Ron Earp
Admin
Many good points on here. I'd like to respond or comment on a few, in no particular order:
- Free forums - yes, they exist but the software is generally poor, you have to put up with whims of the hosting company, targeted ads in the middle of posts, and you can't have the sort of customization and features you have on a forum like this. We started on a Network54 forum way back in the day and outgrew it quickly. If you want a dedicated server, dedicated software, photo hosting, and features like found here and on other sites it ain't free.
- T-shirts for members - great idea until it comes to shipping overseas, where half of us are at. It is easy and cheap for me to ship tshirts in the US but not overseas. Will have to do some thinking on this one. Plus, we'd need a GT40s.com design that wouldn't infringe upon various trademarks and most of all looks cool. I for one ain't an artist!
- I'm liking the tiered concepts brought forth. But I can see one potential pitfall in that it could be all the advertisers we have wish to move to the lower tier and thus income would drop precipitously. I do not think the presence of a website is a good indication of how large a company is. I have see comments on this thread about "a site like this" (meaning GT40s.com), when in reality GT40s.com is a tiny business, if it can even be called a business. Someone mentioned having a vendor for like $400 and banner adverts/forums extra. I like this idea. More discussion around that one would be nice.
- Moderated / controlled subforums - not sure about these. At least two members point out they don't like them and wouldn't allow them. Why not? If a company pays for a subforum and wishes to moderate it is it a problem? GT40s.com is open and you are free to post what you want. But if you go posting in a moderated subforum by XYZ about why XYZ's product stinks do you think the XYZ company should allow that? They pay for their subforum. Now the person can doing the posting can always post anywhere else on the forum, such as the Feedback Forum, and the post will not be removed or changed in any way. That said, I'm not a huge fan of moderated subforums just on general principles. It makes the admin job just that much more difficult for little gain. I offered moderated subforums to try and stop some of the vendor infighting that was occuring late in 2008. I think that has calmed down now and the moderated forums are no longer needed.
- Sponsored forums - same as above but in the unmoderated sense. These are a bit of a pain because sooner or later the company that sponsors them maybe doesn't want to do so any longer. What to do with the posts? If we have paying vendors I'm not up for leaving a vendor forum up for free advertising.
- Making the site fully accessible only if you pay - no, I don't like this suggestion. GT40s.com is 100% free and I want it to remain so. Anyone can register, log in, and post pictures, view threads, ask questions, etc and see all of the forum. I like that and I think most of our members do too. Yes, you need to have a valid email, confirm registration, and we'd prefer you use a real name but that is all it takes to use GT40s.com.
- Ebay forum - not sure I'm a fan of it. It is only a few people using that forum and I delete posts out of it all the time from folks putting their own wares there. If you want to sell it to a GT40s.com forum member then list it in the "Garage Sale" area, for forum members, with a price, and get on with it. If you want to sell it on Ebay list it there, but not here.
- Determination of vendor size...not sure I should worry about it. What we need is a scheme like Jac Mac and others have suggested that has enough benefits/restrictions that the levels will automatically sort out the vendors. If you are big and need a lot of exposure you'll use T1, the big one. If you are tiny and just need to be allowed to advertse then T9, the small one. The trick is there has to be enough difference in benefits that a company can't pick T9 and have 95% of the benefits of T1. That is sort of what we have now. The only difference between the old two tier system was the banner advertisement, otherwise the non-banner advert group could advertise as much, more more, than a banner advert company.