forced to go the fb route?

[WhiteTrash]

Okay here are my two cents to the whole FB/forums dying/WTF is happening.

Firstly I think FB and most other "Social Media" have been the worst thing to mankind as the good aspects (i.e. it's easy for me to contact my friends and other people I know) far outweigh the bad aspects (i.e. they give every cunt the opportunity to air their views).
Personally I still have a look here every two days or so, just to see if there's any topic that interests me. Saying that, I've never posted or commented much in the whole 10 years I've been here. It's just not my thing to comment on every topic/thread. I have my own opinions though. I much rather keep myself to myself, have my own goals and stick to them. I get things done in my own time and don't really need to get other people's approval or a pad on the shoulder.
I read, talk and listen to people who I think actually know what they talk about through their own experiences and have results to show for. The internet has far too much bad info from keyboard warriors/heros/achievers.
I've had time out with my car and are now back into it again with even more enthusiasm only limiting my exploits due to the lack of funding to jump bigger hoops. (But there's still more room for improvements by fine tuning all sorts of aspects of my car and myself).
And I thing that's a big reason for the decline of the amount of posts on here too. A large amount of members have been on here for many years, predominantly from young age. So everybody has grown up (with their cars and the lounge), priorities change with work, families, houses etc, but most are still here and keep coming back. That's just life.
FB has drawn a lot of people (with short attention span and need for quick useless information fixes) away.

With regards to the lounge layout and sections.
Thanks for adding the new technical section. I think it's a really good idea and will probably be the most read section in the near future full stop. That's what a forum is all about (or at least in my opinion should be about).

Before I write the next few sentences I'd like to check something with the administrators first. Is is not correct that ALL the contents of the forum has to be stored on some form of hard drive in order to be available to access and not be wiped off? Is it not correct that because there was/is so much info etc. on here, a larger server had to be bought (or the memory space somewhere else externally)some years ago which is when you did the sponsorship T-Shirts and donations? Otherwise there'd be no more room for people to post.
The for sale section on here has quite frankly pissed me of for a long long time now. Some people have clearly joint just to sell stuff on here, looking at their post history have either never posted anything else of any informative value or even a productive comment.
And yes I'm going to mention YOUR NAMES Restojohnny, UltraOrange67-2443, SEBB and others. Why do you people have to post one advert for every single wiper switch knob and what ever else the fuck you're selling, adding page upon page to the section to the point where it's near impossible to scan it and find something you may be interested in and use up memory space? Since you are obviously running a business from selling parts or trying to make a good little money on the side, have you thought of donating money towards the upkeep of the lounge?
I would suggest to change it to one ad per month per member. If you want to run a larger ad, pay for it or go to ebay etc. I've put a for sale ad up only a few weeks ago, the first in maybe a year, I have no idea what page it is on now and doubt anybody who would look for what I had for sale has any chance of finding it unless they know exactly what to search for.

I don't care if I've tread on anybody's toes, fact is I've been hacked of by many unreasonable people recently, especially in the last few days. And here's proof I'm actually doing what I'm talking about and am achiving.
Happy Racing everybody
[ Attachment: You are not allowed to view attachments ]
[ Attachment: You are not allowed to view attachments ]

[Nico86]

Thanks for adding the Tech section Trond

[Trond Dahl]

Thanks for adding the Tech section Trond

No problem :-)

Even though stats seems to show, on a chosen month, that we see a downfall in activity let's not forget that if we look at page views for the same month used in this thread we see the following:

Pageviews
May 2016: 782605
May 2015: 766036
May 2014: 523412
May 2013: 709076

Most online
May 2016: 247
May 2015: 165
May 2014: 155
May 2013: 165


We can obviously pick and choose which month to view and thereby get a certain message across, but I think it is important to respect that we still have a lot of people accessing and reading this forum. A positive trend actually.
A new tech section is good. I also think/hope that supporting easier uploading of images from cell phones and pc's of larger size etc. will contribute to making it easier for people to post/share as obviously happens on facebook.
Although we will never try to compete, I still hope people see the value of storing images/stories/technical on something that is easy to find even when 5 minutes have passed.

[BeetleBug]

Okay here are my two cents to the whole FB/forums dying/WTF is happening.

That must be the best spent two cents ever! Thank you for your great write-up mister!

