Hi Dave
Great idea. Sometime back we asked if something like a "chat room" could be set up on the
www.vintagecaravans.com site.
It would be handy when trying to reply to or organise several people for a run like the east coast tour. maybe that way we wouldnt see topics ending up 8 pages long.
Look at "back to coledale 2006" and see how much effort tickos are putting into trying to get catering numbers right.
I had to seperately PM all those going on the east coast tour to get their mobile numbers for inclusion on some info i am putting together to give them. Even being able to "cc" a few others on a single reply would be good.
The "pub" as you describe it would be ideal for that purpose.
One thing that people who subscribe to this site have got to understand is that a lot of regular contributors here have come to know each other very well over the years. not only from emailing each other but actually travelling and caravanning/camping together all the time enjoying the vintage van hobby and each others company.
With that comes a mateship that cant be had by just visiting a website every few days. Also means that sometimes people will get off topic because they know a certain member may be passionate about a subject like cars, certain states of australia being better than others, vintage cars v hotrods or even ..... football codes
.
Sure we understand that the site is for the promotion of vintage vans and the sharing of information but i think 99% of forum members have learnt that if a topic title or a thread isnt entirely van related then they just tune off that thread.
If the moderator feels things are getting out of line or offensive then he/she can delete it. Thats what moderating is all about.
A few things i have noticed is:
The people that complain about off topic threads wait until they have read about 6 or 7 replys before commenting. never seem to be members , and have never posted a vintage van related topic themselves. more commonly known around the forums as "lurkers".
i hope these people will also use" the pub "as well to discuss thier concerns between each other ........ But wont they have to be members to use this option
Mark mentioned sometime back that he has engaged a young IT bloke to help maintain this site. Perhaps he can talk to this guy and use some of the money us regular forum members contribute each year to the costs of keeping and maintaining
www.vintagecaravans.com and get him to set up "a pub"., chat room or whatever they want to call it.
Or maybe its a case of we just moderate ourselves and stick to institution like posts , topics and comments.
Leave the good time Aussie commaraderie and mateship until we meet in person.
Reddo....
When we go to work is work all we talk about
