Forum Use

[Armortek]

Hundreds of registered Armortek customers make this Forum a very welcome place, full of interesting material demonstrating the skill and dedication to their craft of a great community. The Forum is also read by a much wider worldwide audience. Most posts are informative, full of substance and of wide interest. The Forum isn’t however a chat room. There is a useful guideline to follow to make sure that posts are relevant and the Forum continues to develop as a friendly, knowledgeable and interesting place.

- If you have something to say which you think is of wide interest to readers, including visitors, or wish to comment on a posting in a way which will interest other users, please post away.

- If you have something to say which only concerns one or two other users, it would be better to confine it to a Personal Message or email, not a post.

The list of latest posts at the top draws readers’ attention to interesting new material. If the Forum is used as a chat room, new posts disappear from the list before many have had a chance to see them. The short, person to person post doesn’t add value for most readers and is best avoided.

Thanks

Stephen

[Armortek]

Recently we've seen an increase in short posts which are of interest only to the sender and recipient. An example might be sellers on the For Sale and Wanted section asking for buyers to reply by Forum post. That's just the sort of message a PM is intended to be used for. Equally, the post "You have a PM" is of no general interest.

The downside of this trend is that interesting and substantial posts rapidly disappear off the headlines and readers miss them. The one liners offer nothing to most readers and eventually turn people off.

Feedback is a less clear case. Feedback is always welcome and we wouldn't want to discourage it.

If this Forum is to remain interesting for everyone, both Registered and Guests, the content needs to be interesting and generally relevant. The guidelines below explain in more detail.

We're looking at this problem and would like to have a Chat facility which would be a good place for the one liner, conversational style of post. But until we can find an answer, it would be helpful to follow the simple guidelines below, so that the Forum remains interesting and relevant to the widest audience, which is global and includes far more guests than registered users.

Thanks. Stephen

[Phil Woollard]

Just to clarify then ,as an example, if I reply to builders interesting build log saying "nice detail as usual so and so" Then that's not appropriate?
I can see your point reference selling reply posts, but now I am worrying about my short pat on the back post reply's

[michael hilton]

There is my pennyworth....and I have missed posts in the past for the above reasons however, the 'one liners' are worthwhile. Words of encouragement are always acceptable if only to show that your work has not gone unnoticed. Change the format by all means but do not discourage us from posting.....Mick....written with a

[Steve Stuart]

This is a difficult one.
There are some responses such as 'you have a PM' are completely irrelevant to everyone but the recipient, but it is important as because we are using computers, the fact that someone has got a new PM may not be getting through. I have sent PMs which have never been spotted/looked at, so being told in plain sight is the only way to let it be know.
There is an issue with the 'pat on the back', it can be very disconcerting when you post and you get no response at all. Fine, it may be, that what you are posting is of minority interest, but it is upsetting that an other topic gets fulsome praise seemingly out of proportion. Encouragement does need to be given, but it also can be discouraging? The issue also is that often there is nothing that can be added or said, so you don't make a reply or response, which ought to be fine.
So perhaps, if the number of posts in the headlines can be increased, that would allow for everyone to be kept happy.
My ha'porth, Steve

[Mark Adams]

Why not create a separate "page" for chit-chat? Most of my modelling related pages have an open forum, in addition to the dedicated pages. Remove the page's ability to post to most recent, and that would solve the problem.

my .02 worth.

[Sam Hough]

I think it is a simple usability problem with this forum software. It is pretty old and creeky.

I use Google Groups quite a bit and it is free, much more usable and more powerful. I'm sure there are lots of other options out there too.

Sorry for more digression from tanks. I've been doing web stuff professionally for about 20 years and would be happy to advise on changes...

Running an online community is a tricky thing but the right tools can help.

Cheers

Sam

[michael hilton]

Nice one Sam, could not resist that one line.......sorry folks Now any views on my recoil problem...mick

[John Heath]

Can see both sides on this issue but it just makes the solution obvious. Overdue for a major forum software upgrade to something more up to date. The current software just doesn't offer the levels of usability and the features that users have become used to on other forums.

As mentioned plenty of options out there.

One of the forums I frequent and an example of an up to date well run modern forum.
https://stargazerslounge.com

John

[simon_manning]

there's always an element of " modern tosh" on forum's, endless replies of not much use, regards simon manning.

[Phil Woollard]

Well we are all guilty of talking bol---ks, me more than most but that's our friendly way I suppose, Im not keen on the Sargent Major way of of addressing some people and topics (that puts some users off posting altogether) but I put up with it, keeps us on out toes I guess
Lets have a bigger board index!

[Peter Silcock]

I agree with Phil and I'm afraid I am a great believer in the KISS principle. The forum is the easiest to use of all the rc tank forums and also the friendliest. Some forums become so complex they are virtually unusable.I suspect most of the regular users of the forum dont want to turn it into a FaceTwit type atmosphere (or am I just old?) and as far as I can see "chat" is kept to a minimum anyway.I simply don't see the problem here- surely its not being suggested that only "technical" posts will be allowed? A sad day if that is the case. As I suggested before perhaps a "thanks for a good post" type button might eliminate some of the "chat" which appears to be causing concern.

[Sam Hough]

I am a techie so maybe guilty of seeing this through technical eyes.

I've been without internet access for the last week so it does make it easy to miss interesting posts.

Does this forum software support email subscription digests?

I do find the image upload/rendering a bit painful.

I don't want any of these comments to eclipse how helpful, friendly and mindbogglingly knowledgeable Armortek and the users on this forum have been to me.

Cheers

Sam

[Armortek]

This is a good sharing of views.

The software that this forum runs is certainly very old. We have run a test upgrade and the migration has worked well. The main issue is that the "look" of the forum will be very different - because the company that made the "look" for this forum many moons ago does not support the never versions.
This in itself should not be a big issue, although it will be a change.

Migrating to a more feature rich platform has also been looked at, but trying to migrate all the valuable history on this forum proved to be too difficult without breaking lots of things.

To be honest, with all that has been going on, the forum software took a bit of a back seat. Perhaps it is time to prioritise this a bit higher and get to it in August now. It would certainly bring some benefits on the admin side - one interesting stat is that everyday we get approx 30 - 50 fake accounts being set up (dont worry - tey are all set to in active unless we activate them). All these are manually deleted - the update could solve/ help with this.

Let us know what you like/ dont like aboutthis forum and we will try to see if it can be addressed. No promises .. and keep it polite

Kian

[Gerhard Michel]

Hi Kian,

I also visit some german tank forums(?) besides the AT forum. Here I miss some postings / pics /clips of events besides the 'official' AT meetings, with our models driving 'in the field'. I hope that here also are many collegues driving their cats in the 'wilderness', felling timber and making pics and clips of all this, isn't it so?

My problem: I was begged to avoid showing here others than Armortek models, but at our meetings there are models of various manufacturers to be seen. Of course in the pics I can differentiate the model provenance, but the clips show only 'mixed modes'.

In technical discussions it could be helpful to show also other solutions in models of other origin to give hints for alternatives in using batteries, sound modules, ESCs, recoil solutions, steel track links and so on, also in Armortek models. I don't know whether or not this could be interesting here and / or could find your acceptance. Could you give me a hint?