Consignment to history

[roland_trim]

There appears to be a consensus that this forum will cease to exist shortly.

It is my home page and I'll miss it. Personally I am OK to move with the class and support the idea of using other media - as the number of posts here has dramatically fallen off.

The content will be archived and available as a "historic data"

 As always - comments welcome

[Phil Alderson]

I think it would be a shame.
 I assume by other media you mean facebook, if so you are not likely to hear from me again, I don't go near that. Even if I wanted to just look facebook is unusable unless you are logged in.

It does not look like anyone has posted anything on the UK cherub twitter in the last 5 years. What else is being used?

How much time is spent maintianing the forum?

[Clive Everest]

I still check the forum every lunch time and would be sorry to see it go.

[pratn0]

Currently we are looking what the options are.

it has been noticed this year that there has been a lot less posting within the forum.  and the feeling was that to be more open and make use of everyone to get the class out there, we should look to promote events and sailing the boats on social media formats where we can share event, photo's and videos to a wide audience that may not wish to login/register on the forum to get NOR/SI etc.  We are actively asking everyone to share cherub related content where possible and we will be linking the Facebook, Instagram and twitter accounts together.

We are also looking to revamp the website and make use of a new platform that will reduce our overheads for the cost of hosting and also enable more agile updates of the website and rely less on us to keep the legacy web server up and running. (the current provider is looking to upgrade us onto new hardware at higher cost)

the new website platform does have a forum of it's own that we may be able to utilize. Unfortunately the platform won't allow us to run SMF without spending a load more to purchase a server.

We won't be rushing into this and will be evaluating all our options and input from more people who were not present at the AGM. and may run the new website and the old forum concurrently as we migrate things across.

If anyone would like to talk further on this please feel free reach out to Jimmy or my self directly.  All feed back is well come.

Kind Regards.

Nick Pratt.

Treasure + Tech Officer.


 

[JP233]

Does seem a shame. It's great for finding out why things have been done (rule changes/discussions/committee decisisons and there are some funny bits too!)

But equally I can't see that many people using it if they have Facebook etc, things aren't as simple (adding pictures to posts, DMing and just seeing what's going on whilst the kettle boils.)

A few weeks have passed so my memory is a bit fuzzy, can we check the minutes?
There was talk of opening up the forum so non members can see attachments.
I believe that was the criticism raised by Ben H?

[JayW]

I'm no Luddite but, like Phil, I'm not going on Facebook or it's linked offerings.
Why would I trust an organisation that can't even keep its founder's data secure? Still less open up my contacts - many of whom have given me their details for business purposes and not for me to pass on to other organisations.

I absolutely accept that it's good for getting our offering to a wider audience, and that is what we need. I also accept that the FB users will inevitably chat using that platform, and I'd rather not miss out on that. But sorry, I'm still not going there!

I've not sailed at Draycote as much as I expected, and when I did go to post an update on the Midland Posse thread I found my access gone - domestic payment mix-up now resolved. Maybe this weekend...

[Jimmy Rudd]

We are currently looking at various different options, but its great to see so many peoples opinions on this. Clearly the forum is something with lots of great info and we don't want to loose this, or exclude those members who don't use FB.
As Nick has mentioned the new website has forum capability so we are currently looking in to how this could be used and if we can run a simplified forum, along with backing up all existing forum info so all the nuggets of info wont be lost.

[Phil Alderson]

Out of interest what platform are you considering, is it some kind of hosted cms? The website certainly needs an update, dokuwiki is getting a little old and clunky.

I think forums are good for having longer conversations about topics, which is something we do quite a bit of, and I don't think other social media platforms are as good at.

[Tim Noyce]

I am also on the 'Pro Forum' side of things. There are still lots of really popular forums that I visit for my other interests so I don't think it is worth even considering the fact that they are dying out as a form of discussion/communication. Social media seems good for quick announcements or showing photos, so maybe highlighting forum posts via social media would also improve footfall on the website.

I've sold my boat now and haven't been a class member for a few years but I still have an interest in the class and where it is heading. The forum does seem quite inactive these days (from the bit I can see anyway) is there much going on in the members side?

This doesn't seem to be specific to the UK Cherub Class. The International 14 forum is also as good as dead on the face of it and also the Australian 12 Foot Skiff Forum hasn't had any posts since 2015 either.

[pratn0]

Thank you all for your feed back.

We will be looking at keeping the forum and running it along side a revamped website.  Nothing will change right now as we will need to find some competitive pricing as well as build out the new website keeping as much of the old useful information as possible.

We will update this thread once we have found a go forward solution.

Kind regards

Nick

[kerrgreg]

I think its partly because forums are just less accessible than the likes of facebook and whatsapp etc, for instance im sure there is a number of forum users who also have multiple group chats with other cherub members where they get advise and help which dilutes from what was a forum post. Likewise with the events and news etc all going onto Facebook.

Agree though there is some great knowledge locked in here and within the users.

[flatbackcaper]

sad if it goes always look what's afoot after loging in at work or home. it is a brilliant asset for the class.