This forum is not a hammer

Stop trying to bang the forum use into something it is not meant to be.

Been keeping a keen eye on the evolution and talk about retention of members. Seen the new mods do good. Observed the ever growing number of new members, daily - making the same mistakes. Saw how some people jump and repeat themselves or ignore the new mob. Noticed a bunch of attempts to re-define what content should be published in a thread or how that should be managed.

I realised it is the TASA community asking for a change - an evolution if you like.

Last year a facebook page was started - and I asked the question why. It was the first sign of new needs.

Are we not just to use to seeing information in a more structured fashion, do we not expect more social networking functionality?

If you look at http://www.vbulletin.com/index.php?do=features
Look at the publishing suite, the additional CMS and blog plays catchup and allows for "new" ways to provided content -think plant / fish lists, articles, etc

But this all comes at a cost .....

I have no clue if the Admin is keen on embarking on the mission to entertain a rethink of what TASA is or if the members are willing to put real money on the table to fund such a project or if the community has it in them to be new media contributors.

At the moment this forum is a topical social commentary tool shouting to be more.

 

I would be quite willing to donate towards an upgrade if that is what Rory decides but I do think that it should be Rory's decision to make and he should not be forced into it. I'm pretty sure that there are quite a few members who would also be willing to dig into their pockets to help with the upgrade cost involved if necessary.

 

I've asked this before, and I'll ask again... How many members are willing to put there money where there mouth is?Who is actually willing to pay for the services of TASA? At that point, TASA would be able to buy all the add ons from vBulletin, and take it to the next level that seems to be requested.

(I do however feel that if there was a monthly fee, the members screaming for these add-ons will suddenly disappear.)

 

Monthly cost may stunt growth of the forum, thus giving other sa forums to start and grow. I for one think that we would be shooting ourselves in the foot. I don't really understand what this is all about. What do you guys think will happen when some1 hits this site for the first time and then is asked for their credit card details. Yes they would google for another site. Keep this in mind.

 

I am really new to this website so don't know if I really might say anything here and have learned in this few days more than ever in 8 months, I am really lazy in reading. And think that people should become frustrated in my questions and think this will become common in all cases, doesn't matter what topic you decide, the site will develop in a few categories, beginners like me who will ask stupid questions and then the Advanced users that will answer my stupid questions and then the experts that doesn't really have time to spend time with the beginners and the beginners will not really understand what they are talking about anyway. Now with my laziness in mind could we not create something like an beginners guide like Zoom did, but not in a thread form but let everyone agrees that this is the way to go and this should be part as an introduction to this site. And if I ask a stupid question that everyone could refer me back to this Introduction(The basics). As I learned today if you have a fish tank you must have a test kit. Without it you will be lost. So yes, I come home every night read some threads and try get the basics behind but it's difficult as there's no manual I can work off and refer new members to.(If you think about it this could be combined in a book and sold to the pet shops to make some money to sponsor the website). Like I said I am really new but this is the situation, please correct me if there is such info on this website. Beginners should be able to know if you are starting a fish tank you should go to www.tropicalaquarium.co.za like if you are searching for friends you go to facebook.

 

Well, the above sounds great, and there are plenty of valid points.
My concern, however, is that I could be capped in 2 days time. The main reason being that the site is hosted offshore.
I used to spend lots of time, on other local forums, and was once capped, due to some e-books that I've downloaded.
Once capped, I can still be on local sites and forums.
Perhaps we should look at hosting it local.
What do you guys think?

Gert.
Ps: I have a 1 G ADSL line from Telkom @R299/m. Any cheaper solutions?

 

Gert, Most people buy bandwidth ala international.They do not know or were not informed that they have an option to buy Local Only bandwidth.

However the issue remains that whether TASA is hosted overseas or local the TASA bandwidth will be capped.
So hosting TASA local will not really be an option regarding bandwidth.


About going cheaper there was a thread a while ago by Rory about Afrihost.
I've since moved to them.R29.00 per GB.
Very good pricing.Alternatively if you have a 384link you may consider MWEB's uncapped option for R200 odd rand.

 

Local is pretty expensive thanks to Telkom

You can go the Mweb uncapped route,Our family has a 4mbps account but unfortunately the line is only 300kbps.

You can check the Mweb website for prices here http://www.mweb.co.za/adsl/

 

I agree with Zoom if there where a fee, I would have never joined, the info on this site is worth a million, but nowhere on this site we are able to donate some money. We could start a list with donations that could help this site earning some money, if sponsorship is advertized more people will start sponsoring.

