TWC Central

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TWC Central
TWC Central
TWC Central as it looked on June 23, 2009, the last archive made of the site.
Type of site
  • Internet forum
  • Content site
Available inEnglish
Country of originUnited States
URLs1.zetaboards.com:80/twccentral/
www.twccentral.com
RegistrationRequired to post on forums
Users462a
Launched2008; 16 years ago (2008) (approximate)
Current statusOffline
  • a Number of users at time of final archival, June 23, 2009.

TWC Central was an Internet forum and content site aimed at The Weather Channel fan community, begun sometime around 2008.

Archives for the forum site suggest that the forum had gone offline by 2010. The accompanying content site, www.twccentral.com, was not archived and is presumed lost. By 2013, that URL redirected to a website associated with Time Warner Cable (now Spectrum).

Background

TWC Central was a broad forum, with emphases on general TWC updates, WeatherSTAR simulator PowerPoint and OpenOffice files, and WeatherSTAR icon and background recreations, among other categories. Additionally, the forum was home to a controversial streaming project known as SilverStar 8.

SilverStar 8

SilverStar 8 was a web-based weather broadcast project which had its own category on the forum. The project included weather forecasts, live alert coverage known as SilverAlert, and a live weather-based talk show called SilverTalk. The project begun in August 2008. The project had serious issues; toward the end of the project's life in December 2008, it appears that project beta testers were fired. The official site, silverstar8.com, apparently closed on December 30, 2008. On January 3rd, 2009, the project ended after the site's shutdown. The project apparently used maps from weather.com. The apparent reason for the shutdown was a copyright strike against the project's standalone website, silverstar8.com.[1] After the shutdown, the project apparently split into two, with the two leaders creating their own projects named UnitedWx and Bolt Weather. Bolt Weather continued at least through August 2009.

SilverStar 8 sparked controversy on the TWC Today forum. Older members of the forum, including the owner of TWC Today at the time, disapproved of the project, primarily citing the young ages of the people behind the project, titles such as "meteorologist" that were used without certification, and overreliance on information pulled from outside sources.[2]

History

Aside from SilverStar-related controversy (which has been preserved on the TWCToday forums), the history of TWC Central is mysterious, as it is hard to come by other information about the site. Archives suggest that the forum had either started in 2008 or had been founded sometime slightly prior. The first concrete date associated with the forum and its history is June 19, 2008, when the board was moved to its permanent URL.

Disappearance

There are no archives of the site between mid-2009 and mid-2010. A May 14, 2010 archive of the URL for the forum shows text saying that the board no longer exists. Whether the forum was moved to the twccentral.com URL or it simply ceased to exist sometime prior is unknown. Many of the forum categories were locked, accessible by registered members only. The backlash received on other forums over the SilverStar 8 project may be the most logical reason for the category locks. Because of said locks, the contents of these categories are lost.

The content site was not archived during its existence. Archives associated with its URL begin in 2013, when it was being used by a Time Warner Cable page called Time Warner Cable Central, prior to the company becoming Spectrum. The URL currently redirects to Spectrum Webmail.

Other forums

This section may be removed and a new page created if more information about another forum is found.

There have been reports of other forums that went by the same name. The forum was created during a time when TWC-themed websites were more popular.

See also

Other community forums

References

  1. ↑ TWCToday (January 15, 2009). "Re: WTF!!!!". TWC Today. Retrieved November 11, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  2. ↑ jtmal0723 (January 15, 2009). "WTF!!!!". TWC Today. Retrieved December 24, 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: url-status (link)
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