Posted by Gordon Maney on Thursday, June 26, 2003 at 8:05PM :
In Reply to: Re: PWA Forums posted by Keith in Washington on Thursday, June 26, 2003 at 12:31PM :
Keith, I tried to e-mail you but your e-mail link in this post did not work. The mail came back as undeliverable. I also could not determine what user name you have on the PWA forums, so I could not, as administrator, e-mail you from there?.
You mention your concern that the information is segmented, meaning that there are separate forums for various topics. I need to share a vision with you, and that is one involving the accumulation of a huge amount of information in these forums that can be researched, using the search mechanism that is part of vBulletin.
Using this software, all the information will stay, there will be no refresh, and it can all be searched for content, the search triggered by individual or multiple key words.
The PWA forums intend to draw a lot of military Dodge users to the arena, in addition to the civilian Power Wagons, and also you will see possibilities for later years, since there is a forum for 1972 and up. All of this is to say that the probably scope and depth of the PWA forums will at some point become a very large place, so to speak, and for that reason there is need for organization. That organization offers much benefit to users.
These feelings I have are the result of having used the forums I list below. During serious use of the vBulletin mechanism pursuing the interests covered by those forums, I really learned the incredible power of the software and the forums supported by vBulletin.
If you type ?powered by vbulletin? into your yahoo or google search engine, you will get many thousands of entries, scroll through as many as you want... They are all vBulletin forums. It is an incredible application, and chosen for its power and performance.
I would urge you to have a look at the following forums that use vBulletin, and the number of registered users, along with the number of threads and posts:
http://www.turbodieselregister.com/forums/
16,261 registered users, 65,709 threads, and 586,819 posts distributed across 22 forums.
http://www.advrider.com/forums/
3,425 registered users, 16,933 threads, and 238,348 posts distributed across 14 forums.
http://www.arboristsite.com/
3,599 registered users, 9,544 threads, and 92,999 posts
My vision is that the new PWA forums will become an unsurpassed reference and research tool for military and civilian Dodge. When you have a question, you not only can ask a new question on the forums, but you can also search for answers. I believe in this because of experience I have had using the three forums I mention above. Believe me, the e-mail notification of new posts to your subscribed threads is a wonderful benefit.
Imagine, if you will, going to the public library and finding that the only thing you could do was walk around, look at the shelves, and read the titles, and that when you did some of that you discovered that subjects were randomly scattered all over the library. Bad analogy, perhaps, but close enough.
When using vBulletin, you are just substituting a click on a forum topic for a all of the scrolling you mention that you are doing. If you give it a chance, you will see that you can find out just as easily about all that is going on very quickly. There is also a link you can choose that will tell you the posts that are new since your last visit. Try that.
You mention your concern about privacy. I am uncertain what you mean by that, and wish that you would take the time to write me about your thoughts. Registrants only need to provide two things, a user name of their choice, and a good e-mail address. Other users can not see your e-mail address and I do not give them out. If you use the forum mechanism to send an e-mail, the e-mail address of the recipient is never revealed.
The really important benefit of the e-mail address is that when someone responds to a thread to which you are subscribed (you posted there), you will get an e-mail notifying you of that action. Simply click on a link in the e-mail and you will go directly to the new post. A marvelous feature.
Furthermore, users may choose, via the user control panel, to prevent other users from having opportunity to send them an e-mail. I cannot see at this point what you feel is a privacy issue, so please tell me of your concerns. You may also wish to read my privacy statement for further information about my views on privacy matters at this site.
Gordon
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