Pagoda SL Group approaching the enviable number of 3000 members

[Flyair]

Just spotted at the bottom of the forum page that we are - at the moment of writing this message - nearly 3000 members of the pagoda SL Group. If the pace is on average as usual, we should be 3000 quite soon.

I think this is an achievement which is only possible thank to the quality of this forum and to the general concept of the Group.

Congratulations to the Founding Fathers and the follow on Management!

[Rolf-Dieter ✝︎]

Hello Stan,

I second that congratulation to one and all that have build this fine site and made it what it is today. Having been exposed to computers both in business and private life including some programming I truly can appreciate the endless hours it has taken past and present board members to make this site what it is today.

[hauser]

Would be even better if all were full members. 

[wjsvb ✝︎]

Amen!  The site is fun to follow and useful too!  Jon

[Tomnistuff]

Hello Stan,

I second that congratulation to one and all that have build this fine site and made it what it is today. Having been exposed to computers both in business and private life including some programming I truly can appreciate the endless hours it has taken past and present board members to make this site what it is today.

Rolf-Dieter,

Naaaah!  You're giving them too much credit.  I'm sure you remember in the late 70's and early 80's when there was no such thing as Windows.  We had to program our PC-XT cascading menus ourselves in DOS using batch files.  At least we were rid of punch-cards.  Then things got really easy with WordPerfect and Lotus, both of which had function key based commands.  Building a two=hundred=page detailed Engineering Department five year budget and work plan and printing it out on a dot-matrix printer was really fun - NOT!

When Windows came along, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

Seriously, the work that goes on to build and maintain a site like this must be monumental.  I am in admiration of those who do.

Congratulations to you all.

Tom Kizer

[stickandrudderman]

Would be even better if all were full members.

Perhaps there should be some restriction on non-members over and above what are already there.
EG: No. of visits per month or no. of posts per month. That way people who are prolific posters or consumers of the info it contains will be obliged to take full membership. It would seem only fair.

[Rolf-Dieter ✝︎]

Yes Tom, I do remember it well. In 84 when returning from a long Australia project I fond a IBM PC on my office desk. When asking my manager what that paper weight is doing on my desk he declared all managers have to get into the computer, so I did too. In those days as you may recall the IBM PC with one floppy A drive was around $10K Canadian. On the employee program by payroll deduction I was able to get one for my basement home office for $5K, so I did since it was painless.

The most fun I had with it was designing dBase modules then after taking a Clipper course in Miami compiling it into an executable file. When all the program lines passed the Clipper compiler and all worked fine including the help function keys it always felt like finishing a great painting. Then like yo when Windows came out it felt like having gone to heaven.

[Peter van Es]

Dear all,

the 3000 number means nothing. Most sites value the number of subscriptions, I value the number of contributors. Around 5 years ago I implemented a system that deleted all members that have not logged in for over year with a minimal number of posts, that have never been full members.

Since then, our membership has hovered around 2500 members. See our Annual Reports for the last few years in the Full Member section, it explains all. The reason it's now at 3000 is because I've been very busy with an interim management role somewhere and haven't run the program.

I measure our success through the number of full members and contributors, but fully subscribe to the notion that prospective members should not be harassed, but enticed into membership: because of the quality of our content, the friendliness off our members, the camaraderie on the site or on live events, and the soaps on restorations as provided by star63 and andyburns.

Not every poster joins in events. Not every regular at events is a Full Member or a regular poster. Yet I enjoy the company of all...

We all build this community. Don't focus on the number of lurkers, focus on the number of contributors. It's the only thing that counts. Real contributors can be measured by the sum of high posters (see here Top Posters) and the total number of full members...

Peter