The end

[grazza]

I'd like to echo Mike's (tj's Dad) words to you guys.  I dont post much on here as I am just a little gunshy at posting crap on Forums at the present time - reasons found elsewhere, not here.
While a lot of stuff posted up here does not hold a lot of interest for me, there sure is a lot of good reading as well, so while I may not leave any footprints - I sure visit  a lot.
Sure would  be a shame to see it go, even tho'I think I understand where you are coming from Frank.
If she goes, I want to wish you all the best for your future, hopefully I will get to meet you some day. Please have a big think before pulling the plug M8.

[GPster]

I sensed something was going to happen. This is bad enough but not as bad as my imagination had made it. I've even had my wife check Face Book to see if the other (better?) half would let out a clue. I'm at a loss for anything more to say. GPster

[Carnut]

Well there is something particularly unique about this forum.

It's always been a lot more automotive technical than social, yet at the same time I do think we all are about the same age and share similar views and styles on a hobby or lifestyle choice.

I've always enjoyed and felt comfortable with things here and frequently have seen value in what all was being posted.

The social aspect kinda just came about because a bunch of us have been here from the start at the original RRT and then here.

Guess you can say we all have just take for granted this place would be here.

I know one reason I have been here pretty much exclusively is the simplicity of the forum and minimal amount of computer flashy stuff in the forum. Also have enjoyed the lack of 'Drama' I have seen at other places.

Guess it's kinda like a gas station or speedshop hangout for old fogies in a way. Various folks dropping bye and participating in conversations. Sharing our love for a particular mechanical hobby/life style.

I guess it's disappointing to some that this place didn't 'takeoff' on popularity like some others and become an income generator, but just like a local hangout it has it's regulars that probably would have been put off if a newbie crowd did actually show up.

Heh, heh, I know I posted earlier that I would happy to provide an alternative site if needed, but that was a bit of braggadocio on my part because I was so taken back by the news.

My personal situation would make my creating another site somewhat shaky because of my own financial situation being 'grave' and my health declining. But because there really is no alternative to this place for me I jumped at the chance to keep the 'idea' alive.

Don't know if anyone is aware but I do keep another forum and nightly chat going at http://goldmonkey.org out of some sort of duty I have for some friends I have met on the net. It's a bit of a ladies sewing circle thing that I'm sure no one here would have any interest in. But awhile back I was feeling my own time was short I brought in a another techie type person to be a Co-Admin on the forum so that if something happened to me that forum would be able to continue on without me. I actually had created that forum on my a server I had here in my own house, but due to it getting hacked and getting the I.P. black listed, and my feelings on my own longevity and how much longer I might be around I felt it was a better idea to move the forum to a hosted service, so the host could fight the fight against hackers and so it could be continued to be supported by someone else if I was gone.

Guess I'm wondering if another Admin here might be a solution for those of us here who would hate to loose this place?

I know that enjenjo pretty much keeps the topics going on the forum, but if it's the management of the forum that is the problem, I'd have no problem helping out with that. Heh, heh, for at least as long as I am around.

[kb426]

I don't want to see the end. This has been a great place for knowledge and help. I agree with George about "likeminded". I will be sad to see it go. What will happen to the tech info?

[Crosley.In.AZ]

I felt the end was near before the RRT race car project got off the ground(?) .. as many here know the fatcat and enjenjo were trying to stir up involvement on the RRT with the car project.

I got on board with the car project early with hopes things would pick up on the RRT site.  When you have a small core group of folks doing the foot work , things can only move forward so far and so fast.

Plenty of solid information from folks here.  I guess a few emails or phone calls would produce similar results as a forum would. ?

My own car projects currently sit from money situation.  We plan on retirement in the area of 2013 - 2014.  The economy has nearly killed that plan.  So .... we hold back on all extra spending at this time to obtain that retirement goal.  I have actually tried to sell a few projects with little(none) results

btw:  my (?) after the word "ground" in my first sentence is there since a salt flat race car getting off the ground (air) is a bad thing

[enjenjo]

On any board like this, one of the keys, is new people. We are not getting new people. The reason this is key, is that there are members leaving all the time. And many are not leaving out of boredom, but for good reasons. Their interests change, their financial situation changes, health problems.  I have no problem with this. Several very prolific posters, with a lot of great info, were missing for a time, for one reason or another for years at a time. No problem with that on this end. But without new people the participating membership keeps declining.

