Origins

PHASE ONE

thanks for coming to the SITE ORIGINS page. The story of how national-PCSOs came to be made, who joined it and why has been long held back in a shadowy - rumour filled vacuum. Now for the first time, the amazing story can at long last be told.

The story actually starts in 2002, coincidentally - the year that PCSOs started walking the beat for the first time.

the very first members to join national-pcsos way back in 2004

top 20	username	template	location	date joined	posts in phpBB2	member no
11	pen	subSilver	Hertfordshire	28 Feb 2004	9	25
12	Jonpcso	Chronicles	Leeds west Yorkshire	28 Feb 2004	39	26
13	Mazaya	Elektro	London	03 Mar 2004	7	34
14	dee	subSilver	Darlington	04 Mar 2004	173	37
15	robocop	Elektro	kingston-upon-thames	08 Mar 2004	6	43
16	Eviction Technician	subSilver	Kernow & Kent	09 Mar 2004	332	45
17	davops	Elektro		10 Mar 2004	4	46
18	Raven	Chronicles	The darkness just before dawn	11 Mar 2004	296	47
19	wozbit	Elektro	Kingston-Upon-Thames	11 Mar 2004	6	49
20	Bobopcso	Elektro	Woolwich	12 Mar 2004	3	52

I had been shopping in Kingston and gone into a branch of "GAME" looking for any cracking computer games going. What I found instead was far far more important than any computer game.

I found a copy of blitzbasic - a cutting edge programming language that "GAME" had decided to stock. Having passed 'A' level Computer Science at Merton Tech a few years before, I was intrigued to see a hands on programming language up for grabs.

I took the package home and buried myself in the manual that accompanied it.

Pretty soon I was looking at the official "support site" for the language and not long after ended up on the unofficial site called "Blitzcoder.Com" (now erased)

The amazing camaraderie, rapport and commitment I saw on these forums (it was the first forums I had ever seen in my life) got me hooked from Day One. I quickly achieved a reputation for being a decent, enthusiastic if not knowledgeable, colleague on the site.

My keen interest in forums had begun in style

PHASE TWO

Some months later I found the unoffical POLICE forums called 'off duty'

Now the forums I'm talking about are not the ones you see today

Sadly the head honchoes at that site felt it was necessary to delete the 2002 'off duty' forums in favour of something better

and when I say delete, I mean GONE

But in 2002 there I was on 'off duty' forums - crikey, I thought Blitzcoder was good but these 'off duty' forums really were beautiful

I was knocked for six, these forums had EVERYTHING (for 2002) and pretty soon I was up to my neck in some pretty controversial topics (now all deleted as the site moved onto "better forums")

by Victor » 07 Jul 2009 07:28 am Hi Every body, Five years already! Time gone quick isn't it, thanks for PCSO web-site to bring us together. We are the PCSOs can change our communities and make them better and safer.

by Lieutenant fatman » 14 Jul 2009 05:41 pm I remember there being a specific part of the forum dedicated to a Big Brother type game. A few of our main members who were keen on the idea got together and all pretended to be in some crazy mansion on some tropical island, or something similar. We would have challenges (making things out of match sticks springs to mind), and then of course the evictions. It was all good fun, and although I think the television show is total rubbish (my opinion), the game was very amusing! Ah, memories.

PHASE THREE

I had enjoyed a real love affair with Windsor Safari Park while my kids were really young

Living not too far from there, I had even bundled the kids down there after school, I was that mad about the place

Sadly, it got closed down in 1992 to make way for LEGOLAND!!

Ever since then I had been searching on the internet to check out any website with a "Windsor Safari Park" theme

Nope! Nobody gave a monkeys

2003 came around and I decided to launch a site in memory of the place I loved so much (thinking that anybody who ever went there would join my site)

these are the major components in the journey to P.C.S.O. com getting published to internet
Blitzcoder.com	hey!! first website I ever joined	.1.
offduty forums	best Police site I ever saw!!	.2.
www.windsorsafaripark.org.uk	first site I made (on 31 Aug 2003)	.3.
Police Specials	Andy Oldham was a great help to me	.4.
natn pcsos	Created on 20 Feb 2004	.5.
p h p B B 3	national-pcsos was created in phpBB2 but in 2007 - phpBB3 superceded the old forums. In 2008 PCSO.com went to phpBB3	.6.

