Time to kill off Pinformer?

[benwillcox]

Some of the members here may know of Pinformer (www.pinformer.co.uk) which is a UK centric user updatable database of pinball machines on location.
There are of course other sites out there such as Pinball Map, Find A Pinball, and Pinside, so you might use those instead.

Anyway I've received an email and seen a recent post on the UK Pinball Facebook group pointing out that Pinformer is very out of date and asks 'how do we make pinformer go away?'

I've kept Pinformer running for the last 22 years or so for the benefit of the Pinball community but if the general feeling is that it's no longer of value then there's not a lot of point keeping it going. For those that aren't old enough to remember, here's the article from Pinball News back when Martin Ayub assisted me with the continuation of the site after Andrew Vevers retired it from service and moved on to other things https://www.pinballnews.com/news/pinformer.html

I'll be the first to admit that the actual site in terms of the codebase is absolutely ancient now, and has hardly been updated over those years apart from the addition of the map in the distant past at some point after Google Maps began to exist. But I've always been of the view that simplicity is key and the actual sighting data is what's important. So having said that, if nobody is updating it any more then it's not a great deal of value, and yes I also am well aware it can be a bit clunky and occasionally temperamental to accept updates which I'm sure hasn't helped.

So, what's the general view, is it time to close it down in favour of one of the alternatives? Any web developers out there want to take it over and give it a new lease of life (it would need a full re-write from the ground up to be honest)?

 

[roadshow16]

Thanks for keeping it going all these years Ben, Pinformer was a brilliant resource that I have used literally hundreds of times over the years. Really appreciate your efforts with it

 

[Wayne J]

It's could be very useful resource IF only the public were to update it with sightings.

I think maybe people assume others will do it, which is why they don't.

It would be a shame if we lost the resource, but appreciate it needs people with dedication to be able to keep it running.

Could we do a publicity campaign on here to ask people to submit all of the pins in the wild they know of, and see what kind of response that gets? Then any prospective coder willing to take it on would at least know their efforts and hard work weren't for nothing.

 

[Taxiturn]

Pinball Map has all the functionality of Pinformer and more on top, is kept up to date, has an app, and is used internationally. At this point, I’m not sure keeping Pinformer alive is worth the time and effort of the developer or the wider community; you would just be duplicating what we already have on Pinball Map, but worse.