Specific User Groups and Private Forum's

[Darren]

After a request on the IAM's forum (and them subsequently deleting my reply!) I am considering offering a couple of specific private forum's. These will be based around creating user groups inside this forum for:

IAM
RoSPA
HPC

then having private forums for each organisation.

Whats your views on this? Would it be supported?

Darren

[Big Err]

I like everyone on the same forum, it gives us all an opportunity to discuss and learn together.

Each of these organisations have their own forums, of which I have also been a member and found them to be in some instances very narrow minded and heavily censored (for driving and roads matters!!!!!).

So I suggest we keep the ADUK forums as they are, open to all members with headings to describe areas of interest/specialism.

If its not broken...........

Eric

[Gromit37]

Personally I like it the way it is, but as long as we are still free to ask questions in the general forums, private forums may not do any damage.

Ian

[James]

Sounds interesting although I think there is a slight risk it would alienate certain groups within the forum, i.e creating cliques that rarely interact with each other. Worth a go though...

[MGF]

I understand the request on the IAM forum was made because it is so user unfriendly.

What makes ADUK unique is the cross-fertilisation of ideas between drivers of a broad range of backgrounds.

If these organisations already have their own forums I am not sure of the benefit to ADUK of replicating them. At the moment our overall posting rate is probably not sufficient to make sub-forums viable in any event.

[7db]

This forum isn't big enough to split, imho. If I were a member of the IAM why wouldn't I just post in the IAM private forum on the IAM site?

Are all the moderators members of those three organisations?

[ipsg.glf]

Without having access to each organisations member list, how will you verify membership?

I don't think there is sufficient traffic here to warrant separate forums.

[BillZZR600]

As with some of the others, I see abselutely no benefit in having seperate private organisation forums, either in terms of traffic, or in the loss of interorganisation or indeed non organisation (Eh Dave (TripleS) ) sharing and postings on subjects and Ideas

If a question is asked What does the IAM think of this? or what should I do in this situation? I will read, and possibly not post a reply as I am not a member, BUT, may subsiquently respond to replies with a "This may be what RoADAR says on it" Or "we are taught this in RoADAR" and we will both have learned somthing, even if it is that we both agree, or indeed have different aproaches and alternate solutions to similar questions.
"Always more than one way to skin a cat"

[TripleS]

Sorry, Darren - not at all keen on the idea of 'compartments' open only to approved members.

Best wishes all,
Dave.

[Darren]

OK, worth the views.

Thanks for your feedback.

[Rick]

I agree, keep it as it is, the other groups have their own forums as it is so I don't see a reason to segregate things here.

[Mr Cholmondeley-Warner]

Just to add my vote to those already cast. No thanks.

RoSPA is strange - I have to pay a sub to my local group but I'm not a member of the overall organisation - is that similar for anyone else?

(Hence I have no access to a RoSPA forum, although that's the closest thing to being "my" affiliation).

[waremark]

RoSPA is strange - I have to pay a sub to my local group but I'm not a member of the overall organisation - is that similar for anyone else?

How come? The standard system for national membership is that your £17.50 per year sub includes the cost of the triennial retests. I should not have thought you could be a current member or take your retests without being paying a national sub.

BTW, I am with all the others on the original question, and against individual closed fora within ADUK for the different driving organisations. But, with apologies to non-IAM members, Darren and others - do keep trying to persuade the IAM to change their system to something more user friendly. Personally I have given up the IAM Forum as too frustrating to use. In spite of the awful system it is very active - 227 posts in the last week. So they were probably right to incorporate the forum within the web site rather than to continue the old mailing list system, however much some of us preferred the old system.

[tonyh]

Like others here on this forum, I prefer the way threads are posted and really appreciate the quality of posts.

My fear is that introducing other elements to the site will only have a detrimental effect on the overall standard as in my opinion the quality of posts on the other sites with the possible exception of the IAM forum ( notwithstanding the way it is set up) sometimes lead me to keep pressing the delete button.

The contributions of members here is a real benefit to the development of advanced driving, is open to all and can only improve the standards of all individuals regardless of the level they start at.

[Renny]

I agree with all the above who say it would be a bad thing to split into sub-boards for specific groups. One of the great things about here is the sharing of views and ideas, without the dogmas of "IAM/RoSPA/HPC says..."

Information, advice, experiences and tips are shared freely and openly discussed, no matter where they originate from. This split of the boards subjects is adequate, if you split them further it becomes less open and more difficult to navigate and view. Viewers will tend to visit only thier favourite subjects and miss out on the broad range of topics the current subject headings encourage.

As for the IAM Members Forum: I am a member and visit the forum ocassionally, but find it very obstructive to navigate to, log-in and view discussions. To be honest I think it is very poorly designed and not user-friendly in any way, prepetuating the image that IAM are a closed clique.