Thursday 27 February 2014

Flood appeal news

At a recent meeting of the Old Bostonian Association it was announced that the President’s Appeal to members for donations to commemorate the catastrophic December Flood which badly affected Boston Grammar School has raised almost £2,500. It has been proposed to provide new display cabinets and seating in the Lobby adjacent to The library which was severely flooded. A plaque will also be erected to show the height the flood waters reached.

The appeal will close at the end of February, so there is still a little time to donate if you haven't done so already. Find out how to donate here.

Tuesday 11 February 2014

Neil Atkins - Obituary

Neil Atkins (BGS 1984-91)
(Photo: Nottingham Post)

Neil Atkins died after a collision with a horse box and two cars in Nottingham Road, between Halloughton Road and Stubbins Lane, Southwell near Newark, Nottinghamshire, at around 2.30pm on 29 December 2013. The 40-year-old data analyst, from Upton, was driving a Mini Cooper to Nottingham Forest's match against Leeds at the City Ground.

His mother, Merna Atkins, 62, of Boston, told the Nottingham Post: "When the police came to us on that Sunday evening, I instinctively knew something was wrong. When we were told, it devastated us because he was the perfect son.

Sunday 9 February 2014

Wiki news

Wiki tidy up - check your account

As I have said before, the OBA Wiki suffers from the creation of a lot of bogus accounts. I have always tried to keep on top of accounts which actually post irrelevant content to the wiki but that has left a lot of accounts which are never going to be used.

For some time I have been trying to get a tool working to automatically delete a lot of these remaining bogus accounts. The mechanism I've decided to adopt deletes only accounts that have made no edits and that are over three months old for accounts with a confirmed email address or one month old for accounts without a confirmed email address. The tool has already made one pass and has made a vast reduction in the number of accounts.

This process brings with it the risk of deleting a small number of valid accounts, so if you had an account on the wiki and had not made any edits, then your account may have been deleted. If this is the case, I am very sorry, you would be very welcome to create another account and you should be able to use the same name - let me know if you have any difficulty.

For those recreating their accounts and anyone creating a new account there is a simple procedure which will ensure your account will not be deleted either automatically or manually by me:
  • Create a new account on the wiki
  • You should receive an email asking you to confirm your email address. Please do this within one month.
  • Within three months of creating your account make some edits. At least place some information in your personal page which explains your connection with Boston Grammar School.
To access your personal page, log in to the wiki, and click on your username which you will find near the top right of any page.

Houses

The most recent additions to the OBA wiki are articles on the houses of Boston Grammar School and the people after whom they are named:
Your help with filling out these or any other articles on the wiki would be gratefully appreciated. For example, there is still quite a lot to be done adding detail of the political career of Thomas Parry. So far I have rather lazily grabbed some of the detail from his Wikipedia entry.