 

There lies the MWEB Problem.:frown:

 

Afrihost is by far the best and cheapest in my opinion, for capped and uncapped.

But back onto the thread topic....A monthly fee would kill the forum as I have seen it do on a number of forums. If upgrading is something which Rory would be willing to look into, perhaps the first step would be to look at the extra cash needed on an annual basis and then try and accumulate that upfront, once a year or so, through donations. A few sites have a donations button. I don't feel that giving any donations should be a compulsory thing in order to use the site, it would defeat the purpose, but all donations should only be on a voluntary basis with no pressure put on any members to do so.

That being said, the site as it is works great at the moment so it is not a do or the forum would die matter.

 

I'd like to see a list of what people are actually asking for here.

I personally find this site almost flawless and wouldn't be able to pay a monthly fee in any case. I can second the donation route; I have seen it successfully support international gaming sites for games that are 10 years old. Even if donation did not cover costs, every bit would help.

 

At the moment I'm paying vB 4.0 licensing fees but keeping the forum on 3.7. Might upgrade to 3.8 if I feel up to it but 3.8 doesn't really bring much that's new and 4.0 is very different and most of us would have to learn everything again. I considered purchasing the CMS but basically vBAdvanced CMPS which this site uses has everything the "official" CMS has (because vBulletin simply copied CMPS and included it in 4.0).

If you want a blog functionality then it can easily be added. I purposefully kept a lot of things turned off because vB has more than enough features for people to get to grips with. I haven't seen blogs used effectively on any other forums.

 

Prophecy Forums makes use of a blog system which seems to be quite successful.

 

Thanks for the feedback Rory.

For the brief hijacking of the thread to chat about adsl etc ... Ja well.

For the rest of the input - all valid especially Veegal "That being said, the site as it is works great at the moment so it is not a do or the forum would die matter." I agree - with that said: I had a quick look http://demo.vbulletin.com - setup a demo and played with blogs and articles the flow seems to be as follows.

Forums work as they do now .. no problem with that. A forum post can be converted to a blog post or promoted to an article.
Typically blogs are about the user and things he wants to share - these can be commented on ... but unlike a forum post the content of the comments do not pollute the original blog post. Blog posts can be converted to an article. An article lives in a section (and can be published to the landing page, home page) - content is structured and commenting can be allowed.

So in short you can have content in four places.

Recent Comments, Recent Blog Posts, Recent Forum Posts & Recent Articles

How would one use this on TASA?
Comments

a passing remark on any other item or comment except a forum post (that is a thread reply) - but it does not form part of the actual main peace of information as originally posted by the author.

Blog Posts

Soapbox style ... voice your opinion or post pictures / vids of your fish, tanks etc comments are appreciated but this is not a two way dialog informaiton peace.

Forum Posts

Solicit a response - serialised dialog - commentary, might be prone to being hijacked or going off topic. Perfect place to ask questions - get answers or pointers. (like 70% of the current TASA)
Articles

Qualified material - blacklists, fish db, plant ID - beginners info etc ... comments can be allowed and these can be used to improve the quality of the article.

The cost of this is not really a conversation about money, but rather it is about time. Time to do a good base setup, time to build a sensible content structure ... ongoing time to manage all of it.

Rory you might just be correct in saying " vB has more than enough features for people to get to grips with"

Maybe if TASA was a commercial effort and not hobby driven the CMS approach would be required for survival - but as a tool to chat about fish ... we should be ok, well for a short time longer.

 

Rory is it possible to give TASA the same functions as what MASA has? What would the costs be?

I understand that the marine guys dont seem to update stuff like the fish database but i think the TASA members will.

For those of you that dont know MASA is the TASA marine sister site:

http://www.marineaquariumsa.com/

 

Such as? Theres a Wiki on MASA but no one updates or user it. As for articles, tale a look in the equipment review section on MASA, basically like threads but the first post stays on every page.

 

i was thinking in the lines of the photo gal

http://www.marineaquariumsa.com/photoplog/index.php

As i said i understand the MASA members dont sem to update it but you and i started something 18 months ago. surely we can finish it and get it live on the site?

 

Rory "As for articles, tale a look in the equipment review section on MASA, basically like threads but the first post stays on every page." ... that looks great.

I think some of our sticky notes should be articles ... maybe we can get zoom and zafgak to be the content managers for what becomes an article and what not?

Actually even Prof D ... might like to work of lecture notes every once in a while when he shares his thoughts ....

Articles in my mind need to be qualified material generally accepted by he the TASA community as good advice ...