SNOWEST FORUMS: Member Comments on "Letter to All Members"

[christopher]

Think long and hard about this one guys. And maybe start listening to your "customers".

We are trying hard to do both.

 

[smwizzz]

A little light

I just came from fouled plug... stupid ppl. Totally worth checking out. Freakin crazy!!! Thats what this place is about.

I'm leaving for the night on that note.

Check it out.

 

[christopher]

Just a question for Christopher here.. Is this a foregone conclusion, or is this part of a fact finding campaign before any final decision is made? There is a Japanese Proverb that says if it's good do it quickly, I think in this particular case perhaps a more useful proverb would be "the wise man looks carefully at his feet while crossing the river". Good Luck either way, and I love snowest.com forums.

While this will likely come as a huge surprise for most people reading this thread, I was the one that asked that we NOT implement the payment system until all the outstanding issues had been RESOLVED.

And that is why nothing will happen till next year.

While I am attacked on all sides for not listening, once again the facts don't match up with the accusations. I listen very carefully to everything that is said.

Had it been solely up to me, and none of my moderators had broken their integrity, NONE of this would have ever gone public until AFTER everything had been fixed, repaired, corrected, changed, modified or addressed first.

But because one person had no integrity, I was forced to deal with this hornets nest before we had a chance to do everything that needed to be done, much of which you have seen in the many many many heated angry posts in this long long thread.

The issue with the moderators will be resolved.

The issue with the forums layout will be resolved.

The issue with user interface will be resolved.

But it's pointless for me to make any promises to anyone about anything at this point because of the huge amount of anger and animosity that one of my moderators caused by releasing private confidential information way before it should have been. And so our hand was forced, and now we are dealing with this as best we can.

 

[christopher]

One last question: "I hope that begining next year you will see NEW CONTENT on the forums start showing up that has never been here before." - any hints on what this content might look like? I have seen reference to new things, but I must have missed the link...

I think we tried to lay all of that out in the opening letter.??

 

[christopher]

The hubby is sitting here jealous that he doesn't have Treadmill. It really IS a good feature to keep up, especially if you're like the hubby that is a hunt and peck kind of person.

We will enable that for all members just as soon as we have the server capacity to support it. Right now it would crash the site.

 

[BigFish BC]

For the last 11 years there have never been ANY real recruiting or advertising for these forums. It has all been by word of mouth or Goggle.

We will begin a concerted effort to promote the forums and what they have to offer to recruit new members to come and join on a regular basis, month after month beginning next year. We will be working hard to ensure there is a steady stream of new members coming into the site.

so you will use members fees to advertise & paying members free info they gave out to attract new members to pay fees to use infowow novel idea.

 

[christopher]

Harris Publishing may not be going away, obviously.
However, the depth of membership in this form will be.

Kind of sad.

MD.

We will loose some people over this, No Argument. There is no change we could make that would not result in people being offended and choosing to leave.

This is a big change, so its going to cause big fallout.

But, its also fair to say that we will bring in new people as well as time goes by. The front door to SnoWest swings in BOTH WAYS.

 

[MtnDoo]

<<While I am attacked on all sides for not listening, once again the facts don't match up with the accusations. >>

HAL can't deal with B--C-R yet, can he?
I hear ya, just finding the easter eggs in that one.

 

[gtdave]

I too am curious what all these "advertisers" are doing for SW Forums, not the magazine (because the banners are all over the forum)?
http://snowest.com/magazine/viewbanners.cfm

how can Doo talk, Arctic chat, totally Yamaha and Snowmobile Forum, to name a few operate for free? what does SW have that they don't? Are SW forum members more knowledgeable, more experienced, more friendly, down right better than those other forums and they are so loyal to SW that they won't just get up and go converse with each other somewhere else?

I'm not in the forum business but it sounds to me that charging members a fee to talk to other paying members doesn't make much sense when we could go somewhere else for free. Revenue should be generated by the companies that benefit from sites like this. So many of the products I buy, I learned about on forums. Those companies can afford to contribute, on my purchases alone...

Why hasn't Harris Publishing been helping out with the costs of operating the forum with the money they make from ads?
Why don't you make a deal with all the advertisers to sell their products on your site for a small fee to generate revenues? SW has the buying power of 100+ dealers across Canada and the US.

I personally don't care about paying the cost of a Mc.D's combo for the info I get on this forum, but I also don't like to pay for something I can get for free down the block on a different forum.

I hope everything works out well.
Cheers

 

[christopher]

I have seen a LOT of sites go up and a lot go down.
I am telling you right now.
You have one shot at this.
I don't think you will survive doing what you are doing.
Just having numbers isn't going to keep this site alive.

