Please vote: Should GWAPA Open Most of Forum to Non-Members?

[Judi]

I prefer to keep most of the forum for members only. I worry that opening it up to non-members would change the character of the forum. What's so wrong with forum access being a membership perk?

I understand the concern about being welcoming to potential new members, but is opening up the forum the only way to achieve that?

[Cavan]

The PAPAS forum is mostly open to only members, and I believe most other clubs have the same thing.

[Ghazanfar Ghori]

That's a plant related forum I hope

[Cavan]

Pittsburgh Area Planted Aquarium Society

[Ghazanfar Ghori]

Post Apocolyptic Pretend Astronaut Society

[ingg]

I voted for it.

To touch on a couple of apprehensions posted above (as I see them anyhow)....

The forums, as I understand it, were originally locked over concerns of spam. Technology is by and large past that, first, and second, we don't warrant the traffic for overt spam attacks in any event, nor could we realistically be envisioned to.

This isn't APC with thousands of hits a day, nor would it ever realistically be, in other words. The concern over security, therefore, is somewhat moot.



I'm a little lost why you would need privacy to post honestly about a vendor in the hobby. I've no problem pointing out what I feel are shortcomings to a vendor, and any vendor who values their reputation would take it as a chance to improve on honest feedback from customers.

I am in sales, and not only don't mind it, but value it. If I, or my company, are missing the mark, I want to know why and want to try and fix it. Most people I know in sales are the same way. I'd want to know, for instance, that my reflectors were flat and bulbs too tight together in my CurrentUSA fixtures - it made the SLR fixtures they now make hit the market instead. If, however, you are slamming someone to a point you wouldn't feel comfortable with anyone outside the club seeing it, you should maybe be thinking twice about posting it at all, no?

(All that said, realize that forums pertaining to group buys and purchases would remain secure to members only, so things like price shopping and such would certainly still remain private.)



The concern about people becoming interested in the hobby/club by being able to see more of this site and what we do is also somewhat baffling to me. This club's purported purpose and goal is to foster the interest and awareness of aquatic plants, is it not?

Yet we shut those who would casually/anonymously get to know the club and just check the place out. I just don't quite get why that is a good thing.

I get that folks fondly remember a little tight knit club of 12 people. I appreciate the hard work and dedication of those folks, they built a fantastic foundation that is the baseline of a great club! But I also get that GWAPA hasn't been that for a few years now - and the growth has only made the club more dynamic, more interesting, and more rewarding for almost everyone, if the annual surveys and general mood of meetings is to be believed.



I think Cavan is correct in that most other planted tank clubs (as opposed to almost any other aquaria club, most of which are far more open) have very private forums. I also don't bother hitting any of their sites, as it is largely useless to me - or to almost anyone else. Shame, isn't it?



As an idea of the difference btw, I think everyone who knows me knows my ambivalence towards cichlids in general. I started reading some of the CCA forums last year, just checking things out. Know what the last tank I set up was? African shellies. Do I see myself doing tons of Africans now? No, but it opened my horizons a bit and showed me a new piece of the hobby I do find appealing.... so was that a bad thing that resulted from their forum being open, or good?

[Cristy Keister]

On the spam question -- I run the PVAS forum with the same software (only a newer version) as this board. I don't have to monitor the board for spam because the spammers don't get through the registration process. All I do is have everyone registering to reply to an email with a bit of info. That just lets me know that there's a human responding rather than a bot. No spammers have made it through.

The PVAS forum is more open to non-members for a very different reason than this club would have. When I set up the forum there were about 5 members that had any interest in joining a forum. I think the average age of our membership was a bit higher, too. The forum was really dead for the first year. It had to be opened to get it going. I think having an open forum has made a small difference in bringing in new members. It's still not quite as active a board as GWAPA's now. Opening the GWAPA board would probably make somewhat more of a difference to this club in terms of membership numbers.

[krisw]

I had a feeling this might foster some strong feelings on both sides, and that's exactly why the board wanted to put it to a member vote, rather than just unilaterally moving forward.

Rob, I appreciate your thoughts on the individual forum areas. After looking, I think I agree with you that the Community Tank might be best served in the Members-Only area. As for the other sections (Articles, DIY, Tissue Culture), I think those could be valuable areas for non-members perusing the forum.

Also, the goal of this isn't necessarily to bring in new members, but to at least make the clubs outward public face, reflect the helpfulness and sense of community that our members exhibit.

Speaking of new members, we ended the year with 90 members last year, far from a Mickey Mouse club. With or without this change, we'll likely need to address the ways in which GWAPA operates and meets in the next few years. In fact, our size has already begun to limit the places which we can meet, ruling out most member's homes who don't have larger homes. (We're still looking for a VA member to host in October this year.)

Chris, there's definitely a balance to be struck in everything. As for consulting with CCA/PVAS, I have definitely spent a fair amount of time talking with Pat Kelly on this and other topics, and I think the three clubs benefit by learning from the others experiences.

Finally, as a couple of you have pointed out, if this gets voted in, and we find that this decision was the wrong one, it won't be difficult to reverse.

[Ghazanfar Ghori]

.... so was that a bad thing that resulted from their forum being open, or good?

Do you want me to answer that really?

[SCMurphy]

I'm a little lost why you would need privacy to post honestly about a vendor in the hobby. I've no problem pointing out what I feel are shortcomings to a vendor, and any vendor who values their reputation would take it as a chance to improve on honest feedback from customers.

I am in sales, and not only don't mind it, but value it. If I, or my company, are missing the mark, I want to know why and want to try and fix it. Most people I know in sales are the same way. I'd want to know, for instance, that my reflectors were flat and bulbs too tight together in my CurrentUSA fixtures - it made the SLR fixtures they now make hit the market instead. If, however, you are slamming someone to a point you wouldn't feel comfortable with anyone outside the club seeing it, you should maybe be thinking twice about posting it at all, no?

Dave, this general idea is one you see on all open forum planted tank sites. We don't let people do any vendor reviews because of one vendor that sued the people running the Aquatic Plant Digest mailing list for letting someone say what a lousy job his company did. So now free discussion is handcuffed to prevent lawsuits, you can't warn people away from bad apples in public. You can say you would accept the reviews as a vendor, but you don't own the company. Keeping these behind a wall prevents anyone from declaring them "slanderous" or "injurious" or what other legal nonsense people have come up with.