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Maruco

Super Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Jan 7, 2004
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Location
The Shire
It's just struck me that we haven't seen any new members in here for a very long time now. I know internet forums are less popular now with people using Twitter, but it's hard to believe nobody is registering.

I know we were taken over 12 months ago. Is there anyone on here that has registered/posted for the first time since that happened? Or is it that new registrations aren't being looked at?

I don't expect we'll get an answer. I was a moderator on here and nobody bothered telling me that I had the facility removed. And when I enquired I didn't get the courtesy of a response.

I can't pretend that my time and engagement hasn't dropped on here as a consequence too.

Who is looking after things these days other than a name that pops up once in a blue moon. One that quite literally appears to have no interest at all if this place dies?
 
I've just had a quick look Simmo. He joined in August 2022, so I still can't find a anyone who has posted that has joined since we were taken over.

If you're reading this 'Keep Quiet', don't keep quiet any longer. Join in. Your contributions are as valid as everyone else's.

If anyone has registered in the last year. Could you post on here that you've done so please.
 
Well after no further response on this after a week, I suspect new members aren't being admitted then, which isn't good for the forum.

Does anyone have a contact, either email or phone, for our current absent leader?
 
Since Dave and Bryan don't appear to be active here, I'd suggest the best way to contact either will be via Casinomeister...

https://www.casinomeister.com/forums/help/

Scroll right to the bottom and in the right hand corner there's a contact us link which takes you to a form. Obviously I don't know who reads submitted forms, but whoever it is is likely to be in close contact with either Bryan or Dave.

******

I know there were plans to try and grow this forum. And it hasn't happened. Or at least there's no evidence to that end, other that the attempts to upgrade the software (maybe 8 or so months ago?)

My bet is there are underlying reasons.

Remember the management team have other responsibilities (ie Casinomeister) that bring in the cash. That's their core business.

On all available knowledge, their work on this TH forum was more a 'we might be able to help out' activity, with no financial interest.

It's entirely possible that their focus had to be increased on Casinomeister (there have been significant changes - to Google search in particular - over the last 6 months, which could have had a negative impact, but the team may have fought hard enough to avoid them. Some tools I have access to suggest that's possibly the case. Anyway, that would be a reasonable explanation).

Ofc for all we know Colin's family could have decided to take another route.

All conjecture and guesswork, just wanted to make the point that there's very likely a valid underlying reason and it's not just lack of interest.

****

Entirely right to be questioning whether there's a blockage in new registrations, though.

The tools I have access to are not 100% trustworthy, but they're reasonable indicators. TH does appear to be getting found in Google for terms where you might expect searchers to go on and register as users (example - for a high level term like 'horse racing forums' where the intent of (some, but not all) users is very likely to be finding a good forum to join. Numbers aren't high, by any stretch of the imagination, but still you might expect one or two and maybe a few more).

Aside from actual forum logs that'll indicate what visitors are doing, probably the only fully trustworthy way to see what's happening is by the use of Google Search Console (a tool that shows - as accurately that you could hope for - who's landing on the site, where from, what they were searching for that got them here, and what possibilities there are for getting visitors to the site who might ultimately register and contribute, among other things)
 
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I should add - about a year ago, maybe a bit more - I did run an exercise (for Bryan and Dave) - to list out potential headings/subjects for posts that would allow some intuitive grouping, if there was going to be some form of post/subject/topic reorganisation that could contribute to improved rankings in search engines and thus (hopefully) bring in more (new) visitors.

Those potential/suggested groupings would be out of date in places now, and it would need a recap exercise to be of satisfactory use (along with analysis and comment from existing membership, ofc). It was just to get a start and see how it might work at the time. But clearly the intent to improve was there. That's an additional reason why I suspect they got diverted and/or something else happened to get in the way.
 
6 days have passed with no response at all. It's become hard to think anything other than the guys that own the site now don't care. With nobody looking in or responding, I suspect we are now one outage away from being no more.

And as new registrations have to be authorised, even if there are no issues there is literally zero chance of us doing anything other than dying a slow death with nobody able to join.

Thanks for all the promises when you took over guys. Even the Conservative Party have delivered more in the last year or so!
 
Does anyone have a contact number for Cols family? I’m not sure if he was on Facebook? Possibly if he was, someone still has his account linked and can try contacting an obvious family member?
 
OK, I have some news and, as I suspected, Bryan and team got sidetracked with other stuff and just didn't have the bandwidth to continue with the forum update. The problem (or solution, depending on how you look at it) is it needs someone with forum software knowledge to be able to spend the time creating a new category/thread/post structure, and then know how to migrate existing content into that new structure. I know some website stuff, but that knowledge doesn't extend to forum builds. If anyone here has some skills and experience with Vbulletin and Xenforo, then shout. But I heavily suspect no one here will know that stuff.