I just looked, since midnight last night, 40 new members have signed up. Of that 40, 2 might be legitimate. This is actually high. For the most part, it's maybe one of a hundred. We have had to make joining so hard because of the scammers, that very few will go through the hoops to join. Of the last 1,000 people to join, 5 look to be legit, and only one of them has posted. We have to go back three months to find any with more than one or two posts.

This is part of what is killing the board. If it appears that we do not welcome new people, even though we do, new members don't stick around.

Another part of this is post count. Lately 10 posts is an average day. It's not a problem with me, but we need more than that to pique interest in a new member. If it looks like they can't get what they need here, they just move on. It's kind of self fulfilling, no posts, reduces interest, and you go somewhere else for stimulation. Or if you only have one question right now, and you have to wait three days before you can post it, you go somewhere else for the answer.

More later

[32coupe]

WOW what can I say?

You go on holidays for a few days and things change while your out of the room.

If I post more will you keep it open?  Please?

I have also noticed that you havent opened the chat room for a while, I miss it.

Well I guess you'll all have to come over the pond and join us over on ozrodders.com    

Cheers
Andrew

[Carnut]

Oh gee, enjenjo, guess that is a pretty good statement of your goals and philosopy for this forum.

Fraid that is not how I perceived folks here were looking at the forum.

I saw this as a place for current members benefit and enjoyment and occasionally a newbie who might want to join in.

Thought there was an atmosphere and social culture here of a certain type that really didn't lend itself well to outsiders, kinda on purpose. Not that anyone would be intentionally excluded from joining.

Just never considered the reason for existance for the forum was to promote increasing membership.

I know as a practical matter on my own forum, I turned off the automatic registration feature because it was what was used to gain access to my server and hack it for a paypal phishing site. Also the group I served actually wanted a form of closed site where they all had a vote on new members just to make sure newbies would be accepted by all concerned.

Nothing wrong with an open forum I guess, but I don't see why the existing forum should be closed because of lack of new membership.

heh, heh, if anything I would put up a poll for voting on whether to close the forum or not and see what you get.

At least this thread looks to help get the post count up a bit for awhile.

I'll have to admit that I've actually refrained from posting here because I didn't want to overwhelm folks here with my mindless drivel.

I also tend to not log in here unless I have something to post, I just read several times a day to check things out.

Anyhow if what really matters here is gaining new members and getting the post count up, I guess you might have reason to be discouraged.

I once had an open forum and an open guestbook on my Carnut site and I closed down both of those because they became overwhelmed with scammers and I didn't have time to mess with keeping all that straight.

If that is a problem here, I'd just turn off open registration and rely on member recommendations for newbies or at least require an email to get registration made.

[phat46]

Sorry to see this, but I can't say it wasn't unexpected, I noticed the lack of posts a while back too. Seems like many of us are busier than ever right now and the car stuff is taking a back seat for the time.  Thanks to the Franks for rescueing the board in the first place and for all the work since then.

[enjenjo]

I don't want to increase membership to become another HAMB, that is not what we want. I don't want number just to have numbers. For a stable site, we need 150 to 200 active members, we don't have that right now. And it has nothing to do with the summer doldrums, we were in this shape last january.

Since we started this site, we worked to have a site that respected all, and was a place to get a straight answer. I think it has pretty much been like that. We have worked hard to keep it like that.

If you want a closed forum, no new members, we can do that. It would relieve a lot of the pressure on Fatcat to keep the spammers out. If you want a totally closed forum, no outside viewers, we can do that too. If you want new members by nomination, that can be done.

I am not on an ego trip, I don't want the biggest site on the web. I just want a place that friends can get together and discuss our common interests.

For several years those who left were replaced by new people, that is not happening any more. We stayed between 150 and 200 active users. I am not sure why, but that is no longer true. Probably the biggest reason, most people who are going to use the internet are already doing it.

There are several people who are post killers, particularly tech posts. I am one of them. If I answer a tech post, that is usually the end. So I don't get to learn new things as much as I like. There are others too. Just because we have an answer, it may not be the only answer, or even the best answer. I want to hear the other answers too. Quite often I wait to hear some of the other answers so I can learn too.

