Redirecting new members to other boards, time to react.

[Theo]

Dear participants,
unfortunately and sadly I have decided to announce the imposal of an important new rule.

For the sake of the good hard work of numerous participants and for the sake of this forum's growth it is prohibited to refer to other discussion boards that cover MEL engine topics.

Violators will be warned only once



Explanation and the reasons why.

In the past and up to the present I have been watching participants frequently redirecting new members to an other board. This mainly took place in the "Introduce yourself" section, where new registered members were doing their first steps into this board. You could literally wait for referals posted ASAP.
In most cases the new members have not asked for a referal and despite that I don't think it is fair to all those who have been taken their pride to actively participate in making this board interesting and run nicely. Just take a look at what participants have provided to the DIY Tutorial section and to the "Knowledge Data Base" section for instance. These articles deserve to be read and discussed by way more people than this is currently the case.
Do yourself a favour. Do not chase away people. Give this board a chance to develop to the same high level of what has been provided by its' participants so far.

Rather than bleeding the ford-mel-engine.com by redirecting new members, this board and its' community deserves positive and active participation within its' own format. See this thread from quite a while ago
http://www.ford-mel-engine.com/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=131
The foundation of the "ford-mel-engine.com" was not intended to be a guidepost for other discussion boards. You can not flow a boat if you keep picking holes into its' hull.

I'm sad to impose such a rule but I feel that it is absolutely necessary and that I have waited way to long while watching it with anger.
I feel sorry for all those who think that their right of speach has been restricted. I can't see any other solution at this time and besides that I believe that this wasn't your home anyway if you feel that way.

I whish you all the best and a productive day.

[KULTULZ]

I'm sad to impose such a rule but I feel that it is absolutely necessary and that I have waited way to long while watching it with anger.

I feel sorry for all those who think that their right to talk has been restricted. I can't see any other solution at this time and besides that I believe that this wasn't your home anyway if you feel that way.

I must ask that you remove my membership at this time. I do not agree with your reasoning.

It is bad enough this government (US) is imposing Socialist rule but once you begin to hinder exchanging of information via channels such as this, I cannot participate.

KULTULZ (GARY)

[Theo]

Gary, it's not a question of hindering information flow within this forum. That's not possible anyway even if I wanted to do so. It's about attitude, moral and freedom which includes the freedom to protect yourself from whatever you feel disturbs you in reaching your goals.
Let's not mix apples with peaches.
The way how new participants habe been redirected to other boards even though they haven't even asked for has much of an "headhunter" character. It is not acceptable especially after this problem has been addressed openly. See your own thread that you once started here http://www.ford-mel-engine.com/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=131

Participants who are seriously interested in benefiting from a forum and being part of a helpful community should keep in mind that it's only possible if you help to build it up rather than bleeding it. Redirecting members w/o a cause will weaken it and make it useless on the long run.

As for your membership I see no reason to delete it. You are not obliged to participate on discussions if you don't want to. However I would like to see you being part of the discussions though.

[Shelby#18]

Theo, I did a search in the New member introduction section and only found 2 instances where a member was directed somewhere else. I also went and read the thread that Gary posted about how good this sight was. You responded about how this sight is the #2 when googled.

There are other sights out there with information, but they are not specific to these engines. On most of those you have to wade through a lot of info to get what you want.

You own this sight, and you have the final word. But I would suggest giving it time. All good things take time.

I'm sorry if I overstepped my bounds with giving out the Lincoln Club Information.

All the best...
Rick

[Theo]

I'm sorry if I overstepped my bounds with giving out the Lincoln Club Information.

All the best...
Rick

Don't worry Rick, I'm not addressing anyone in particular. As for the redirecting of people there were a few other sections where it occured. Can't really remember where and it's not so important. This is no investigation.

I deal with a bunch of spam bot registrations every day. It takes about 8 minutes to tell apart a single spam bot registration from a unobjectionable new member rgistration. I'm very pleased each time a registration proves to be a real person in the end. It's like pressing a pint of rose oil out of 3 tons of leaves.
You can probably imagine how pi##ed I get when I see them people step in and walk out the next day.

The information and even the existance of this forum is not vitally important to me. I don't own a MEL powered car and my last MEL project is a few years ago. Also it doesn't look like I'm going to have an other MEL project going on in the future. Neither do I have income interests from adds or sponsors. But I have decided to take steps into consolidating this forum as good as I can and as far as my time allows.
I hate to see it becoming a transition camp to some other places and I hate to see other participants' and my own time being wasted this way.

Again. I'm not very happy with the imposal of the new rule but sometimes it's necessary to impose unpopular rules, especially when you feel that there's not much to loose in the middle of an exodus.

Rick, thanx for your positive attitude. I second most of what you've said.

[reijerlincoln]

There's a middle ground solution here (I'm Dutch, can't help it):

Reacting to questions on this forum about MEL motors is allowed by posting a link to a relevant thread on another web forum - not just a link to the web forum itself. You could also copy-post some of this info so the other guy can make an assessment whether to use the link or not.

