Garden Railway Forum

There is some investigation going on into the possibility of starting a new forum if a new owner who is acceptable to Tom cannot be found to continue this one.

To do that will require some funding for a Host server and Internet Domain name. This will be an ongoing cost on an annual basis.
Before we get too far down this road we need an indication that the funds can be found.
If YOU are willing to contribute please drop me a PM asap with an indication of how much you can offer for the first year.
NOTE:I am NOT asking for actual money at this point, simply gauging the possibilities. If we don't get enough offers of financial support then the whole thing will die.

philipy wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 9:43 am ...simply gauging the possibilities...

In that case, to help us "gauge" your suggestion, perhaps you could share with us, what kind of costs are we talking about?

bambuko wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 10:25 am

philipy wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 9:43 am ...simply gauging the possibilities...

In that case, to help us "gauge" your suggestion, perhaps you could share with us, what kind of costs are we talking about?

That's the difficulty. Let's assume for now, it would cost £160/year for hosting and the domain name. If only ten people are prepared to chip in, they would have to contribute £16 a year. However, if 100 people chip in it would only cost each person £1.60 a year.

At present, there seem to be only around 30 active members, with around 20 who post on a regular basis. This is just a best guess. Would the 20 regulars be willing to subsidise the forum and the rest get it for free? Do we ask for a regular commitment every time a new member joins? These days, people expect to get things online for free.

I suppose we could explore advertising as a source of income. The G Scale Central board does this but members have complained about the number of ads on each page and some have left as a consequence.

Rik

PS I would certainly be happy to chip in £16 a year (ie £1.60 a month) to see the forum continue
.
That's my contribution (to the discussion and the fund)

I suspect Philip is asking for PMs in case someone with deep pockets loves the forum so much they would cover its costs in their entirety......

Rik

ge_rik wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 11:24 am PS I would certainly be happy to chip in £16 a year (ie £1.60 a month) to see the forum continue
.
That's my contribution (to the discussion and the fund)

I suspect Philip is asking for PMs in case someone with deep pockets loves the forum so much they would cover its costs in their entirety......

Rik

I actually asked for PM's so that nobody would think that £1 wasn't enough after seeing that somebody else had offered £20 ( as if!).
ALL contribution offers are gratefully received.

bambuko wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 10:25 am

philipy wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 9:43 am ...simply gauging the possibilities...

In that case, to help us "gauge" your suggestion, perhaps you could share with us, what kind of costs are we talking about?

Rik has answered that question, so I'll leave it, except to say that the funding for the current forum was raisd in a similar way by asking for contributions. Although I don't know how much was actually contributed back then, I do know that it has been enough to cover the cost for several years. So please offer as much as you feel you can afford and any excess will go to fund the future, not just this first year.

I am one of the "freeloaders" who has joined the forum since the last contribution round.
I only post very moderately and not very regularly either.
My preferred solution would be something like https://proboards.com/
It seems to work very well for https://modeleng.proboards.com/ or https://livesteam.proboards.com/ (for example).

I’m happy to bung £20 in the ring for this next year.

I think if you credit contributors on their profile the that’s a good way for people to see who’s sponsoring the site

Eg make me a cleaner and railway company shareholder

We have explored the Proboards option but the problem is that it only provides 200Mb of storage on the free version and even paying $14.40/month only gives 2Gb of storage. We could get round the storage problem if everyone uploaded images to places like Flickr and then just posted links but I think most members prefer uploading their images directly to the forum.

Rik

ge_rik wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 1:38 pm ...it only provides 200Mb of storage on the free version...

Yes, I am aware of it. For me this was never a problem, but I realise some members prefer to have forum based storage.
Perhaps there is an idea here:
"Premium" (financially contributing) members have storage available to them on forum.
"Freeloaders" (like me) have to make their own arrangements

bambuko wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 1:18 pm I am one of the "freeloaders" who has joined the forum since the last contribution round.
I only post very moderately and not very regularly either.
My preferred solution would be something like https://proboards.com/
It seems to work very well for https://modeleng.proboards.com/ or https://livesteam.proboards.com/ (for example).

Just to show where we're up to .... I created a GRF style forum on there to see how it might look and work.
https://gardentrains.freeforums.net/

As you say, it's impressive. But, unless everyone got used to uploading their photos elsewhere and posting links, then the 200Mb of storage would quickly run out. I suspect it would mean having to delete threads every so often as well to stay within the 200Mb limit - or start paying their fees for extra storage - One of the great virtues of GRF is the archive of info which it contains. Also we'd have to fork out $5.99/mo after the first three months if we wanted to keep it ad-free, so it's quite an expensive option .

