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
Voting ahh! Come on ladies and gentlemen
Just out of interest how many forum members are there?
Anyone have any ideas what we can do to get more people to take part?
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8 people!!!
Just out of interest how many forum members are there?
Anyone have any ideas what we can do to get more people to take part?
According to the Forum statistics we have 2083 registered members - some of which have left the hobby (although occasionally one or two return after a while).
It's a bit strange, though, as when I looked a little while back there were over 600 people 'watching' - I suspect a goodly amount out of these are the 'spammers' who constantly apply to join (19 in one day last week). but there must be a percentage there of genuine Aquarists who like to view the conversations without wishing to actually join up.
Then we have joined-up members who log in every day, but never contribute.
However, at the end of the day it's the active members who make a Forum like this worth while,
We used to get more entries when the Forum sponsors could give prizes of vouchers etc, but even then it was a hard job to coax members to send in their votes - hence why we changed the system to asking the prize donors to adjudicate instead.
As there are four prizes donated this month it was felt that asking the four donors to be judges was going to make things a bit 'messy - hence the reversion to asking members to vote.
As to the question of how it might be possible to get more to take part, we have tried different options - the setting of categories being one - but that actually resulted in even less entries so that was shelved, although it was mooted again for consideration for future rounds.
I'm afraid the dearth of active members who are willing to contribute here is a large part of the problem,.
What we need is for more of the 'lurkers' to come out from the shadows and become active.
John
Location:
N. Tipp
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl - year after year.
ITFS member.
It's a long way to Tipperary.
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