WANTED : FOR SALE section split from WANTED....

[SLR No.77]

Regin, for someone whose English is their second language, you have described the situation very eloquently.

Stu.

[Shaun_E]

I have no problem with people suggesting changes and we have implemented  many suggested changes. In some cases though 1) we disagree or 2) there is some constraint preventing a good value result.

Let me give you an analogy - why spend 1000's developing a fundamentally flawed engine? If you want reliable big horsepower, why not choose a Duratec? if you want a high revving engine with sequential and paddleshift, why not choose a Hayabusa? Each of those solutions (including the one chosen) presents it's own unique challenges and compromises - you have to work with what you've got. By the way - an article on your car development would be fantastic for either Lowflying or the website. We have Wiki functions enabled on the website now so anyone wishing to write technical articles is most welcome.

It's the same for our website and forum - we made a good decision to move to a single content management system which brings a whole heap of advantages but of course there are some compromises, in this case some constraints on ability to implement some functions easily and cost effectively. We are working with what we have.

Ian - I wish I had thought to request that historic posts in for sale and wanted be tagged during the migration - an oversight on my part - sorry. Your second point was what I wanted but it was not a simple change.

Please don't forget that this wasn't a single isolated change - it was part of a larger package of work and consolidation of forum sections which in general has been successful. To make changes to one small element of that now has a disproportionate cost.

We can make this website and forum do exactly what we want - for a price! It is my role to balance the functionality against the cost to provide good value for money for the club and it's members - that is the difficult bit.

I am well aware that it doesn't really matter what I think or write here - some people will always believe there is some conspiracy, some hidden agenda and that we don't listen to the membership. Well those people are wrong, it's just that it's always a bit more complicated than it seems. It becomes soul destroying constantly trying to defend every decision - by all means make suggestions but if it doesn't go your way then accept it and move on. If we made every suggested change either the club would be bankrupt or membership fees would have to double - nobody wants that.

[rj]

Shaun,

Would you please explain to me why people stopped posting on the 17th April 2014? 

I assume it would be possible to run some sort of statistics on this if no-one believes me.

I don't think the average user stopped tinkering, I think the average user got fed up with a - sorry - defunct forum.

I am not nagging over the lack of FS/Wanted - like I said: s**t happens. I guess exactly this would be the least important as a market place is a very dynamic place. When I post in this thread it's because I see an issue with the forum in general.

The technical part of the forum is something completely different. Imagine someone in 10 years want to find some information on - say a Xflow. The cars are still around, but sorry, you can't because the forum is defunct.

That is a catastrophe!

Why I want to make a car with a certain engine is my choice. One is that I am a huge fan of the K-series. I don't think you'll find a car engine that suits the Caterham better. I can for regulations here not use a bike engine in anything newer than 1990. I have yet to find a D-car that handles as well as a K.

[rj]

PS: When I post my concerns it's actually because I care about the club.

[Golf Juliet Tango]

PS: When I post my concerns it's actually because I care about the club.

Hi Regin and Stu

I and Shaun fully understand this.  I certainly see you both as whole hearted supporters of the club, as am I, as is Shaun, as are the vast majority of club members and BC users.  We all want a vibrant and active club both on the road, in the meetings and events and online.

From my own perspective, looking at my own faults and most emphatically, not pointing at any post or posters;  it is easy to see small, peripheral flaws and miss the broader benefits.

[rj]

miss the broader benefits.

I don't think chasing the tinkering users away is a broader benefit.

I also don't think it would do much harm to use a forum software that is easy to set up and use at the sacrifice of having to log on both an the web site and on the forum rather than to have to mess around every time I enter the forum - which I do by far more than to navigate around on the general web site - is a huge price to pay for having something user friendly.

I have yet to be told why the loss of users happened in April 2014 if it was not for the lack of user friendliness. The demography of the users does not change overnight. 

[rj]

Stephen,

I may be ignorant, so if someone could enlighten me to know what the broader benefits that can counterbalance the loss of users are, I may become less biased against the Drupal forum.

