BLUEMOMENT

at last - a like minded soul...

marisca wrote:Along with the rest of you I received Nick's threat of closure today. Not that his dates make any sense - how pissed was he? - but the gist is probably one month to demonstrate how much we need these fora (and, by association, him). The idea that 4 of us would have no way of arranging a drink at yuletide is too abhorrent to contemplate so to borrow from Peter Pan, the panto, we must all clap our hands and shout "I believe!" and post some drivel. It can't be worse than TOP.

First I've heard of this was on logging on today! As it's nicks site, he can do as he pleases, and having run a couple of bb forums in the past, handling spam and updates etc is not exactly a matter of moments. Spam has killed many a good but quiet site. So I can see his point.

As probably one of the newest offcomers, I would say the site is quiet, so quiet I only log in every month or two and it really takes very little time to catch up.

I'm quite happy to contribute more, but there is an appearance of cliqueness on here, and I'm not softskinned at all! It's probably down to the small core of regular users who all know each other in real life. I don't even know who nick is on ybw, and I check in there most days.

That small core is also an issue itself, not because of them, but because they are all there is! Forums need traffic to survive, and a regular drip of newcomers to add variety and spice and fill up where others drift off or stop posting.

Two things we did when an invite only photography forum I ran was declining was ask some members to be "mods" and their job to be to try and keep conversations going and initiate new ones; the other was ask every member to invite 3 others they thought may be of interest. An extra step was to cut down the amount of subforums to the bare essentials. The forum is still thriving 6 years later.

Someone mentioned facebook, facebook groups are huge and can be useful, but they are excrement compared to forums. They actually move too fast, the information is not easily searched for, and it is very much, of the moment only. Try finding an interesting cruise someone did from 9 months ago if your contemplating visiting that area and you will really struggle. The big succesful scottish cruising fb group is a case in point, interesting enough in bits but ultimately it bores the tits off me, and I couldn't find anything to get my teeth into on there, so I left.

Everything changes, nothing lasts forever, it's the nature of things. But I would be sad to see this one go, as it's the only scottishcentric one I know of, and has a lovely absense of bullshit daily mail readers.

steveyates wrote:Someone mentioned facebook, facebook groups are huge and can be useful, but they are excrement compared to forums. They actually move too fast, the information is not easily searched for, and it is very much, of the moment only. Try finding an interesting cruise someone did from 9 months ago if your contemplating visiting that area and you will really struggle. The big succesful scottish cruising fb group is a case in point, interesting enough in bits but ultimately it bores the tits off me, and I couldn't find anything to get my teeth into on there, so I left.

Everything changes, nothing lasts forever, it's the nature of things. But I would be sad to see this one go, as it's the only scottishcentric one I know of, and has a lovely absense of bullshit daily mail readers.

I have thought that too, and even after being "educated" about how to search FB still think it's rubbish to look back on, not like a forum. Way too many threads keep cropping up asking the same question and there is no point posting links to the 5 previous posts in the last 6 months answering it, like you see on YBW.

On the clique thing, SCS will go the same way, the 30 folk who post on everything will get to know each other and talk by mobile so FB will be redundant, or end up scrap like Myspace.

My parents never went online and their visitors book from Seminole is a wonder to behold, they actually approached folk in harbours and on pontoons and spoke to them, you don't have to recognise a boat name from a forum to go make friends. They read YM and PBO so got info from there.

I still like it here, ever since I searched Google on "Sailing Loch Lomond" and found BM, a mine of info, and met Ash and Joan and subsequently many more of you. I'll be sad to see BM go, but if it's a pain to keep going I'm sure I'll cope.

And the other thing, Stormy got the "I'm going to pull the plug " email, but I didn't, but I wasn't hurt or dejected.

I did think that it was a bit quiet before the message but don't like to post stuff just for the sake of it.

Going to ask about chain soon, despite not knowing how big it is or what electric windlass I'm going to buy.

My parents never went online and their visitors book from Seminole is a wonder to behold, they actually approached folk in harbours and on pontoons and spoke to them, you don't have to recognise a boat name from a forum to go make friends. They read YM and PBO so got info from there.

Aye - 'tis true but also on our sojourn to Northern Ireland there was a lovely lady from the Rathlin Island Tourist Board taking boat and sailor names & a small potted history of each new arrival - a fantastic archive and great for research