Spencer's discourse on TMA was well made. Personally I think it is a brilliant resource just as it is - one I always consult before going off on one of my annual adventures (i.e. holiday) to some far flung corner of the British Isles. That is the key to its effectiveness I feel - you can look up a site and read the field notes of those who have gone before. Almost always articulate, often humorous. Then write up your own field notes afterwards, if you wish - so there is a permanent record of your visit to look back on. I find that quite satisfying.

Although there are quite a few Facebook prehistory pages around now they are too fast and not suitable for research or planning. TMA really belongs to the people who use it and I should give Rhiannon a mention here for the excellent Folklore archive she has been largely responsible for.

There are a few gaps in The Modern Antiquarian book - for example, Julian Cope never wrote much about Northern Ireland and other parts of the Irish Republic so the Irish contribution here is particularly useful.

The Forum can be entertaining and informative too. No changes from me.

Nicely raised post Moss and Spencer.
I spend lots of time on here (no, really?) and still find it an invaluable resource for planning days out and helping to find the less obviously signposted places. My recent trip to Gibbet Moor would have failed without Stubob's photos.
I like the mix of stuff, it's definitely not a photo sharing site primarily, although many of the contributors post stunning pictures. The mix of notes, photos and folklore is great and gives a nice well-rounded idea of a place. I love reading and seeing photos of places I’ve never been and probably never will go.
The other brilliant thing compared to almost every other site I use is the lack of adverts.
So for me it’s already pretty good.
Sometimes an opinion is raised that the direction of the site doesn’t match where someone would like it to go. I’d just reiterate what Rhiannon has said. It’s a community website, so the way to cover your own preferred angle is to contribute something that you’d like to see/read and maybe others will follow suit. There is a very broad range of styles of notes and photos, so as long as it’s on theme I reckon there’s a place for it. I find other people’s contributions an immense source of inspiration.
Things I might change if it was down to me are small tinkering really. There was a change last summer sometime to the way pictures are rendered, so they don’t look as sharp as they did. There are also quite a few sites that are really one site but have been added as extras when really you’d visit them together, so perhaps a prune would be good in some places ( I’m pretty sure this does happen actually). But this is really trivial stuff and far outweighed by what we have got in my opinion.

That book captured my imagination precisely because it DIDN'T employ the tediously dry - often prohibitively so - point scoring, pseudo-academic discourse of any other archaeological work I'd picked up beforehand (the occasional dry wit of Aubrey notwithstanding). I've always held the opinion it's rather easy to become an expert upon something that will never allow definitive resolution of even such a basic question as 'what was a stone circle for?'. Cope was clearly coming at it from a different, irreverent direction with, crucially for me, an emphasis upon how these places made him FEEL combined with an altruistic, all-inclusive clarion cry to the reader to go and see for themselves.

It was the format of the book which I believe enabled Cope to share his enthusiasm so vividly, so I see no reason why the format of the website should change. I hope he - and those who give up their own time in support - feel the vision was worthwhile.

As a *ahem mumble* year old man - I don't like change. :D I seem to remember there being a discussion on this subject here many years back. A few changes were made, in fact. Not sure if the forum had any bearing on it. Took me ages to get used to though. :D But now it's all I know. It's so familiar.

As a web developer, I agree that a mobile version would be a great improvement, for a lot of reasons. And I'd be happy to help in any way I can to make this happen. :) Web trends change rapidly and new technologies are created regularly. A website only has a life of a couple of years, max, really, before it needs an overhaul. But then as mentioned somewhere above, there's probably not the resource for it! Or the need. It does what it needs to do. And if it doesn't, people have created their own websites to fulfil their needs. Which is fair.

I've not contributed for a while now - or not much, anyway - but still enjoy keeping myself up to date with the comings and goings. The forum itself goes through many changes of participants, for better or worse. It can get heated, yes, but then all online fora go through the same issues. It is a place for discussion. It should never become personal or insulting but there we go. We're all human. I think. ;)

G x

Well this thread has really taken off, it should have subsets ;), notice Rhiannon mentions 'phenemonology' well this essay by the Urban Prehistorian should spark some thoughts.....

https://theurbanprehistorian.wordpress.com/2017/01/21/selfish-walks/

In the end the 'wholeness' of the landscape is the thing that moves us, stone, water, mountains and of course the weather plays a significant role. The essay argues you can't get back to prehistory, viewing 3017 bc from 2017 ad is just a flight of fancy. What we do is look for clues in the landscape, try to marry them together. I just love the palimpsest of history, a river that has moved progressively over the centuries, an old well with a statue of Mary, barrows that follow the line of an older road. Saxon, Viking, Norman they tumble through the soil to earlier times, to old kingdoms forged out of the roman withdrawal, and did those kingdoms start from the aggressive Iron Age hill top forts. History is fluid, its pattern etched in the landscape.....

The Old Wife's well, has an ambiguity that says interpretation cannot be qualified into exactness, as the 'roman road' that is nearby is seen now as maybe a much earlier linear line on the landscape...

http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/6683/old_wifes_well.html