forum

[E_T_V]

I do feel that it is a little unfair to say that the club boils down to Monstro and Peterborough - that is simply not the case.

Amongst other things the club is doing and working on, we have worked hard at getting as much exposure for the cars as possible and indeed that is one of the committees current aims. The more people who we can get to see the virtues of Maestro & Montego ownership, the better. Presence at high profile shows (which cost very little for the club to attend) and working with the classic car media is important. Even better if we can get them into the national press, although that is harder to achieve. However, the reporting of the Festival of the Unexceptional in the Telegraph did have some excellent Maestro coverage.

For the average member that is exactly the case though. What does the club offer its members?
Magazine? - Sadly not. I've not seen any service bulletins either.
Spares - No
Technical support - Yes via a forum which isn't as good/reliable as it once was
Shows - Yes
Insurance discount - No
Discounts from suppliers - No
Remanufactured parts - No
Magazine and press coverage - Yes. And this is important to attract new members but doesn't benefit current members unless their car is the feature. It can help secure members benefits too though if you work at it enough.

[Russ]

Sorry Tanya you're not selling it to me. I can't honestly see how giving the cars more exposure is good for the club except for the owners of the cars involved.
There are NO more MMs for Joe public to buy and join the club. The club should be getting NLA parts remanufactured not attending the NEC unless the owners involved want to pay most of the costs.
But we can't have parts remanufactured because we don't have a parts department anymore

[Tanya]

I can't believe that it's something that can't be fixed, it's not like there has been an emergency government bill to make forums as difficult as possible to navigate. Err they haven't have they??
But as stated before I can't see the value of being a member anymore, this is a real shame as I was very passionate about the club in the past. It was only because of my geographical location that I didn't get more involved. One magazine is not much in return for eighteen quid oh and being able to park on the club area at Peterborough

There is more to the club than the annual Monstro. Due to time constraints Monstro was getting published less and less, possibly less than twice a year - it is a major piece of work and unless you're retired with lots of spare time on your hands, it's almost impossible to produce. We are now going to pay to have it edited and produced as despite our best efforts to find someone to take it on, understandably no one came forward,

It has been replaced with the Service Bulletins which give much more regular information about events and what's going on in the club. I do feel that it is a little unfair to say that the club boils down to Monstro and Peterborough - that is simply not the case.

Amongst other things the club is doing and working on, we have worked hard at getting as much exposure for the cars as possible and indeed that is one of the committees current aims. The more people who we can get to see the virtues of Maestro & Montego ownership, the better. Presence at high profile shows (which cost very little for the club to attend) and working with the classic car media is important. Even better if we can get them into the national press, although that is harder to achieve. However, the reporting of the Festival of the Unexceptional in the Telegraph did have some excellent Maestro coverage.

[Russ]

I can't believe that it's something that can't be fixed, it's not like there has been an emergency government bill to make forums as difficult as possible to navigate. Err they haven't have they??
But as stated before I can't see the value of being a member anymore, this is a real shame as I was very passionate about the club in the past. It was only because of my geographical location that I didn't get more involved. One magazine is not much in return for eighteen quid oh and being able to park on the club area at Peterborough

[Tanya]

It's been interesting reading all the comments and thank you to all have have taken the time to comment. Some are much more about the club than the forum and certainly the coming together of BL/ARG clubs in one way or another I do see as the best way of small clubs such as ours being sustainable and the best way to build in resilience. However, that's a separate topic and a very large one at that!

E_T_V, I'm not sure if you understood my point which was that I am very interested to hear from users with average experience of forums rather than experts as most of our members will have average experience. In that sense my experience and view of forum is just as valid as beakers. Also, I'm aware that some where not happy with beaker's tenure, just as some are not happy with mine. This is normal but I feel that your post slightly implied that is a good time for the club when I know that not everyone shares that view. I don't have a view as I was not there.

I am still having very few issues with speed and have opened threads randomly for the past couple of days and the longest a thread took to open was two seconds - most were instant. I know others can also open threads quickly so I'm not sure what's going on for you but it would be good to get to the bottom of it. I'm not quite sure what 'white space' is. I'm an average forum user who frequents a number of forums. To me, this is clean, uncluttered and easy to use on all my devices. Personally I find the layout friendlier than most other forums. However, I'm the first to say that's my opinion and not shared by everyone.

I do think it's important to keep the difficulties with the forum in context. It is entirely normal to hear from those who do not like something, far less likely to hear from those who are happy and just getting on happily with it. I do feel that this is the case with this.

The downloadable PDF membership form is under 'Join' and has been there for sometime. I know that some people have had trouble finding it so we'll look to make that clearer.

