The New CHGPA Forums/Listservs : Why We Need Them

[chgpa]

You may remember that I posted a note to the old chga email list
(at folkriver.com) a couple months back, mentioning this new effort:

http://chgpa.org/forums

If you go visit that URL you'll see the web interface to the intended
replacement for the current folkriver.com email listserv. I think these
new forums are ready for prime time, and we are now asking our members
to make the jump to the new digs, starting this week.

Maybe I hear you asking: "Replacement? How come? The list ain't broke!"
Well, actually, it is broken, at least in the sense that it isn't serving
our needs very well. More about that later.

Or maybe I hear you asking: "I just want to get email, what's all this
forum stuff?" Relax, no worries mate, you can set things up so that you
receive all messages by email and reply by email. For you, nothing
really changes that much; all you need are a couple of new email
addresses.

For those who may have bailed out of listserv participation: these
forums let you use the web to read only those topics that interest you.
When you reply, other web users will see your post when they browse
the forum website, but in addition, all those who've chosen to receive
email from the forums will receive your post. So essentially, everyone
participates in the way that works best for them.

Moving to our new forum/listserv solution is easy: a) register at the forum
website; b) wait for your forum account to be activated (this could take a
day or so); c) login to the forum and set up email 'subscriptions' to the
forums that interest you. That's it!

Here are the new forums and their associated email addresses :

<li>Hang Gliding Flight Topics : hg_forum@chgpa.org</li>
<li>Paragliding Flight Topics : pg_forum@chgpa.org</li>
<li>Marketplace : market_forum@chgpa.org</li>
<li>FiFi Forum : fifi_forum@chgpa.org</li>
<li>Non-Flying Fun : fun_forum@chgpa.org</li>
<li>General Discussion : ot_forum@chgpa.org</li>
This may look like a lot, but signing up for one, some, or all is taken
care of with a couple of mouse clicks at the forum website. 10 seconds, tops.

For a detailed description of the registration procedure go see:

http://chgpa.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=123

I have to activate each new forum registration, so that's the biggest
bottleneck for the switchover. You can help speed things along by
following the recommendations about username/email-address/location
that are mentioned at the above link.

The rest of this particular topic provides some general background
about the new forums, and the problems that they will solve for us.
<hr>
If you've been on the folkriver.com list for any length of time you know
that flame-wars break out every couple of years. That's probably a lot
better than many communities, but it's still distracting enough that
about 1/3 of CHGPA members simply don't want to see anything by email
anymore. They would rather just go somewhere to pick-and-choose the
topics that they want to read.

The remaining 2/3 of the members prefer to have posts "come to them"
(by email), rather than having to go browse a website. But this can be
a problem because there's only one listserv at folkriver.com . If you
are an email-kinda-person, then you simply have to put up with the fact
that all posts come to your mailbox, regardless of topic.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to satisfy both camps? That is,
several different types of forums (flying related, for-sale, non-flying
fun, etc), for which some people could request email delivery, and
others could just use the web?

Back in December 2003 I found one solution : The phpBB forum software,
plus an add-on called Mail-To-Forum (m2f). At the time m2f was still
in a state of flux and lacked some important features, so I couldn't
move forward. This finally changed with the beta 3.0 m2f release in
late 2004.

The main idea behind m2f is that all posts within a forum are
immediately sent out as email to everyone who has "subscribed" to that
forum. If someone replies to a message, that reply goes out as email
to everyone else who has subscribed, and it gets stored at the web
site. The communication is completely bi-directional, so the web-only
crowd can go see all posts at the forum website, and the email-only
crowd will receive all posts in their mailbox.

In short: If you like email, ya gets email, and the only visit to the forum
website will be for registering. And if ya don't like email, you won't get
anything in your mailbox, but you can still use the web to browse, reply,
and create topics. Everybody's happy!

Ok... So what problems are we solving by making this change?

The biggest win is that we will stop the splintering that's been going on :
FiFis over in their own Yahoo forum; the web-only crowd over at the
Yahoo group which 'Spark set up; the old 'chga' listserv at folkriver;
the off-topic group that Scott created.

The new CHGPA forums/listservs can meet these disparate needs. And
that's important because our flying community isn't exactly large.
We really do need to be in "one place" in order to take advantage of
each other's knowledge and advice.

I also think that the highly visible nature of the forum website will
help bring new people into the sport. All the forums can be browsed
without registration (except FiFi), so it's very easy for a newcomer
to dive in and start learning about hang gliding and paragliding. An
active forum can be a showcase for the kinds of flying activities that
go on in our region.

Finally, the forum is very flexible : we can add new forums/listservs
very easily; the forum can become a repository of documents and images;
there are a gazillion things I haven't even explored yet. I think that
the new forums will be able to meet all kinds of new club needs that
arise over the next few years.

So we invite you to register as a CHGPA forum user, and to start
using the associated new email addresses.