen now. I haven't heard from him in a very long time. But there are some others, and I have had some light preliminary discussion with one of them and with more in-depth discussion planned early next year (2008).

So those of you who appreciate this niche in some degree or another please be thinking about this! Either from the standpoint of 1) what you would like to see, and your ideas on 'doing this right,' and/or 2) if you have some kind of personal experience (went to a paddling school, received it, witnessed or heard it, talked in some detail to those that got it, etc, etc.) and would wish to share that, either behind-the-scenes or in some other way, please let me know. You can best contact me at rg0044_2@yahoo.com (the PM box here is just about full!).

STOP! I just decided to make this post a New Topic. I realized that it might be buried and out of sight on this thread. It has been re-posted under the title "New School CP Website." Click here to go directly to it. Please make any responses to this post on that thread. Thanks! - RG

RG of PAS