Shoutbox

A Brief History of The Gravel Trap / TGT

TGT started out in 1997 as "F1NGers", part of the old formula1.com website, back when it was owned by Purple I as an unofficial formula 1 site.  The URL at the time was news://news.formula1.com, and newcomers would get to that through the 'Fun' page of the website - that's how the majority of us found the NG. Purple I didn't moderate the group, so we were left to our own devices, and a unique culture evolved, completely different to any other F1 forum on the internet. We said what we meant, and that meant some ugly flame wars at times - but it was all good fun. At some stage we got transferred to news://gearbox.formula1.com, for no apparent reason and without anyone telling us why... But this was just a cosmetic change.

At frequent times from 1999 onwards, f1.com faced legal threats from Bernie Ecclestone's FOM company, the owner of the commercial rights to F1. They contended that since they held the rights and the trademarks to F1, Purple I should not be operating a site under the F1.com name. This was eventually taken as far as the courts. I don't recall the outcome of the court hearing, or even if they made it into the courtroom. What we do know is that in 2001, the domains www.formula1.com and www.f1.com, both under Purple I control, were to be transferred to FOM and that at the start of the next season, a new site would replace the current one. This was in the summer of 2001, so we had almost a year to wait for our future to be resolved.

During the latter half of 2001, while we were debating our future and waiting it out to see what would happen, we gained our name, courtesy of Krash (the proverbial 'old man' of the group) - the name being 'F1NGers', borne out of 'Formula 1 NewsGroupers'.

It was unclear if the new site would continue to facilitate a newsgroup, but as the official site of Formula 1 motor racing, some were doubtful that it would. These doubts were confirmed when the new site went live and the newsgroup disappeared at the start of the 2002 season.

Fortunately, the F1NGers were saved from sudden obscurity. Mike (NG Handle: Sir Hailstone) had arranged a news server at his place of work. We were all grateful to Mike for providing this service, for free, and life continued as normal at news://news.f1ngers.com.

During the mid-point of the 2004 season, a flame war broke out that was the proverbial "straw that broke the camels back".

The end result of this ultimatly pointless argument?

The F1NGers have split into two distinct groups.  The group that wish to use a login system which gives them overall control over who accesses the group or not, thus meaning that if you happen to annoy one of the group 'rulers', then it's goodbye group account, hello barren wilderness.

Then you have The Gravel Trap, a place where discussion about any topic of your chosing [within reason] is encouraged, newcomers are welcomed with a simple click of the newsgroup link, and do not need to go through a long drawn out process of getting a forum account to join in.  Newcomers are welcome to post what they please, when they please and how they please.  We do not care about trivial matters like plain text / html or top / bottom posting, etc...

There are only really two things that we ask.  If you want to start any personal abuse against another group member, please take it off the group and onto private email or chat program.  Secondly; while we don't mind images being posted to the main group, we ask that anything over 100KB in size be posted to our 'binary' group, TGTXL.

Copyright TGT 2005