The Silence

[Triquet]

It has gone so quiet, I was wondering where everybody was?

So I will take this opoortunity to wish everybody a Festive Christmas and Jolly New Year .....

[RiK]

So I will take this opoortunity to wish everybody a Festive Christmas and Jolly New Year .....

We've barely started November!!!!

[Triquet]

I thought I'd better get the festive greetings out early in case we only had second-class internet ...

[Horse]

We have our first Christmas party in10 days.

To be fair, it's a Christmas themed murder mystery and one of the people attending is a 'santa', so tends to get busy soon!

[martine]

Yes - I only check for new posts perhaps once per week...where 2/3 years ago I used to check several times a day. I reckon there are only a few regulars here these days...sad isn't it?

[GTR1400MAN]

It's hard to get traction/engagement if it isn't "in your face", reckless, or over the top in some way.

Also, sadly, forums/bulletin boards are seen as 'old school' by many.

There's actually been a few interesting debates/discussions on IAM Facebook recently, but it is so poorly threaded it soon becomes an unfollowable mess.

[akirk]

I think that a part of the problem is that there is a general decrease in an interest in driving let alone advanced driving… where are the younger folk coming into the discussion? There is an assumption by some that cars will do it all for you now / soon so why do we need to bother?

And for those who have a long standing interest there is perhaps a feeling that the discussion has already taken place - what is new to discuss?

[Mr Cholmondeley-Warner]

Maybe we should have a Facebook group ..... (shock, horror, curses about personal data etc.)

[akirk]

The biggest issue with facebook is that it controls how you see content - it is difficult to find past conversations and to structure how content is saved... It is very good for fresh current content which rapidly goes out of date, and it is very good at photo / video uploads, but otherwise it is a poor alternative to a forum.

If the photo / video uploads is an issue (not sure it is as video is more often used on here than photos and it makes sense to embed from youtube), then we can look at anything from allowing uploads to the server to new and easier forum software such as Xenforo (historically the site has sat on a work server of mine with finite disk space, but we are moving all hosting over to virtualised hosting so in theory that will no longer be an issue when we make that move)...

happy to do what others think is helpful

[Mr Cholmondeley-Warner]

I was thinking of something in parallel rather than a replacement. Maybe Facebook could act as a conduit to find us more members. You can link a website from the description of a group, or the Intro section of a page.