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What happend?
Where are the updates for the last couple of seasons? Well, it's a fault of
our own misunderstanding about the show's direction from the beginning.
LostHatch was designed to not only capture information, but to also position
that data in a timeline. It is then possible to run reports that show events in
a chronological fashion (current day [island time] character facts, flashback
character facts and flash forward character facts) or break the data into nice chunks that the site visitor can
get a handle on (dreams/visions/hallucinations, facts related to island mythology).
Being a database driven site, getting the data right is crucial for displaying it correctly.
Since season 4, it has become frustratingly difficult to correctly classify data. When breaking down the show
it became apparent that we didn't know what we were looking at.
Did we see a dream, island hallucination, vision of the past, vision of the future,
flash forward, flash back, time travel forward, time travel back, new memory of
the past based on time travel that seems like a vision of the future during a
flash back that we thought was actually a flash forward...?
The time it was taking to perform episode updates began to creep upward as we attempted to resolve the
timeline issues. By season 4 we were spending an average of 30 hours per show gathering the required
data and classifiying it.
Given what we've accomplished at LostHatch.com you might imagine that the site is run by a multitude of people. In actuality, with exception
to the Games section, only two people are responsible for the creation of the site, site maintenance, error management, transcripts, facts, images, sounds,
quizzes, surveys, episode guides and so on. It has been this way from the beginning.
In attempting to get a jump on the data gathering it became impossible
to just 'watch' the show because we were always searching for clues, looking for connections, reading the Closed
Captioning to get character names and hard to hear dialogue to ease transcription. Our passion for the show had become
nothing but an albatross tied to our necks. All of our spare time at night was spent trying to get all the data
entered, the transcript perfected and uploaded, the images and sound files captured, etc., before the next show began.
Our hobby had suddenly become a second job, one that we really didn't have time for.
The two people obligated to LostHatch.com have full-time day jobs, families,
children and all the responsibilities being fathers and husbands entail. As the
show unfolded and timelines became crossed in a tangled web we made the
difficult decision to just stop where we were and begin watching the show for enjoyment again.
LostHatch.com is still an excellent resource for information about previous seasons.
We have entertained the idea of streamlining the site and removing some
information (things like Island Whispers, Numbers, TV and Movies, Games). This
would remove a couple of hours of data, sound and image gathering if we were to
decide to begin updating again.
We are both happy we made the decision to stop updates to the site. The last season has been amazing and we have enjoyed
just 'watching' again. We still
rank LOST at the top of our Must Watch list and, like you, look forward to every episode.
As the show winds down the timeline issues should begin to fade. And then (who knows?) maybe LostHatch.com can be reborn.
Thank you for visiting!
-The Guys
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