[Wile7]

The forum has lost some of its ease of 'old post' retrieval currently but I'm unsure if it's recoverable within Drupal as a bolt-on via 'crumbs module' or what-have-you because, as Shaun has implied, if tagging at migration has not been done its is nigh on impossible to reverse it.

It's certainly not as easy to tease out key posts about things anymore. As many of you know, I had a period in the mid-noughties where I posted stupid amounts on BC, some useful, much banter and arguably much drivel 

But trying to dig out old posts now about xflows, driving internationally, French/Suisse sevening, 'mornin' all' etc. has proven to be a difficult task with the new site - labourious I think is the best word (scrolling through pages of posts despite putting in key words).

The new site is DEFINITELY a better presence/feel and I think represents the club well in 'webland' BUT, and there is always a but..., if folk (paying members and regular users) are posting on here that the functionality has gone AWOL then we need to listen to that. 

At the end of the day, it's a coding issue withinin Drupal (and they say themselves that):

'Thread splitting

This feature is not yet well supported within Drupal. There exists, however, a promising module prototype that would allow an admin to move a comment from one place to another, either within a thread or to another thread, or to create a new thread (new node).'

This module prototype could be helpful moving forward and I'm sure Shaun and the team will do what they can to help us all out if possible (financially club-wise and other).

Undoing the joining of 'For Sale' and 'Wanted' (as per Dave J's original post that started this thread) would be advantageous in my mind. But I'm not sure how easy it is now to undo what has been done within a Drupal set-up.

Love to all...and to the management Team behind the scenes - keep smiling...don't let the bar stewards grind you down.

Life. Too. Short.  

Wile (Dave)

[rj]

Dave, 

Unfortunately it's not just post from the old forum that are insearchable or at least if it is, then those congest the search results to a point where the search facility is useless. Even the UglyBooks search works better. 

I can't see the issue in have a web page and the forum on their own platform. The header of IE a phpBB could point to the web site - and we could even have the old domain name back for direct access to the forum. In phpBB you can also hide content from guests. I don't know what happens when not logged in to the club side, but many threads are not updated if you're not logged in. I don't know how to set it up, but I know it's possible and at present I am looking for someone to help me setting one up for something else. And I have no clue about migrating data - that said I am close to accepting that the past is lost if only we stop loosing from here. The current forum could be locked and located on a sub-domain like longgone.blatchat.com. I know that some fora use a customized google search. Again I don't know much about it and would need a computer geek to help setting it up.

I even think you can set up links from user names to certain web pages; wonder if not someone clever could write a script that would copy a user from either the Drupal web site to phpBB or the opposite. This would make the site seem more uniform for users although I  would not mind having to register twice. A disclaimer stating that the owner of a given username on one of the two domains would have priority - like currently for .co.uk you also have the right to register .uk

I would very much see Blatchat reborn and I would also very much like to see that it's not only very few posts in techtalk that result in constructive new posts rather than having someone very dedicated digging out old posts. This should be possible for anyone.

Having a good website is not enough to justify a defunct forum and given the number of well working fora I am sure there's software around that can be used. As of yet I don't understand that it has been accepted not to have the option to move a thread. Is it a beta version we have?

Of course I am more sensitive to a working forum as it's because of the forum I'm a member of the club. I've never - not even once - used the club discount and often Low Flying fail to land in my letter box. Given my location I don't participate in club events. What does Drupal then leave me with?

Regin

 

 

 

[Shaun_E]

OK I'll rise to the bait again.

Benefits of the new world:

1. Single sign on vs 3 different ones (Blachat, website, 7FAQ) - this is important as hardly anybody used the website or 7FAQ
2. Events calendar
3. Easy content posting for MT and ARs (news, events, member benefits)
4. On-line payment for events
5. Technical "Guides" content (now with Wiki functions ready to be launched)
6. Web pages for Track-days, Speed championship and Area Meets (including international)
7. Private messaging
8. on-line chat
9. Single search across all content

Before someone tells me yet again that search is rubbish, it works exactly as old BC did except it defaults to OR instead of AND but, lets face it, will never be google. If that's a problem then use google - it works. On the website search, you can filter the results by content type, forum, person who posted. We have over 2 million posts on the site - it's always going to be a tricky to find very old posts. On old BC you had to scroll through pages and pages of results to find what you wanted and you didn't have the filters you can use now.