It will break my heart to shut this down, I have invested a lot of time in it. Not to mention money, which many of you helped with. All I need is an excuse to keep it going. I am not as sure about shutting it down as I was at Noon yesterday.

I have seen some good ideas here, and in PMs I have received, lets keep it up, I want to hear what you want.

more to come.

[river1]

where are we currently on active members?

[Carnut]

Heh, heh, actually I think the lack of activity (without being too political) is due to the economy.

My website is also down more than 50% in viewship in the last 2yrs. Went from 60k hits a day down to about 28k hits a day now. Really impacted my Google income.

I really think a lot of folks who used to surf the net at work are either out of work or not taking the same chances now at work.

I wouldn't like a forum closed to viewers, but do think you might ought to consider turning off the open registration routine and just make it an email request thing to join.

[enjenjo]

where are we currently on active members?

Less than 100.

[tom36]

"Since we started this site, we worked to have a site that respected all, and was a place to get a straight answer. I think it has pretty much been like that. We have worked hard to keep it like that."

That's the main reason I visit this site whenever I log on.   A few times I have contributed a response when I had something relevant to the subject, but for the most part, Enjenjo, or Crosley or Wayne answered queries better than I could and I didn't want to chime in repeating what was already said.  I came here last week asking a question about where to find a part I was looking for and Enjenjo came thru as usual.
Although I have never met face to face any of the regulars, they (you) are like old friends that you are comfortable with.
Maybe not huge in numbers but the lack of drama was a breath of
fresh air-  I see enough hate and animosity in the world  without reading it on the computer.  Quality not Quantity
I certainly hope that the RRT can be saved in some manner.  Tom...

[Fat Cat]

If that is a problem here, I'd just turn off open registration and rely on member recommendations for newbies or at least require an email to get registration made.

Since this software was installed in 2004 there has been a requirement for a user to activate their account by clicking a link in an email sent to their registration email address. The spammers have figured out how to automate that process and can activate spam accounts on any targeted forum through a computer automated script. That is how we have seen the issues of the last 7 months where I was blamed but a vocal minority for not protecting them from spam messages on the forums and in private messages. So at that point I turned off all forms of registration that allowed a user to become a member of this forum. For a new user to become a user here I have to personally activate their account. That presents a new issue as how do I determine if a new user is a valid user or another spammer. Some cases I can pick them out right away. But if someone uses a seemingly valid user name and I turn the account on and they start spamming I am to blame for that. If I delete accounts that appear to be spammers and they were real users then I have alienated a potential user and further reduced the talent pool of this site.

Having said all that if those of you that are here and actually use the forum want it open and do not care of there are any new blood here that gives the older respected technically oriented users a chance to teach all of us how to do something they did not know how to do already then we can just completely turn off user registration and leave things up. But when we get to the stage where there are nothing but people viewing the site and nothing being posted for weeks on end I am going to pull the plug and close the doors because at that point it is just not a viable situation.

Just to add some perspective to this issue how many of you reading this remember users such as Blownolds, 4 Inch Bore, Larry@Graffiti, moondisc, DrChop, kroozn, and KustomLincolnLady. None of those users have posted here in the last 3 years with several of them having been absent for nearly 6 years. I have met many of those on that list and consider some of them my friends. But without people to actually converse with on the forum all we would have is a bunch of page viewers and very little conversation.

I do not want to see this forum go away. I have spend fully 1/4 of my life making sure that anyone that wants to discuss cars has a place to do just that but for the last 6 months I have been seeing fewer and fewer people actually doing that on the RRT. I have also run out of ideas on how to get more people to actually talk about anything. Every one I talk to says I learn from reading others solutions for users problems but if there is no one here with a problem then there is little information being offered for those silent users to learn from.

I also see a number of users apologizing for posting off topic late model car posts. As far as I am concerned there is no such thing as off topic automotive posts. For many years I have used the following description to advertise this site, "This site is designed to provide a place for like minded people to find help on, or talk about cars." Nowhere in that description does it say only street rods. It would seem that a number of users consider the fact that there is the word rodding in the name of this site that we should only talk about pre-48 cars. Well that is not the case. I am only 40 years old to me any car built before 1970 is old. But I have owned only one car build before 1970. So cars built in the 70's and 80's are what I know.