Re new registrations...

From Bryan - "Yes, I have been checking the registrations - and since this is an older version of vBulletin, the spam filters are shite. I need to eyeball each registration to make sure spammers don't get in. Every once in a while it's a real account, and it gets approved. But in the last several weeks there have been very few new signups. I just checked now - in about 5 days there were about 100 sign ups - no real accounts."

**Anyone who doesn't get why people sign up with false forum accounts and wants to know, let me know and I'll explain. But the clue is above anyway.


Maruco I know you lost your moderator status at some point. But sounds (if you'd still be interested in doing it) as if Bryan could use some moderator help. + Anyone else who might be interested in that, post here and I'm happy to co-ordinate communications/offers.
 
Hi all!

My apologies to everyone here. I was just made aware of this thread, today and yes - I was sidetracked the past few months with a number of things, and these have caused me to take my eye off the ball here. I'm extremely sorry about that.

I have been jumping in here sporadically approving new members, but unfortunately many of these accounts are spambots, so I need to check each account to make sure it's legit. For instance, today there were over 100 new registered users in the moderators' queue - zero legit accounts - all spam bots. The problem is this old version of vB 4 is non-supported and their spam filters are archaic - this is one of the many reasons we need to upgrade to Xenforo - which is in the pipeline.

The thing is - before we upgrade, we need to restructure the forum with proper categories and sections. This will make the export/import of the database much easier, and we'll have a live forum right away after that. Unfortunately, I just haven't had the time to get this done. Thanks to chaumi, it's back on my radar. :)

chaumi kindly gave me a good idea of what the structure of the forum should be. I just need to set aside the time to properly do this.

In the meantime - yes, I need moderators. @maruco - I had no idea you were a moderator at one point. If you'd like, I could reinstate your moderator privileges - especially if you'd like to moderate new users. Just let me know.
 
Thank you for responding! We do all very much appreciate this forum still going and I for one was in a bit of a panic I was going to lose my fam!

The other forum I frequent is currently having a proper meltdown (oddly enough revolving around a former member of this very forum but banned about 15 years ago) and I would be bereft if this also disappeared.

Can’t remember who the mods used to be on here with the exception of Maruco?
 
This forum is not going anywhere - it's only going to be properly brought into the 2020s. I made a promise to Colin's family, and I am sticking by this. So please rest assured that this is going to be squared away. :)

Just to mention - the traffic here is really pretty good. So once we get this going, this forum should really take off.
 
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bbailey said:
This forum is not going anywhere - it's only going to be properly brought into the 2020s. I made a promise to Colin's family, and I am sticking by this. So please rest assured that this is going to be squared away. :)

Just to mention - the traffic here is really pretty good. So once we get this going, this forum should really take off.
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Thanks for taking this project on, I appreciate your good intentions and hopefully you’ll get around soon to realising them.

Meanwhile, however, are there any precautions we should be taking in case the worst might happen? For example, should we give permission to somebody here to extract and store members’ contact details so that a new forum could rise from the ashes of the existing forum were it to founder?
 
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Grey said:
Thanks for taking this project on, I appreciate your good intentions and hopefully you’ll get around soon to realising them.

Meanwhile, however, are there any precautions we should be taking in case the worst might happen? For example, should we give permission to somebody here to extract and store members’ contact details so that a new forum could rise from the ashes of the existing forum were it to founder?
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Hiya Grey!

That's really not necessary. I am going to finish the job that I started. TH is on the same server structure as CM - so it's pretty much being backed up constantly etc. So all is well there. I just needed a boot in my a** to get this done.

I have been working on this this morning, and all is looking good. :thumbsup:
 
bbailey said:
Hi all!

My apologies to everyone here. I was just made aware of this thread, today and yes - I was sidetracked the past few months with a number of things, and these have caused me to take my eye off the ball here. I'm extremely sorry about that.

I have been jumping in here sporadically approving new members, but unfortunately many of these accounts are spambots, so I need to check each account to make sure it's legit. For instance, today there were over 100 new registered users in the moderators' queue - zero legit accounts - all spam bots. The problem is this old version of vB 4 is non-supported and their spam filters are archaic - this is one of the many reasons we need to upgrade to Xenforo - which is in the pipeline.

The thing is - before we upgrade, we need to restructure the forum with proper categories and sections. This will make the export/import of the database much easier, and we'll have a live forum right away after that. Unfortunately, I just haven't had the time to get this done. Thanks to chaumi, it's back on my radar. :)

chaumi kindly gave me a good idea of what the structure of the forum should be. I just need to set aside the time to properly do this.

In the meantime - yes, I need moderators. @maruco - I had no idea you were a moderator at one point. If you'd like, I could reinstate your moderator privileges - especially if you'd like to moderate new users. Just let me know.
Click to expand...

I've just sent you a DM Brian.
 
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