I do feel that as a club we are very fortunate with the content of this forum - it holds a wealth of information. However, it was very overdue for a rebuild for several reasons, namely security, to ensure it could be easily used on all devises and to tie the membership database in with the forum and website.

Facebook is a difficult one. It is so easy to use and share things on it widely - it has a huge audience that is easy to access. However, as many have said it's not searchable so all the good, useful info is soon lost. We are very lucky that this forum collected so much useful information before Facebook became as huge as it is today. I know of other clubs/register who have set up in the past two or three years and are struggling to collate useful info as it just gets lost on Facebook and people are reluctant to contribute to a new forum with little/no info on. My best guess is that people will post less on this forum but it will be used as a resource as many questions can be answered by searching it.

We will continue to tweak the forum and iron out any glitches. I know that there are already some issues on this thread such as broken links which are on the list. If anyone has a specific issue, please do post them here with as much information as possible. While you are very entitled to post that you don't like the new forum full-stop, that is something that we cannot fix.

Thank you

[Ed]

The amount of trouble that Facebook has caused at work mean that I will never join regardless of what I may be missing

That's a shame Russ.

[Russ]

The amount of trouble that Facebook has caused at work mean that I will never join regardless of what I may be missing

[Ed]

I personally like the new website layout, however, I've not posted regularly here in a long time. This is probably due to significantly reduced traffic in recent years and with the rise in smartphones and tablets, the old software just wasn't modern and quick enough to keep up with changing times.

The Facebook page is very busy, and it's plain to see that the traffic that was once on these pages, is now on Facebook. Whether that is a good or a bad thing, is up to the user. For me, Facebook is quick, instant, and I can get an answer to a technical query immediately. It's also a very quick way to share pictures and enjoy other people's cars. I post "on the go", and I haven't got time to sit at a desktop computer for hours uploading pictures the old fashioned way. The majority of my posts are made via my smartphone.

I don't think Facebook is going away anytime soon, and if you're not prepared to have a look at it, you're going to miss out. The MM community is very much alive and well, but times have changed and many people do not have the patience for forums anymore.

I do hope this forum has a future as it would be very sad to see it die, along with the wealth of archive material. What would be even sadder, is long standing contributors disappearing forever, refusing to embrace social media for no comprehensible reason.

[Mike Brock]

I agree with Russ regarding Facebook - not convinced this new website is responsible for dwindling numbers at all. mm's are in a constant downward spiral for reasons that are obvious. I think we should all stick together since we are now few and far between. The website is new - I'm sure all bugs will be ironed out sooner than later. Personally I would never throw my renewal of my membership out the window because of a few bug issues on a website - a tad overreaction in my opinion.

[Russ]

I'm on a model railway forum which is still really busy.
I didn't realise Facebook didn't keep information, I can honestly say I've never been on it and don't intend to

[E_T_V]

Quite possibly, as facebook has killed off traffic most of the forums I use as it is more immediate. Thats fine however all the good advice and help is then "lost" as you cannot search to find anything ever again which is where forums are far more structured, searchable and therefore valuable.

[Russ]

Is it because I Facebook that the forum has gone so quiet or lack o,f members?

[E_T_V]

Evening Andy, I think if the forum became members only that would certainly be the end of it.

And remember that was exactly what was originally proposed - much to the disgust of many. Anyhow people saw sense and that was put to bed thankfully.

[Russ]

Evening Andy, I think if the forum became members only that would certainly be the end of it.
You mentioned the help that the forum gives. About 7 or 8 years ago I had a fuel problem with the EFi , within an hour of posting for help there were several posts of help. Sadly these days it would take a week for a similar level.
I used to enjoy helping other members with technical problems but this new forum is so unwieldy that I just don't bother.
On the old forum it would at least a couple of times each day hit the unread posts button and see what was going on, not anymore .
I've also noticed that a lot of people albeit this was in decline before the forum change don't seem to be around anymore, useful people who were excellent with fault diagnosis

[H48HPE]

is there no way to make this latest version run to look / act more like the traditional forums?

how are member renewals doing now? are we seeing a massive drop of member numbers? if so we need to consider what can be done to turn that round.

I'm not a fan of merging the club with others, this is supposed to be a community of MM fans. if I want other cars I'd just get in with one of the many groups already dealing with that...

It is kind of hard to justify the £18 without a regular magazine. The only good reason I can see is cheaper insurance for being in a club. one way to make the fee justifiable would be to make the whole forum member only - but I hope this is not the plan again as I think it would just increase the decline of remaining cars, if short term owners cannot get help.

Andy