We are obviously going to be working VERY HARD to see to it that your forecast doesn't come to pass.

 

[christopher]

ok so over 2 nights I have read every post in this thread. All 38 pages.
I am going to keep my posts short as it seems the short posts get answers from Christoper.

My first question is this. If we are on a server with many other sites from HP than how can they honestly know that it is SW that is the drain on the funds. What I mean is that throughout this post it has been said many times that there is no way to know exactly how much SW has cost.

Yet Christoper has stated repeatedly that HP seems to think that in 11 years SW has been a drain and cost money to keep running. IE that sw is a drain.

I would like to hear more on this.

Great Question.
I would guess that their corporate analytics package tells them all of the comparative dataflow from all of the sites that are hosted on the bank of servers we live on. But in the end, I simply have to beleive that they are telling me the truth and not intentionally lying to me. I can not prove the fact, but I really have no reason at all to think otherwise.

 

[christopher]

It seems like what a lot of people don't get, is the fact that there are a lot of people that welcome this change and welcome the increase in moderation. Guess there maybe too many snowest bullies around. Read all the posts from Chris and catwoman. They get a lot of pms about this stuff it seems, and they are responding. Something to think about. There are a lot of people on this forum that are only lurkers. Seems they are trying to get those people out of the woodwork and more active.

Correct you are. That has been one of our goals from day one.

 

[MtnDoo]

<<would guess that their corporate analytics package tells them all of the comparative dataflow from all of the sites that are hosted on the bank of servers we live on.>>

WTF? Are you living amongst a herd of Unicorns?

You've sold us down the road that these lowly "magazine publishers" can't tie their digital IT shoelaces (including the CCIE), and you accidentally overloaded their token server with Rainbow statistic graphs and sub-categories... ..to the point that 30K became a HUGE expense requiring $$$$ from all of the membership.

Once you get to the point that you can't keep the facts (er...?) straight, then you're in real trouble!

I understand you're caught between the the smart and the smarter, but jeez....

 

[AmericanOutlaw]

Just a suggestion but my bike forum has a VIP section.You have to pay to get in.That might be an easier way to find out if your plan will work without alienating those who think this is just a cash grab.

 

[christopher]

well im sorry but its impossible to realistically have a view of losing money without knowing costs of operation...imo...im confused..

I am not suggesting that the corporation doesn't know these details.

I am saying that "I" don't know them as I am not part of that. That is not part of my job.

 

[mountaincat 800]

Put me down as a long time user not happy with the direction snowest/christopher is going. This forum used to be fun, not so much anymore. I too dont find much need for all the changes, ie. shoutbox, green boxes, graphes, etc. keep it simple.
Chris, you say you read and listen to all post. I like it here, as others have said it's home. I'll stick around and see what happens but I too fear the worst.
Please by all meens keep the local riding section and the sled manufacture sections free. Good luck snowest on your future.

 

[dsp81]

how can Doo talk, Arctic chat, totally Yamaha and Snowmobile Forum, to name a few operate for free? what does SW have that they don't? Are SW forum members more knowledgeable, more experienced, more friendly, down right better than those other forums and they are so loyal to SW that they won't just get up and go converse with each other somewhere else?

For one, those sites don't even tickle the number of active users. Bandwidth is tremendously expensive. The most users Dootalk has ever had online was 1047 in March of 2008. There are that many users on SnoWest right now. SnoWest's highest activity was over 4 times higher at 4,449 in January of this year. Paying for that pipe get's expensive fast. Along with bandwidth, you also need to constantly keep your equipment updated. That means multiple servers and that costs a lot of money.

 

[christopher]

Bwahahaha, keep dreaming

And Christopher, It's obvious even to me, one of your biggest critics that you are making a concerted effort to reply to all serious questions in this thread. Good luck with that, you've got a long night/week/month ahead of you.

While I am far from being perfect, and I have a family of 6, I am spending ALL the free time I can steal away from them to be here and stay as involved in this thread as I can.

 

[breakingsomum]

Answer

Can I get an answer to my Questions?? Or do you not want everyone to see it??? Just wondering

 

[christopher]

Have you considered asking someone? It seems clear to me that this is a pretty big issue. According to you, HP claims the site hasn't pulled its own weight for the past 11 years. According to nearly every free site on the web, advertising revenue pays for the site. You are the liason between the users and the owners. We've asked the questions...go get the answers please.

I do not think that I am going to be given corporate financial data on marketing and advertising to share on this forum.

Its a privately held corporation and it's their business, not mine.