Swallow Boats Association?

[Tony]

Ok, then, folks.
Lets forget planks, confusingly twinned websites and 'who said what to who and when' and try a sporting analogy for a change.
We have had this nice little forum going for a few years now, like kids having a kick-about in the school yard. We have our own protocols – like all free kicks are indirect and if the ball gets caught behind the bins  its a dropped ball – but now more people want to get involved and we need a referee. Unfortunately, the Head Teacher  (that is you, Matt, that is) is too busy earning a living  to come out and play as much as he used to, so what should we do? 
We appear to have come up with two options:
Option 1.
Get one of us kids to borrow the head teachers whistle and run THIS forum to the best of its capabilities – not all of which have been explored, it seems - on the clear understanding that it is for the benefit of Swallow Boaters, not Swallowboats.com and certainly NOT as a platform for spam artists, corporate stealth salespersons  and other low-life, who should be shown the Red Card before they even get into the game. (Sounds of grinding teeth!)
Option 2.
Pick up our ball and take it to the Council Recreation Ground, where we can hire a pitch by the hour, employ a professional Ref and perhaps join the Sunday League......but, of course, we might have to play by the same rules as everyone else, and hope that they can workout which website is which. The school yard, in consequence, becomes a sad and echoing void. (This part of the analogy would hold true even if nothing else did.)

In Matts place, I would want to keep the forum “in-house”. What better way of promoting and developing his products  than having the virtues and vices  of  boats aired, analysed and commented on by the owners, right there on his website.  Free R&D at the very least.  In addition, the open, no punches pulled, commentary on his designs can only encourage prospective buyers, who will also see from the exploits of present owners what the capabilities of the various craft are.

From our point of view, a forum to exchange ideas with other owners of similar boats is a great asset. Even better is the chance of picking the designers brains – if he aint too busy with the Pampers these days – to help when tinkering around with  modifications, etc. which means my preference is marginally in favour of Option 1, specially if given a decent search facility by a kindly grey haired boffin and kept up to date and spam-free by someone with enough time on their hands – or perhaps a few such - taking turns.
So how about it? All willing volunteers report to the Head Teachers office ......or do we have to have an election?


By the way.
If anyone out there finds me long-winded and patronising in my comments,  it is because I really AM long-winded and patronising.  Get over it.  If it lets you feel superior in some small way to your fellow man I am just glad I could be of assistance but, if you want to gloat, do so in private or this forum will REALLY be like the school yard.

[Jeremy]

I suggest that something needs to be done fairly quickly, as the spammers seem to have cracked the scripts needed to make spam posts here automatically, now, exploiting the vulnerabilities in this forum software. 

Posts from spammers are now outnumbering useful contributions and this post is partly just to push the spam back down the list a bit.

[Jonathan Stuart]

Tony,

I agree with much of that but I'm not sure Option One would achieve what has been discussed here because that requires more than just forum moderation access. Server-level access and changes would be required and I wouldn't expect Matt to permit us to do that. However, if we just want an improved forum through moderation then let's do that but so far we have been discussing much more than that.

To continue your analogy, here's how I see things: A couple of weeks ago I spoke to Head Teacher and said that while we enjoy our kick about, our ball needs pumping up and we would also like to do more. He said he had been thinking the same and that this would be good for the school, him and us. However, he doesn't have the time so he wants us to do it (and if this was a real school he would also talk about personal development through extra curricular activities, but it isn't and he didn't).

That conversation is where I'm coming from. If we just want a moderated forum then let's get a couple of users setup as moderators. If we want the things discussed with Matt and in this topic then we either setup an external site or ask Matt to update his site, but I don't believe the latter is likely given my conversation with him. I'm happy to facilitate the former and there are already a couple of other volunteers, however I don't want to do this if it is going to cause splits or there is a lack of support.

[Anthony Huggett]

Best do it quickly - Oakley SPAM has gone critical.

[Jonathan Stuart]

FYI, I have pinged Matt and email about the spam and suggested a couple of current members get moderation rights regardless of what happens with an association. I will let you know if I hear anything back.

[Clem Freeman]

I'm still happy to help whichever option is chosen but agree with Johnathan that we need something done quickly with regards to this sites moderation. If I were Matt I'd be uncomfortable about allowing a high  level of access to my company website. If the forum could be firewalled from the corporate side of things that may make option 1 viable otherwise I think we have to go with option 2. Also under option 1 how would Matt stand legally if we did something stupid on the forum?

[Tony]

Hi, Jonathan, Clem, et al.

