EDITORIAL 2005

                                                                                                                                Thin Lizzy - A Rock Legend. 3 Years old! (by Dan Donnelly),.

When we launched Rock Legend in 2002, we intended that the "Editorial" would be used to pass comment on events in the Lizzy world (as opposed to the factual reporting on the News page) and also as a place where guest writers could provide articles. Like many good ideas, it didn't really take off as a regular feature. It has mainly been used as a way of summarising the state of Rock Legend each August. Well, and as Rock Legend reaches its 3rd birthday, it's a good time to continue that tradition. However, I extend an invitation to any budding journalists out there to provide a article - you know where we are!

This year has seen a few big changes in the way Rock Legend is run and organised. Just as we had settled on a new managment structure & constitution for running RL, things kind of went pear-shaped! First off Phil Osborne, a founding member, one of the three on the management team at the time, and all round tour de force in the Lizzy world, resigned from Rock Legend. The reasons were tied up in conflicts about what Rock Legend was all about but we're all still good mates and Phil now has his own web site (www.philip-lynott.com) while continuing to be very active on our forum. From my point of view, the door is always open for Phil to return to active duty.

So what is Rock Legend all about? My own view is that the over-riding objective of RL should be to provide an information point and meeting place for the broad church of fans that populate the Lizzy world. In doing so, Rock Legend should not alientate any particular group or faction by over playing any particular agenda. Since Rock Legend has no mandate to represent anyone, my view is that it should be the channel through which fans can be heard rather than attempting to provide the voice itself. To be an effective channel, it needs to be high profile. To be high profile, it needs to have mass appeal. To have mass appeal, it needs to be high quality and avoid being factional. Never-the-less, we welcome fierce debate and strong opinions and we can assure you that nothing will be conveniently swept under the carpet!

The second problem we hit this year was techical and involved our server, our domain name and our forum! The original forum on VOY was awful and after much chopping and changing, Marty McNickle put together the current forum which is fantastic! The original RL server and domain name had been in the control of a founding member who had created the original code for the site but who had then not played any further active role. With no notice, we were suddenly left out in the cold with no server and no access to the original domain name www.thin-lizzy.net. At the same time, the server that Marty had used for the new forum gave up the ghost! So, since I still owned www.thin-lizzy.com (used to be The Thin Lizzy Starting Point), I bought some server failities via United Hosting (which are excellent!) and moved both the the main site and forum under this single domain name & server. It was hard to "find" everyone again since we had no easy way of advertising the change-over ... but it all worked out in the end and it has resulted in a much more robust situation.

So, how are we doing? Well, despite the problems "Thin Lizzy - A Rock Legend" continues to be a great success with an average of 525 sessions each day during the first 7 months of 2005. The forum has more that 270 members, 160 of who have posted a message, and a hard core of over 50 members who have posted more than 20 times. The forum is also browsed by a large number of "guests" who choose not to register.

The other people actively involved in running the show on Rock Legend at the moment are Davey Murphy and Paul O'Connell who actively moderate the forum. Nick Sharp has currently disapeared off the radar (he did move his gig guide to our server before vanishing) while the forum creator, Marty McNickle, has also gone to ground (though I hope he is still around should I ever need some help with some techincal issues with PHP!)

I believe Rock Legend is serving its purpose well - we're not attempting to be an official site (although we do run Robbo's site as a separate venture), we're not attempting to be a supporters club, and we're not attempting to provide the ultimate Lizzy archive (see the excellent www.thinlizzyguide.com if that's your bag). What we are attempting to achieve is the provision of a focus to allow casual browsers to find out general background information about Thin Lizzy while providing the more regular vistors with up-to-date Lizzy-related news. The forum allows fans to either share their enthusiasm for their shared subject or to vent their distaste at the way the legacy of Thin Lizzy has been treated by those who should know better! Rock Legend doesn't pretend to represent Lizzy fans but it does claim to provide the most high profile place for Lizzy fans to express their views and therefore allow those voices to be heard. As such, our aim is to continue to be "high profile" and we pledge to provide a place where all views can be expressed.

So, do you agree with the ethos outlined above? And can you offer something that will make Rock Legend more high profile? If so, we need you on board. Get in touch.