• Win a Free Custom Engraved Brass Coin!!!
    As a way to introduce our brass coins to the community, we will raffle off a free coin during the month of August. Follow link ABOVE for instructions for entering.
  • SUBSCRIBE TO SHIPS IN SCALE TODAY!

    The beloved Ships in Scale Magazine is back and charting a new course for 2026!
    Discover new skills, new techniques, and new inspirations in every issue.

    NOTE THAT OUR NEXT ISSUE WILL BE MARCH/APRIL 2026

Info/Announcement Model Ship World Outage — Community Support and Update

Jimsky

Jimsky

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
Forum Moderator
Joined
Nov 3, 2018
Messages
14,483
Points
938

Location
Brooklyn, New York USA
Shipmates,

Many of you have likely heard by now about the situation with Model Ship World. It is a deeply unfortunate loss for our community, and I want to take a moment to address it directly.

First, let’s keep things in perspective. From everything we know, MSW itself was not specifically targeted. This appears to be part of a broader, large-scale attack, based on a security vulnerability affecting servers worldwide. MSW shared infrastructure with servers that were not patched, and as a result, it was caught in the blast radius.

The scale of the loss is hard to overstate. Years of build logs, research, photographs, and collective knowledge, all gone. Some of us have learned from, contributed to, or been inspired by that body of work. It is a tough moment for the entire ship modeling community. That said, if there is one thing this hobby has always proven, it’s resilience.

Model Ship World will return. It may not look the same at first, and the archives we relied on are gone, but the members, the real heart of the forum, are still very much here. And that’s what matters.

When MSW is rebuilt, I strongly encourage all of you to support them:
  • Rejoin when the doors reopen
  • Restart your logs if you can. You can simply copy your logs from here
  • Share knowledge, photos, and experience
  • Help rebuild what was lost, piece by piece
We all benefit from a strong, connected community. MSW has been a cornerstone of that for many years, and it deserves our support as it finds its footing again. In the meantime, let’s continue doing what we do here, building, sharing, and helping one another. And let’s keep our colleagues at MSW in mind as they take on the enormous task ahead.

We wish them steady winds and following seas.

— SOS Administration
 
Unfortunately many model ship builders on the MSW have passed on and will not have their legacy preserved and there knowledge is now gone for ever, if they have not been a member of another forum.

It might be a good idea for Ship of Scale members with knowledge of those members to prepare a list.

Get a external drive and back up frequently all your files and store the drive outside your house. Don't use the Cloud as your backup.
 
You need three backups. One local, as in a backup on the same server or hosted by the provider. One online, the cloud backup, this one is on a different server or a dedicated server. And one you keep on a storage device in your home or office that is not connected to the internet except when backing up. The source for this is my good friend Tract who does this kind of thing for a living.
 
Wow. Glad I posted my build logs here. The copy of my first build log was destroyed on MSW not by hackers, but by an overzealous admin from the "Keep it Real" crowd for specious reasons. That fellow is no longer there thanks to a founder of that forum. My condolences for members who lost so much more at MSW.
 
This is a huge loss for our hobby. I also had a large forum in Ukraine, and due to the war, it was destroyed, and all the reviews (photos) were lost. So I know what it's like. That's why I duplicate all the information many times. I've been to MSW and other forums, and here, too, and I have a new website with my reviews where I'm transferring the information from the old one. So I'll be one of those who will add to the knowledge base, and I highly recommend everyone join... There aren't many of us in the world as it is, and there's even less well-structured information, especially for beginners. I agree with the advice... save photos on an external drive, and keep review descriptions in text format for the fastest possible recovery.

After the night always comes the dawn!
 
Words fail me, and to lose the backups as well. Let's hope lessons are learnt from this event.
I have several external hard drives which I use for my own backup, and they are only connected and accessed when I have data to load to them. I've never truly trusted the "cloud" where ever that is. It always claims it is safe and secure, and comes at a cost for some applications eg. Apple backup etc.