Server-level access? Corporate firewalls? You speak of things strange and wonderful.
 In IT  terms  I am still a Cro-Magnon  banging the rocks together. (Fun.... if you keep your thumbs out of the way, but no way to make a fire.)
 If you have the skills and WANT to do it  let us have no false modesty  or  show of reluctance for forms sake.  Get squared away with Matt and get stuck in! I am sure you will have the backing of the rest of us (....subject  to status, terms and conditions will apply, etc. etc. etc  ....) 

Anything to make sure that the days of the Spammer, though nasty and brutish, are short !

Dont worry about doing something stupid on line, Clem, as your role will be to chuck stuff out, not put it in!
Nothing to stop you preping up an Option 2 of your own, though.  If it is good, people will  use it – and vice versa.

[Anthony Huggett]

I don't know how hard this would be, but a re-cycle bin approach (set up so that only Matt could empty it) would let the delegated moderators move any post to the recycle bin, and Matt could deal with any complaints and reinstate the post if upheld. That would at least get rid of the Oakley threads, which I think are the major problem at the moment.

[Julian Swindell]

I think the major problem at the moment is that Matt is a professional boat designer and builder, not a professional web manager. When we are on this site, we are doing it for recreation. When Matt is administering it, he is losing money on his proper day job. I suspect that he will soon want to upgrade the whole of Swallow Boats web site as it is all a bit flaky, and that he would then prefer not to have a private discussion forum on it at all.

I don't know how this whole association discussion will resolve, but should Swallow boats decide to upgrade to new web software, I think this existing forum at best will be frozen, but quite likely will disappear. The work involved in transferring data from one forum to another is enormous and only possible if the old and new forum systems are compatible. Even then there would be very significant editing work needed.

I support the idea of an owners association. The UKHBBR is probably not a relevant example. Look at the Cornish Shrimpers association or the Cape Cutter 19 association. I think these are more relevant to us.

http://www.shrimperowners.org/
http://www.capecutter19.org/

It is also important to remember that those of us having this discussion are not representative of all owners. There must be hundreds, if not thousands of Swallow Boat owners out there (it would be interesting to know how many). All of this talk has involved less than a dozen of them. It would be nice to offer something to everyone, even if they are not interested in a web forum (most of them aren't it would seem)

[Craic]

... However, I'm certain no-one here wants an association for the sake of it, so if we can do in the current web site/forum the sort of things Andy mentioned then let's do it. Claus - what's your thoughts on how we do this with the current software?...

This is what Andy had mentioned:

"Photo's of owners boats.": -There are hundreds own owners boats photos here already. If you want more, just open a new thread "Owners Boats" and invite postings. They'll come.

"Links to blogs." : - There are hundreds of links in this forum, to blogs or other websites. Why say it cannot be done?

"Calendars of whose sailing where and when".: Just a fantasy idea so far by some user as far as I understand. Show us any website where that is implemented, and I am sure we can copy that. But aside from that, it should be simple enough to have a new section here "Cruising Grounds" and anyone can post where he is planning to go sailing next weekend. That's the  way it's being done in all other websites, and of course it can be done here too.

"A register of SB boat models with brief history of their evolution for interest to us all." All there. All SBs are featured and accessible through the homepage.
I too would love to finally see more content like a proper professional specification and pricelist for each boat and some downloadable brochure and orderform, but that is Matt's job and business and not ours. Of course that could be done here, and would be very welcome.
 
"Current news of new boat development - with Matts cooperation". All that is there already, as far as Matt has put that content in. I too was puzzled that for instance the BR Expedition never made it onto the "Drawingboard" section before it actually came out - but again, that is Matt's job and sole decision. Nothing to do with "Cannot be done with this software".

"Input from our friends in Australia, the US and other exotic places around the world where SB boats are increasingly popping up." Of course all that can be done here in this existing forum, and has been done. Why say it's missing?

"Home builders views, progress etc." : Home builders even have an own section since this forum started and are posting away ever since. So what's the problem there?

"Future sailing events" : Just look at the past events we have promoted successfully through this forum when they were still future events. Through this forum software from 2005 we got the biggest SB attendance to the Morbihan Week 2011. There is nothing lacking here as well.

"Not to mention a spam free forum for people to ask questions, discuss matters, technical issues or just plain old fashioned Help!" : That is all matter of course, and that is exactly what this forum is for and already does, with thousands of postings and hundreds of thousands of views. OK the spamming is a problem, but as I learned from the Simple Machine website there is a spam guard long available for this forum software, and it beats us all why it wasn't implemented long ago.