Enjoy the racing and the rest of the summer. I heard that you are unfortunately not coming to SCC this year but hopefully someone will post some updates during the event here on The Lounge like we did in the good old days 

-BB-

[Trond Dahl]

Before I write the next few sentences I'd like to check something with the administrators first. Is is not correct that ALL the contents of the forum has to be stored on some form of hard drive in order to be available to access and not be wiped off? Is it not correct that because there was/is so much info etc. on here, a larger server had to be bought (or the memory space somewhere else externally)some years ago which is when you did the sponsorship T-Shirts and donations? Otherwise there'd be no more room for people to post.
The for sale section on here has quite frankly pissed me of for a long long time now. Some people have clearly joint just to sell stuff on here, looking at their post history have either never posted anything else of any informative value or even a productive comment.
And yes I'm going to mention YOUR NAMES Restojohnny, UltraOrange67-2443, SEBB and others. Why do you people have to post one advert for every single wiper switch knob and what ever else the fuck you're selling, adding page upon page to the section to the point where it's near impossible to scan it and find something you may be interested in and use up memory space? Since you are obviously running a business from selling parts or trying to make a good little money on the side, have you thought of donating money towards the upkeep of the lounge?

Yes you are correct. And yes people have been told directly on numerous occasions to collect sales ads together(in one, or with items sensibly grouped together).
I have failed to follow that up good enough and it seems it has become worse yet again.

In general we don't want people to stop selling items on The Cal-look Lounge, as buying and selling parts is part of our hobby and and a good way of finding what we need or getting rid of something. Of course we don't want to see a VW Golf or a Ipad advertised here, but we don't evaluate if a knob, a mirror or an engine part is more, or less important than another part.

We are not running this forum to earn money, but of course the donations we do get it much appreciated. It is not much throughout a year, maby a handful of small donations usually from the same peope. But we appreciate it equally every time.
As you all have probably noticed we do currently have one advertiser at the top right corner and used to have another before. These people are doing business in a good way and want to pitch in for advertising their products and services. This is how people that run a business should do it.
An alternative would be to ad google ads or something, but I am not sure it would create more revenue than irritation among the users?

Anyways, some pm's will be sent out and perhaps it is time to create some rules for the sales section to make it more visible.

[richie]

Yes you are correct. And yes people have been told directly on numerous occasions to collect sales ads together(in one, or with items sensibly grouped together).
I have failed to follow that up good enough and it seems it has become worse yet again.


Anyways, some pm's will be sent out and perhaps it is time to create some rules for the sales section to make it more visible.

Some stats from right now at 15.09 UK time 7/7/2016  in For sale

30 For sale topics inc the T shirt add up top

Those 30 are from 13 different users including one who signed up seemingly just to post a for sale advert, one person has 6 single adds, another 7 single adds so possibly 17 other people got bumped off the page.
Seems simple to me, one warning then if they don't get it ban them from for sale section   

cheers Richie

[Trond Dahl]

It's alteady done.
I am just not "american" of me. I ask first, shoot later instead of the opposite.
All are agreement with me so will look better moving forward

[Trond Dahl]

Even with a more organized sales section, there is more to it. We still need people to participate and share. The sales section is not "the problem" :-)

[richie]

Even with a more organized sales section, there is more to it. We still need people to participate and share. The sales section is not "the problem" :-)

Agreed but I can also see people getting pissed off by it if there one advert just gets bumped off all the time and not bothering to post at all, not everyone is as calm and relaxed as you Trond   

cheers Richie

[Nico86]

I think people who are here only to sell parts still won't participate more to the other sections of the forum, but at least other members who are trying to sell won't have their ads pushed on page 2 or 3 after a couple of days only.

[Trond Dahl]

I think people who are here only to sell parts still won't participate more to the other sections of the forum, but at least other members who are trying to sell won't have their ads pushed on page 2 or 3 after a couple of days only.

Exactly :-)

[Russell]

Very interesting topic, great post Frank

I feel sorry for the people who's ads are pushed down the list, what about 2 for sale sections 1) formin 3 adverts and 2) over 3, and charge per advert

and what about all adverts removed after 28 days, regardless, they can repost if not sold and pay again if required.

Russell

[WhiteTrash]

Even with a more organized sales section, there is more to it. We still need people to participate and share. The sales section is not "the problem" :-)

Agreed but I can also see people getting pissed off by it if there one advert just gets bumped off all the time and not bothering to post at all, not everyone is as calm and relaxed as you Trond   

cheers Richie

Thanks for all your work running the Lounge Trond and taking action with this.
I totally agree that the sales section is not the problem. The main problem are unreasonable and greedy people who have no real interest in the hobby, this particular and probably any other VW related forums either. We all know Resto Johnny has the same ads on the Samba and some other "members" from the lounge probably do too. And how much do they contribute to topics on that forum? I'd guess fuck all.
And yes I'm put off by putting my couple of ads up because of being bumped down within a couple of days. I only ever post ads for things which I consider are relevant to this forum. My last ad was for a set of aluminium door panels (which are still for sale by the way) as there are many people on here building race cars.
I'd rather see items of quality advertised on the lounge than quantity. If I want that, I'd go on ebay.

I agree with Russell. Maybe remove all ads after 30 days or so. It works with Craigs List, gumtree and I've been on other forums which do it.

Frank