Rik

When do we migrate?
I have registered and joined already
as for photos - every forum I am on, is making members use external storage and embed their pics - no problem for me at all
(although I realise some computer challenged members will hate the idea for the same reason, I guess, they all flock to Fakebook or email boards.. )

ge_rik wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 2:01 pm

Just to show where we're up to .... I created a GRF style forum on there to see how it might look and work.
https://gardentrains.freeforums.net/

Just to emphasise that this is still very much an experimental test site and nothing you may see on there is 'for real'!

bambuko wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 2:09 pm When do we migrate?
I have registered and joined already
as for photos - every forum I am on, is making members use external storage and embed their pics - no problem for me at all
(although I realise some computer challenged members will hate the idea for the same reason, I guess, they all flock to Fakebook or email boards.. )

I'm not sure it's the solution. Given the amount of traffic on the forum even if we could persuade people to use a separate photo upload server, we'd soon fill up the 200Mb with text which would mean having to delete threads or pay for extra storage on a monthly basis.

If no one comes forward with the time and the technical know-how, then I think it would be more cost effective to spend the money paying for hosting and using the existing phpbb software to mimic GRF on a new website. That way we'd not have to worry about which threads to delete and it would allow members to upload photos directly to the site.

The £160pa I mentioned above would give us unlimited storage on the server for all our photos and posts and give us the technical support and know-how which Tom provides free of charge at the moment.

Rik

I vote against external storage

• Its cumbersom
  Fiddly
  Annoying when you go back through old post to find something juicy and photo bucket has deleted it!

HugoFitz wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 5:21 pm I vote against external storage

Me too!
I have never used external storage simply because I don't trust it to be user friendly and easy to access, for a non IT person like me!
I do hope we can overcome this situation in time to salvage what we have.

And who is going to run this new forum...Phillipy.....not for me.

And has for the issue of paying, yes that's a good idea, but then the freeloaders will have access to everything and not subscribed. I think personally we need someone to take this, our forum on with an open mind. It's seems a lot of messing about with the other ideas, which have been thought about with very good intentions to at least try and keep a forum going similar to our forum.

And if a new site is found for a new forum are we going to have the same way of running it. Phillipy was given /asked to be a moderator so he could run the Quarterly photo competition, which he did quite well, but I feel moderators should only be like politicians a short term thing of 2 years and then other members can be asked to moderate the forum. It seems which is great by the way that there is 2 or 3 members looking into finding us a new site to host a forum and they are doing an excellent job to a point. Please stop though with the bold printed words, we are not little kids and get some more members involved with trying to get a site for us and come up with any ideas to help with it. There must be somewhere someone who has skills to run a site like ours.

I won't be going to Facebook either, there are too many scammers and idiots on it. What about asking someone from the 16mm Association would they know of someone or a site that would be perfect for us. Or has that avenue been explored.

Can I also ask, what's going to happen to the funding that members have contributed for the next few years. Can't that be used to have a site that would have unlimited storage, or is that just not possible.


Pleas don't think I have a problem with any member I don't. It's just there are ways of talking to people like adults.

FWLR wrote: ↑Tue Nov 17, 2020 8:07 amI won't be going to Facebook either, there are too many scammers and idiots on it. What about asking someone from the 16mm Association would they know of someone or a site that would be perfect for us. Or has that avenue been explored.

The 16mm Association's main organ for forum-type postings is now Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/16mmngm). With over 2700 members surely that cannot be denied. There is some excellent stuff posted, and it is quick and easy to do so. The Facebook group is actively moderated and I can only assume that scammers and idiots are dealt with promptly as I have never noticed their presence.

There is also a groups.io email-type group under the Association's control whose 264 members managed to get 24 postings in September, 36 in October and 29 so far this month. This replaced a Yahoo egroup which in its latter days seemed to be full of messages discussing its own threatened existence and tests to see if it was still working.

There is no denying that FB has a lot of subscribers Tony, but no matter how well that site is monitored there are scammers a plenty and it just isn't like our forum for wanting to view someones line or what they are building.

Although I have my own page on there, which is a closed group, for which I chose to do because there are people who just want to say nasty things about someone or something. I did contribute to someone's post on there in garden railways if I remember correctly, I could be wrong and that person was just down right abusive because I didn't agree with what he was saying, he even told me to Fornicate Off. He is still on there and the moderators did nothing about him. There is encouragement I must confess, but it's not the same has on here.
And having my page is alright, but can you imagine having 1000+ pages for our members....Plus I haven't updated it for ages also, don't ask me why though. I just can't be bothered too much now, it is easy enough at times, but a lot of the time FB do updates and keep on changing their regulations the look of their site all the time, you never know if your coming or going with them.

It's bad enough for me on an everyday basis at home mate, I can't remember what I did 10 minutes past by at times...