[Theo]

Not a good idea at all IMO. That's exactly one of the reasons why this forum is suffering from low traffic.
Again, this forum has not been created to function as a linkservice to other boards. It is IMO a good functional platform to host it's own community and to make it a useful thinktank to all those who search for reliable MEL info and a nice community if desired.
This is only possible if people do s.th. for it. That's mainly sharing and contributing knowledge by actively communicating by writing rather than redirecting or exporting topics and members out to some other place.

Why not writing down a few sentences from what you've learned here and there. Everybody has learned s.th. from somewhere. There is no reason to think you're stealing something from others. Put it in your own words and share it here. A question has been asked here, so give it a response here. Don't split the conversation by spreading it into different directions.
If a forum communication reduces itself to plain referal to somewhere it will become poor and will finally die. This is what is currently happening with some threads here. The resulting consequences are not contributive in terms of forum community and will not attract people to stick and build up a community here. Speaking forum, a platform will degenerate to a connecting station. I'm not quite sure if this is allready the case.

If I go out to watch Billy Gibbons for instance, I don't want him to show me some old videos of his influntial idols. I want to hear him and have fun w. his performance.

An other example:
I'm a member of this forum too http://www.flyingbrick.de.
The format is old fashioned and there are virtually no sections other than a few but excellent knowledge base pages. There have been numerous requests by users to devide it into various sections. There was a big uprising and a poll on this issue has reveiled that the very most participants were voting to keep it as is.
That's gozillions of off topics like "my canary has cancer", "my wife ran away" and so on that wildly mixed w. tech topics. To me quite a desaster to read and wade through.
The discussion threads on the "sections" vs. "one section" format had made clear that in essence allmost all participants didn't want to get the posts split into various different section even within their own forum. They feared that the forum would change its direction towards becoming an archive rather than their current big chat room where everybody is instantly in touch with every single post that comes in.
These people were voting for permanent communication even if they had to repeatedly write down old answeres to old questions a million times. You will never see some folk complaining on others not having used the search engine and waste other people's time. They have intuitively understood that once a forum is changing to an archieve while just refering or redirect people to old threads and other forums that it would soon had to die. That's very true and you can see the effects in various places that once have been crowded but slowly die out once it reaches a certain level.

It didn't take me much time to see how effective the mentioned http://www.flyingbrick.de community is.
You post a question at 8:30 in the morning,....you get answeres right away instantly. After 15 minutes you're most likely to read 5 to 15 answeres to your question. No kidding.
The average hits on a half way interesting topic is about 500 to 2000 views within a day or two.

What does it mean and why do I make a short story long? These people have chosen to indefatigable keep up the writing and to become a successfull community rather than to become a dead boring archieve, data base or link service.
It's a great mix of data base, discussion room and real life comradship.

Some member fall down with his bike, 150 bikers to attend the funeral. Some garage burned down recently. 50 000 hits and a gigantic "build up member "X's" garage campaign didn't only get started but helped to built it up again soon.
You're stuck in the middle of an other county or state? Go get the forum buddies.
Telefonlist, Telfonchains, Lists of where to sleep, where to do repairs and so on work better then any ADAC or AAA.
You may easily start working on your bike with the labtop next on your bench. Clean up your greasy fingers, type your problem and watch them responding virtually simuntaniously.
It's true and it's about comradship and community.

Let's face it. Some new folk steps into the ford-mel-engine.com, hello forum here's my question.
"Oooh, good question, it has allready been answered there. Go to this other place. Here's the link."
Folk steps out and never comes again. Why should he? Some other places have thousands of members, gozillions of threads and topics to the same issiue and will possibly be of service instantly.
Why should a person return to a place where he might be lucky reading 2 new posts a week and where out of ten posts, two are referals or redirections?
C'mon you can't be serious. Who do you think is going to benefit and who is going to work for whom? It doesn't take much to count one and one.
I've been watching things for some time now. It's not satisfieing and it's about time to see things getting better than that.
It can only get better if the participants are willing to help getting this place valuable.

I urge you the participants to think about what might be usefull to you on the long run. Please feel free to write down your questions and answeres. It can be much more communicative and fun than using this forum as abranch-off station.

B.T.W. When the old forum at Network34 came down due to some Network server problems I was asked to merge the forum with an other big forum. I didn't want that as I allready had this domain registered and I allready had publicly promised to move it to a modern format years ago. When I had finally installed it many people wrote me how happy they were with the new format.
I felt sorry because I didn't had the time to do so much earlier. I thought that I owed the participants s.th. and so do I untiltoday. You minority MEL guys deserve a place.

Thanks for your time reading my ramble.
Best regards

[Theo]

Dear participants,
I would like to make clear that the imposal of the new rule mentioned above is of temporary character. It will hopefully help to consolidate this forum. Once things normalize I will announce the abolishment of this restriction.
Your thoughts about this issiue are welcome and can be discussed here .

[derek]

hi all been geting your email checked out the time to react site.joined your forem for the great knowledge on the mel your site is by far the best I have seen on this engine and used it lots my engine is running new and strong so have not been here for awile.as for redirecting people to oiher sites if its for something other then the engine this should be fine all sites may have sum use I am now rebuilding my rear end as the engine runs sirong and this site is not much help for that.best regards to all lets keep them running derek

[Theo]

Thank you Derek, your comment is much appreciated. Looks like this site is benficial to more people than it shows on the surface. Good to hear that it was of help for your project.