🚀 go-pugleaf

"Gisle" <GH-news@w-d.no> writes:

> Thanks Simon, but I was looking for well-arranged boards on bluewater
> cruising.  For the cruising sailor going on longer journeys than daytrips.
> 
> I think www.cruisersforum.com is well arranged and easy to find info in, but
> it's quite new and not known to the crowds yet - but it will be.
> 
> I'm fed up by forums looking like newsgroups on usenet...

Two answers to that: one is Usenet and mailing lists work well, and
I've yet to see a Web forum that does. Secondly and much more
importantly, there are a limited number of knowlegeable multihull people
active on the Net. If you were to split them up into a number of small
groups hanging out on different forums then the amount of expertise
available on any one would be very limited. The great benefit of the
Net is that it allows communities of interest to foregather from
across the globe; to then fragment those communities again seems to me
madness.

However, the Net evolves. If you genuinely build a better forum system
then people will use it, and over time the community will congregate
around your system.

There is one point I'd make, however. I used to be an active member
(and enthusiastic promoter) of Scott Brown's forum at 
<URL: http://www.themultihull.com/forum/active.asp >; I no longer use
it. Why not? Because, fundamentally, he's doing what you want to do -
he's trying to create a little world that he controls. After twice
having my posting rights suspended for posting links to the answers to
questions people were asking elsewhere on the Net (including this
group) I decided it wasn't worth putting effort into any more.

The Net works by linking, and it works by openness. If you want to try
to control what people can do in your little bit of the Net, sooner or
later they'll go elsewhere.

-- 
simon@jasmine.org.uk (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
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