"The list of stuff that could be put up is endless - none of which could feasibly be done on the current owners site as I see it." -I have taken the trouble to check Andys mentions point by point, and clearly, I cannot accept his statement that this software is dysfunctional and a hindrance. Even this old and dated forum software from 2005 is well capable of what is required to keep all owners well informed and connected, and with a software upgrade to the current release also the spamming could be checked.

And BTW, one can actually search this forum with the current software release. However, presently the search feature is only available to registered users. Beats me why that is. Any visitor should be able to search. But that is just a small thing.

Jonathan, thank you for stating that no-one wants an association for the sake of it. I was unsure at first. I think we can do very well without an association for the time being, and for a good while yet.

BTW, Julian Swindell has above guessed there may well the "thousands of Swallowboats" around today. -I am hopeful there will be at some stage, but I am sure there are not near as many today.

[Michael Rogers]

FWIW, my two-pennorth (or, in my case, two groat's worth) -

Going back to Tony's school yard analogy, I would favour Option 1: especially if a few of the older and more skilful boys would be prepared to coach and blow the whistle, and liaise with the HT so that he knows what's going on. Much easier to do all that staying in the school yard than the other side of town: AND there are plenty of other teams which school-yarders can join for w/e footie etc.

I agree with Claus's, analysis - it wouldn't take much of an upgrade to make this forum more user-friendly, and the current four 'headings' cover the ground surprisingly well.

Julian's most recent offering - is this pure speculation, Julian, or have you had a crafty pint with Matt to coax some forward thinking out of him? As to the website being out of date, a lot of it's been about 5 years behind the times for well over five years (have a look at the stuff on the Trouper 12!), but I wonder why you 'suspect' that that's about to change? If Matt can have the whole site upgraded, that could easily include an updated forum. That would be my preference.

Tony and I could square up, school-yard style, as to which of us is the older fossil when it comes to IT. Actually I win, being older and, unlike him, incapable of incorporating photos, let alone drawn diagrams, into forum threads. So yah boo, sucks to him. By the way, has anyone seen my bottle of Quink (blue-black, permanent)? And whoever is stuffing blotch into the ink wells, kindly desist or I'll tell Sir.

[Jonathan Stuart]

Julian clearly not only has powers of clairvoyance but also amazing timing. Either that or he has hacked my phone (you aren’t ex News of the Word are you, Julian?!). About the time Julian wrote his post I had a call from Charlotte at Swallow Boats. They are currently building a completely new web site and are interested in ideas for how that can work with an association and how there can be more “community involvement”/”social networking” (whatever you want to call it) , e.g. Facebook integration.

I think that is happy coincidence because it puts to one side the contentious questions of what happens if we do something separate to the SB forum and whether or not the forum can do all we want. As an aside and before anyone asks, I don’t know what will happen to this forum, but at least that will now be considered along with how the main SB site and any external sites (association?, Facebook?, etc) are used.

If anyone has any ideas/suggestions for what they would like to see then please post them here…

[Julian Swindell]

Just to be clear, I haven't spoken to Matt about anything to do with the website or anything else for several months. My comments arose purely from what I would do if I was running a commercial website, which is fundamentally a marketing tool for a company. This website, however dear to us, is very archaic and in serious need of upgrading. I think that any boat owner activity should be quite seperate and independent of the commercial side of things.

As an example, the Cornish Crabbers company has gone into receivership and changed hands several times, but the Cornish Shrimpers association was unaffected because it is a seperate entity. I believe and trust that Swallow Boats is in rude commercial health, but its and any owners' activities should be seperate, however supportive of each other. Who knows? Matt might sell up one day to some huge conglomerate so he can go and paddle canoes in the Caribbean with his kids, and the new owners transfer everything to their Chinese website. (I really hope I haven't put any ideas in Matt's head there...)

So I would support an owners associaiton, in whatever form it took, because I don't think the existing informal forum on the company's website can continue indefinetly.

[Julian Swindell]

Julian clearly not only has powers of clairvoyance but also amazing timing. Either that or he has hacked my phone (you aren’t ex News of the Word are you, Julian?!).

I can barely make a phone call on a mobile, let alone hack into one. I have to get my daughter to tell me how to listen to my own voice mail each time I get one. If you ever leave me a message, prepare to wait a very long time for a response.

[Jonathan Stuart]

Just to be clear, I didn't intend to imply that Julian had any inside knowledge and hopefully no-one took it that way. I just wanted to say that in case my comments could be misconstrued!