I think I'll get another couple of SSD drives, big ones...
 
Terrible, but I have no regrets. No backup, no sympathy. During my time as an admin at MSW – before I was bullied out in the most despicable manner through the lies and intrigues of Chuck Passaro and James Hatch – I repeatedly emphasised the need for local backups; in fact, a hard drive was even purchased specifically for this purpose, on which I regularly made such backups. If you then fail to follow this up because you think you’re so clever, it only demonstrates the complete incompetence of the people involved there. And this wasn’t the first time.
 
Dubz Modelling World said:
Terrible, but I have no regrets. No backup, no sympathy. During my time as an admin at MSW – before I was bullied out in the most despicable manner through the lies and intrigues of Chuck Passaro and James Hatch – I repeatedly emphasised the need for local backups; in fact, a hard drive was even purchased specifically for this purpose, on which I regularly made such backups. If you then fail to follow this up because you think you’re so clever, it only demonstrates the complete incompetence of the people involved there. And this wasn’t the first time.
Click to expand...
Dirk, I agree wholeheartedly with you. I am very sorry for the loss of actual information and for SOS members who may have lost their build logs, but as to the MSW organisation, I have no sympathy either. Like you I was the target of a personal vendetta by messrs. Passaro and Hatch when I introduced the YuanQing Bluenose. Who can forget the number of MSW members who were banned simply because they had bought the Bluenose kit. Ironically, the number of Bluenose kits sold was far higher than that listed on the owners' list - simply because numerous MSW members asked me not to reveal their identity. Some even went so far as to adopt pseudonyms for their builds on SOS.

Clearly the MSW admin should have spent less time policing other people's builds and more time on creating backups. And you are so right - this is also not the first time that they have lost their database. Some people never seem to learn.
 
As a “residual” user on MSW, my account was cancelled because I had a thread on my personal blog and on SOS about a Chinese kit. I hadn’t published it on MSW, but according to them, that alone was grounds for expulsion, and they terminated my account outright. I complied with the rules at the time and posted here on SOS without any issues.

As someone who also manages a similar forum, I’m very aware of how challenging it is to keep a platform running securely and reliably.
The responsibility of running a forum is to ensure that it works properly, that it is secure, and that the information users contribute remains available over time.

Of course, no one is immune to hacker attacks, and as in this case, it’s not enough to keep your own portal secure—an attack on the main server hosting the virtual infrastructure can bring everything down in an instant.

That said, it’s basic administrator knowledge never to keep backups of a portal on the same server or hosting environment.
There should always, without exception, be a LOCAL backup stored at home or in a secure location, disconnected from the network.

I deeply regret the massive loss of data and the damage caused to so many people who, in all likelihood, no longer have any trace of their threads.

Wishing you all the best in this new stage.
 
When I build my first Model Shipways kit in 1983, I became aware of Nautical Research Guild. I've been a long-time member of NRG and MSW. I have also been a member of SoS for several years. The loss of MSW as a resource and my personal information in terms of contributions and build logs has been a "gut punch". In my experience I viewed NRG and MSW as one modelling resource, a community. I never had a bad experience.

What happened to MSW hurt the ship model community, especially contributing members, past and present. I've read a number of posts today of people venting about their negative experiences with MSW, the personal attacks and seemingly celebrating its demise. What's the purpose of this? Apparently, I misunderstood the Forum Rules.
 
Heinrich said:
Dirk, I agree wholeheartedly with you. I am very sorry for the loss of actual information and for SOS members who may have lost their build logs, but as to the MSW organisation, I have no sympathy either. Like you I was the target of a personal vendetta by messrs. Passaro and Hatch when I introduced the YuanQing Bluenose. Who can forget the number of MSW members who were banned simply because they had bought the Bluenose kit. Ironically, the number of Bluenose kits sold was far higher than that listed on the owners' list - simply because numerous MSW members asked me not to reveal their identity. Some even went so far as to adopt pseudonyms for their builds on SOS.

