My 2000th Post and Membership Plug

[Garry]

This is my 2000th post.

As the Group Membership Officer for “The rest of the World other than the Americas” I think it appropriate that in this 2000th post, I highlight the levels of membership available and to encourage some of the “Basic“ Members to consider upgrading to “Full Member” given all the benefits they may have gained from their Basic membership and the very small cost to do so.

This Forum relies on some of us generously paying a small membership fee to become full members to help pay for the costs associated with hosting the Groups web site and Forum, and some other minor costs associated with running such a Group.

 Full Membership then gives full access to the Technical Manual, members receive the Pagoda World Magazine and Pagoda Notes, are able to insert “for Sale” notices all for the small sum of $30 USD (25 Euro) per annum.  All funds are used for the running of the Forum as per the Constitution which states “ The funds needed to achieve the Group's purpose and objectives shall be generated by membership dues, revenues from events, sponsoring and advertising, and other donations .
‘
The Pagoda  Group is run by a Board of Directors,’ currently eleven people, all unpaid volunteer positions manned by a variety of members like myself, from around the world and currently led by our President, Peter van Es from Netherland.

I think I have said enough for my 2000th post.. Now back to sending out Welcome Packages and W113 windscreen stickers to the new members.

Garry

[Cees Klumper]

Thanks for all the hard work Garry. I know from experience.

On the full membership, although it makes perfect sense that everyone who comes here for information and advice regularly join as a full member,the membership fee may be on the high side. Not in that is is a lot of money, but it's still higher than necessary relative to the group's annual expenses. That discussion has been held several times but as far as I know never satisfactorily concluded. One solution could be to grant two years' membership for $30 instead of one.

[Rolf-Dieter ✝︎]

I second that ... what Garry said

I became a Full Member a few days after visiting here first. I realized that immediately that the minimal membership fee was worth it's weight in gold so to speak.

The interaction of members here and the technical contents and links in the Technical Manual will confirm this once a Basic Member has been here for a spell and signed up for Full Membership.

[69280sl]

I may challenge Benz Drs. title of group curmudgeon, but I can't understand why anyone who owns a pagoda would not be a paying member just to show appreciation and respect for the work that the web master, board and contributors are doing. Full membership is less than the price of an oil change.

I get particularly irked by a couple of non paying members who each have about 200 posts, almost all asking for help and information but who never see fit to support the group with a very nominal membership.

Contrast this group with other "free" groups where you have to wade thru ads and banners. If that alone is not worth the nominal cost the other resources certainly should be.

Gus

[Flyair]

Garry,

congratulations on your work and productive activity. I remember one of the 2000 posts when you explained how you wake up early in the morning to "decontaminate" our forum from spam messages. This made me realize how - among others - thanks to your work - our forum is different from other places, where not only banners and other pop-ups eat us the space but also fight with spams for the doubtful privilege of deterring Members from the site. In your case, besides contributing 2000 posts, your contribution is important also because of the number of spam posts you cleaned up, and those, I am sure, exceed the 2000 number   Once more, thank you also for the invisible part of your work, that we all benefit from, without knowing that it's mostly hand-made work.

69280SL
Hard not to agree in principle with your arguments. As a next step, out of the insane curiosity I hit the Membership column to scroll down the list classified by number of posts and tried to see who is around 200 inputs while keeping the Junior Level status to see who is the stigmatized culprit, and… I found none. The first one meeting such criteria was below 50 posts. This changes nothing to your point that - as I said - are very valid in my view, but the scale of the "abomination" looked much smaller

Now, taking the risk of reviving many old discussions, I must confess that I am still confused by the titles Members get here: Junior on free registration and Full Member status for paying ones are self explanatory, as are Board Member or Inactive titles. but what are the criteria of being Bronze or Silver? And what means Regular? I do sense that all these categories are honorary, but I suspects that some (if not most) Members do not know how the system works.

So, as Garry kindly offered in his commemorative post to expose the relation between titles and Membership, I would encourage that this very motivating passage is completed to give the full explanation.     

[Peter van Es]

The membership levels have been explained here: http://www.sl113.org/forums/index.php?topic=12717.0

If you have a question about this site, it's workings, and how to use it, you can usually find an answer on the "About this site" section of the forum.

The number of spam sign ups has gone down dramatically over the last couple of years since I added automatic checks for New registrations on www.stopforumspam.com. This summer I made a subtle change to the registration procedure which thwarts even more of them. Over 3700 attempted spammer registrations have been stopped.

We used to get a couple of spam messages per week, now it is a couple per month. My defenses are getting better and better.

Peter

[Peter van Es]

Thanks for all the hard work Garry. I know from experience.

On the full membership, although it makes perfect sense that everyone who comes here for information and advice regularly, the membership fee may be on the high side, not in that is is a lot of money, but it's still higher than necessary relative to the group's annual expenses. That discussion has been held several times but as far as I know never satisfactorily concluded. One solution could be to grant two years' membership for $30 instead of one.

Cees, the board has discussed this topic year on year. Every time we reach the same conclusion, also supported by the membership: we just leave it as is.

This year we've organised three successful events around the world which were fully paid for by attending members, but we have used some money to pay for legitimate set-up, promotional and prize expenditure. In Europe it now almost looks like we can move to an annual event (the next one is 2014 at Goodwood) and I've got volunteers for a 2015 and a 2016 event who I am in discussion with.

Hopefully a PUB will happen again in 2014... Again, the board will discuss using some of our reserves to  make it easier to organise these events and to make sure they are organised well.

Peter

[Garry]

I must say that the number of spams has dropped off significantly in the last few months and I dont think I have had to report one to the Stopforumspam.com site for at least two months.  A welcome change.