Retirement and forum shutdown (17 Jan 2022)
Hi,
John Howell who has managed the forum for years is getting on and wishes to retire from the role of managing it.
Over the years, he has managed the forum through good days and bad days and he has always been fair.
He has managed to bring his passion for fish keeping to the forum and keep it going for so long.
I wish to thank John for his hard work in keeping the forum going.
With John wishing to "retire" from the role of managing the forum and the forum receiving very little traffic, I think we must agree that forum has come to a natural conclusion and it's time to put it to rest.
I am proposing that the forum be made read-only from March 2022 onwards and that no new users or content be created. The website is still registered for several more years, so the content will still be accessible but no new topics or replies will be allowed.
If there is interest from the ITFS or other fish keeping clubs, we may redirect traffic to them or to a Facebook group but will not actively manage it.
I'd like to thank everyone over the years who helped with forum, posted a reply, started a new topic, ask a question and helped a newbie in fish keeping. And thank you to the sponsors who helped us along the away. Hopefully it made the hobby stronger.
I'd especially like to thank John Howell and Valerie Rousseau for all of their contributions, without them the forum would have never been has successful.
Thank you
Darragh Sherwin
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- john gannon (John Gannon)
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- Andrew (Andrew Taaffe)
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- maggy88 (Wayne Mc Glynn)
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Regards
Dec
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- sheag35 (Seamus Gillespie)
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other mods/admins may feel differently but this is my opinion
Seamus
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currently 25 tanks, and breeding is the aim of everything i keep
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- BlueRam (Sean Crowe)
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But in saying that to have Gues'st posting without us being able to see who is posting ie names ect this could turn every wrong
As Sheag as said we have had a lot off trouble with some members on the forum and sorry to say had to be banned as the outcome this also would cause trouble as who can tell it wouldn't be them or even if there was a comment posted about someone or anything like that you know
Yes i see we could work something it so that we have to approve each comment but you know yourself that if this was the case as we can jobs and that also and can only get on the forum as much as we can what would be done for when we are not comments not getting post and so on till to late
If it was me i would have the site closed off to just reg members even if they didn't post as im sure they would after the got to know the forum it would be better to track if anything was to go wrong
As said above the forum is free and tales a few minutes to sign up i don't see why someone wouldn't want to
Maybe something could be thought up about it but would be very hard to have something in place to control it
Thanks for the idea have this is what this site is all about we will never get better if our members didn't come up with good ideas like yourself
Thanks
Sean
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- john gannon (John Gannon)
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As I said i seen this else where and taught it might work here,with Andrews suggestion would make it even better,as for the forum being free as far as I know most forums are ,maybe I'm wrong (technically I pay for my broadband so nothing is free but that is splitting hairs ).as for banned members and abuse well they could easily join under a different name if they really wanted to,and with andrews suggestion nothing gets threw the net ,As for it taking a couple of seconds to join ,to be perfectly honest it took me almost a week to be active and I have also been asked on another forum by somebody why they were waiting nearly the same.now don't get me wrong I do appreciate the work admin put in.,also there's also over 1600 registered users here ,how many post on a regular basis or just came on when they had a specific problem got it sorted and headed off on there merry way.all this personal info being held somewhere does that cost money to admin or is it free ?i don't know.
If the mods and admins say that it can't be done technically or it's not worth the hassle say no more and let it be an end to it.
John
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- BlueRam (Sean Crowe)
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it's not worth the hassle say no more and let it be an end to it.
There nothing on the forum that i would say this about mate i have put in a lot off hours doing different things to come out the end off it that is not worked or better off with out it a lot off very lot nights
I am going to have a very good link and have a chat with John about it if there is a very good way to fine tune this and we this it could be done my all means i will do it sure even if it was just on a trial basis
If im am not mistaken from what i see in the back-end when it comes to Guest's that we can have them post on the whole forum or not on the forum at all again i will have look into it or talk to Darragh to see if this can be changed i really dont think it can with the sofeware we use but then again i could be wring (sure when am i not) haha

Sean
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- BlueRam (Sean Crowe)
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As i said to the lads i don't mind putting in the work to get it done if it was to help with the forum in any way at all at the end off the day why is there Admins or Mods if we don't do this and help the forum
Thanks again mate any more ideas


Sean
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- igmillichip (ian millichip)
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It would be true that such a section would be open to trolls and abusive behaviour.........but we have had members who have been trolls and abusive.
Dealing with the odd riotous 'guest' would be easy enough.
What is not so easy is to tempt genuine people to get involved but who may feel intimidated at first.
They are fish-keepers, and already part of our bigger community of fish-keeping.
In life we are often thrown into living by the 'rules' of minorities such as not venturing into certain parts of city because of a few thugs, boggling our mind with remembering to lock our house windows etc.
Most people are surely honest and genuine (and I'm by no means naive to the existence of the few bad uns that lurk out there)
ian
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- Valerie (Valerie)
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Approving each post could also lead to an additional load of work for our kind-hearted volunteering administrators who have an active life away from the computer screen.
In a discussion forum, you will always have people who participate heartily and people who prefer to just read without participating. Some will eventually post/subscribe once they see that we are a nice bunch

My 2 cents

V
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- JohnH (John)
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Some will eventually post/subscribe once they see that we are a nice bunch
You speak for yourself!!!

;o)
John

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- Andrew (Andrew Taaffe)
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Pro & con replies please.
Andrew
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- igmillichip (ian millichip)
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For me, also, it would be a pain in butt as I refuse to pay for anything on-line....I pay cash or nothing

Another point is that whilst I am personally happy to not be an anonymous person on the forum, I would also respect that others wish to remain anonymous to both other users and the administrators..........giving payment details may somewhat remove that anonymity (even though there could be means of anonymous payments).
I won't go into whether people can afford it or not as that is a different discussion altogether.
ian
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- JohnH (John)
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As to Andrew's suggestion, well this Forum has always (at least since I joined it when first coming to live in Ireland) been a free one - both to Members and Sponsors - and I think it ought to remain that way.
At least while the Owner (Darragh) is content to cover the costs, anyway.
All in all - and I hope you'll all agree - the Forum chugs along pretty well as it is (and long may it do so) so we should all be grateful to Darragh for his 'behind the scenes' work and for financing the whole show.
My own personal views as JohnH solely as the Forum member.
John
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- john gannon (John Gannon)
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