PHASE FOUR

at the time I was getting pretty heavily involved with Police Specials too and the guy in charge Andy Oldham - at that time - was using phpBB2 for that site (I believe he since changed to another software totally different)

But to get phpBB2 forums enstalled - first time around - was incredibly difficult for me

It's like anything, once you've done something a few times - you say "Hey! How easy is that!!?" Sure it is, for someone who knows how

I remember Andy coming over to my installation and checking it out (it just wouldn't work)

Of course, he managed to sort it and told me what I had/ hadn't done - but I was always very grateful to him for being such a friend

the very first members to join national-pcsos way back in 2004

top 10	username	template	location	date joined	posts in phpBB2	member no
1	falkor	subSilver	Surrey	20 Feb 2004	5508	2
2	Lieutenant fatman	subSilver	England	24 Feb 2004	389	8
3	Rowan	Chronicles	Walton On Thames	24 Feb 2004	5	11
4	Rachel	subSilver	Herts	26 Feb 2004	10	12
5	dilly day dream	Elektro	a world of my own...	26 Feb 2004	2346	13
6	magical46	subSilver		26 Feb 2004	3	15
7	Dan	subSilver	Yorks	26 Feb 2004	18	17
8	Maquis196	subSilver	London	27 Feb 2004	18	20
9	deb	subSilver	herts	27 Feb 2004	6	21
10	kipper	subSilver	Home Counties	28 Feb 2004	2482	23

PHASE FIVE

By the time 2004 hit, I had already launched another couple of forums, "SurreyCounty" and "NationalCableTV - neither of which were that successful and ultimately were scrapped. However it looked like PCSOs were missing out, as everyone else had forums, Police, Fire Brigade, Ambos even Specials - so what about PCSOs? I had a look around for quite a while, thinking "well somebody must have set up forums for PCSOs!"

In the end I came to the conclusion that no one had bothered! So I started "national-pcsos" and very quickly, PCSOs began joining and participating and creating a useful, quality place to come to, that any other PCSOs would be welcome to join our discussions. Very soon "national-pcsos" put "Windsor Safari Park", "SurreyCounty" and "NationalCableTV" to shame, through sheer numbers of topics and members.

"SurreyCounty" and "NationalCableTV" went on for a year or two - then just peacefully dropped off a cliff.

PHASE SIX

I was a big fan of phpBB2 and as I said before, originally Police Specials and many other forums were operating with it. When phpBB3 came in, in 2007, I was not impressed. I was not in fact going to move to phpBB3. I couldn't understand what phpBB3 really offered. As time went on - negative information began surfacing about the viability of continued operation with phpBB2 and even the hosts fired a broadside in my direction, when I asked for support. "There is another version of phpBB available," they told me - as if I was completely lagging behind the times. Still I refused to budge.

Another site "National Traffic" had launched in 2006, after a Highways Agency Traffic Officer on "national-pcsos" had been talking about the "HATO" role. After a while, I proposed a "HATO" site and together we kicked off "national traffic," a kind of "national-PCSOs" for HATOs.

In 2008 however, a number of senior members on "national traffic" began "complaining" about the way the forums looked. Their grievances snowballed to such an extent, that I felt something concrete needed to be done. Something that would so satisfy their irritations, that the subject would be stopped in it's tracked.

It occurred to me there and then, that the time for phpBB3 had arrived. A daunting process to convert phpBB2 to phpBB3 then occurred over several mindbending days - the resulting forums however, operate faster, more securely and more efficiently than ever! And once it was done to "national traffic," it could pretty easily be done to "national-pcsos" and so in 2008 - our site was upgraded to phpBB3, the most cutting edge forums on the market today!

ANECDOTES, LEGENDARY MEMBERS, QUERIES, COMMENTS, REMARKS are sought for this page, do email me please if you can contribute anything to this page

the very first members to join national-pcsos way back in 2004

top 40	username	template	location	date joined	posts in phpBB2	member no
31	IndianaJones	Elektro		19 Mar 2004	46	90
32	pieman71	Elektro	London Westminster	19 Mar 2004	8	93
33	dlambeth	Elektro	South London	22 Mar 2004	14	99
34	Shpadoinkleday	Elektro	London	25 Mar 2004	5	105
35	Shimmy	subSilver	Over There * Points*	25 Mar 2004	495	106
36	Orett	subSilver	London	25 Mar 2004	9	107
37	husky	subSilver		28 Mar 2004	4	112
38	superfan1	zoneCopper		29 Mar 2004	56	114
39	Victor	subSilver	Concrete jungle	03 Apr 2004	180	119
40	Anna Key	Elektro	London	11 Apr 2004	15	124