I've just done a few random searches to test. I tried french AND seven and then filtered by author Wile7 - 163 posts. I tried Halfords AND voucher and filtered by author Geoff Brown - 5 posts all referencing the Halfords voucher scheme. I searched "K series" and filtered by author Peter Carmichael and got 70 posts. It's not that hard and I've posted the 3 main search tips many times.

• Use term 1 AND term 2 to get posts with both terms in e.g. oil AND filter
• Use "word1 word2" to get the exact phrase e.g. "oil filter"
• Use the sort and filter functions to narrow down the search

Having multiple platforms with a single sign on costs more time and money to implement, is unreliable and has to be tested and tweaked every time one of those platforms is updated. In IT the hardest thing to do is integrate separate platforms which is why the club made a decision to have a single platform and accept some compromises. IT is expensive - with every additional functional requirement costs go up - we can't have everything we want and have to prioritise what we believe are the best value changes. We do listen to member's requests but sometimes the cost benefit isn't there.

I know it's not perfect and it never will be but, for most members, it is good enough and for the club it is good value.

[rj]

Shaun,

If it works that well, why did the activity go down like it did when the new forum was introduced? I honestly don't think the demography of the users changed overnight. As of yet this has not been explained in a language I understand.

Killing the active forum is a very very high price to pay when you talk about cost benefit.

The single sign in you praise also has it's cost: If you fail to sign in it sometimes is almost impossible to dig up a thread from new and updated when you return; you can't (or I can not) stay signed in. Mind you, the only thing I'm moaning about it the forum; the rest you can keep on Drupal, but I'd happily register and log in on two platforms if I needed to. The chat function? Never used it, so to me it's of no value.

I have - of course - tried to use "and" searches, but regardless what I do I end up getting either no results or a billion. Why is the default set up different than "everywhere" else? (Well, "mostware else" that should be :-p ) 

 

[7 wonders of the world]

Chitchat 'sticky' update from Christine following the last MT meeting.....

[Wrightpayne]

Boing - unadressed issue for the MT - 7 pages of comment?? 
 

MT about to vote themselves in a new leader without input from the paying membership.

ARE WE HAPPY WITH THIS????

[rj]

Boing - unadressed issue for the MT - 7 pages of comment?? 

 

MT about to vote themselves in a new leader without input from the paying membership.

ARE WE HAPPY WITH THIS????

 

No!

[7 wonders of the world]

I'm still waiting for the promised response from Christine on this and the shocking search option that this site runs.

 

[AdamQ]

Here, here - split wanted and for sale, sort out a decent search facility and please, please, please restore all the broken links.

 

[alcal]

I'm delighted to see this topic getting so much traffic.

I have posted critical comments about the current website in recent times and have been puzzled by the lack of response to them.

Of course the For Sale and Wanted sections should be separated but more importantly the abysmal search facility should be replaced by one that works as well as the old one did.

This should not be beyond the means of a club with a £1m+ income.

 

Alan C.

[Golf Juliet Tango]

This should not be beyond the means of a club with a £1m+ income.

If only we did... (not close, sadly).  Start with the number of members (approx 2,750) and the membership fee.

[SM25T]

Must be thinking of the worldwide Ferrari club ?

[Wrightpayne]

Or Porsche Club GB - 22000 members! 
 

On a side note, the daily traffic on their forum is considerably lower than blatchat, which speaks volumes!

[alcal]

Oops, never was any good at sums. The search facility is still awful though.

Alan C.

[AdamQ]

This is a truly great club with truly great people - it has been for ages.  Over the years there have been some exceptionally knowledgeable people on here - and there still are (I'd love to include myself, but I most certainly do not).  What irks me the most is that that knowledge has become frequently inaccessible because links prior to whenever are now redundant (and I acknowledge that in some/many cases those links would lead to a 404 Page not found error, but there's still wheat amongst the chaff ...).

When one finds oneself hunting out archived copies of the site to retrieve information that one knows was once readily available there's something wrong.

I repeat: great club, great people (and fantastic cars).

Adam