Clearly the MSW admin should have spent less time policing other people's builds and more time on creating backups. And you are so right - this is also not the first time that they have lost their database. Some people never seem to learn.
Click to expand...
Why were they banned for buying a kit!? That's why I never join modeling groups as a rule. You always get some officious little snot who thinks he's running the world! In my local plastic club, even the founder of the club got thrown out!!!!
I reminded them that they were talking about models, not the division of the Sudeten Lands!
Ridiculous.
 
Quint said:
I've read a number of posts today of people venting about their negative experiences with MSW, the personal attacks and seemingly celebrating its demise. What's the purpose of this? Apparently, I misunderstood the Forum Rules.
Click to expand...

I haven't read any posting "celebrating its demise" at all. For what i read, so far, the full community feels very bad and if there is a way that we can help MSW modelers to recover their logs, like it happened to @Y.T. , then let us know.

The "vents", like mine and others, were just comments of how MSW administration was managed. Those postings shows the scars left by that administration. And, at the bottom of my heart, I hope they change when MSW is rebuilt. If allowed, I will join ASAP and continue my postings at SOS too. Nothing bad to post a build on 2 forums.

So building for the future, how can we help ?

I do not have images saved from MSW logs (wasn't allowed) and all the links I saved to build logs are unusable now (after a few years of being banned I was able to read again the logs. So I saved many links to go back to them, now unusable).

I am (we are) here to help !!!!

Daniel
 
Chelseafan said:
Why were they banned for buying a kit!? That's why I never join modeling groups as a rule. You always get some officious little snot who thinks he's running the world! In my local plastic club, even the founder of the club got thrown out!!!!
I reminded them that they were talking about models, not the division of the Sudeten Lands!
Ridiculous.
Click to expand...
According to MSW all Chinese model manufacturers （with the exception of CAF if I remember correctly） copy their models from the existing plans of "Western" model manufacturers. The fact that the Bluenose model was the only Plank on Frame derivative of a Bluenose kit in the world, did not matter.
 
In fact, I was one of those who got banned from MSW, so I understand how easy it is for old frustrations to resurface... but I fully agree that this isn’t the moment for that. What we’ve lost as a community is far bigger than any individual grievance.

Rather than revisiting past conflicts, I think we should focus on what we can do going forward. As an established and knowledgeable group, we’re in a good position to help preserve, rebuild, and share what we can, whether that’s knowledge, plans, techniques, or simply supporting each other. If we keep the focus on that, something positive can still come out of this.
 
Big loss for the community for sure.
Personally I had a build log in progress on the Brig Niagara I am working on. No great loss as it was an older kit and there was not a great deal of interest in my build. For me the loss is of access to those that had completed logs of the Niagara.
I would also agree with some of the comments here that having your back ups on the same server is not the most prudent plan.
 
STILL IN THE AGGREGATE A HUGE WORLDWIDE LOSS OF SUPERLATIVE INFORMATION TO OUR HOBBY and to their 50,000 members and logs in general.

I, here, read a couple of negative - sort-of glad it happened - just about them (members) posts - Really????? It's not about a single member OK!!! In my very humble opinion. Yes some of their Admin people were extremely myopic, but stil.....

As Jimsky just posted above!! let's move on from "all about me" posts PLEASE....
 
Last edited:
I have suffered a very significant loss through the MSW outage – my entire La Créole build log going back to 2013 has disappeared.

At the same time, I want to say that I was always treated fairly at MSW. I am genuinely sorry that some members here had negative experiences or were even banned.

Since 2021 I have also been active at SOS, and I have always felt welcome and well integrated in both communities. Both forums have contributed greatly to my development as a model builder, and the exchange in each place has been valuable to me.

In light of what has happened, I believe this is not the moment to look back or reopen old issues. As others have said, what we have lost as a community is far greater than any individual grievance .

Let us stand together, support a fresh start, and improve whatever may not have worked perfectly in the past. Only by working together can we recover as much as possible from this loss.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top