Open letter to all

[riffraff]

Fact:

This forum is only going to continue to grow just as the Rhorbaugh line of firearms and accessories continues to grow.

Owner and moderator of this forum.

You need to recruit one or two moderators now before the forum gets so big that you are rushed to add some help.

A seperate moderator forum needs to be established within this forum where only the moderators can discuss issues related to the board.  Posts that are questionable can also be transfered to the Mod forum in order for the mods to discuss the post and mutually decide what to do, how to procede, and if the poster needs too be contacted via PM to either warn or advise the poster about the post and any future posts.

Duane will of course be the head of the mods and will have the final say in any decesion regarding the forum with the forum's owner's approval of course.

A good 'for instance' is that I have noticed a lot of 'newbies' posting a hello in this, the Forum News and Feedback subforum when they obviously don't belong in this category and should be moved to the appropriate subforum.

Like I said, it is easy now but it is going to catch up on you pretty quick.  Isn't it best to make plans now than to play catch up later.

Been there, done this.  I know of what I type.

Mike

[riffraff]

Duane,

I believe you have the excellent FAQ and information section on the R9.  IMO that link should be 'pinned' to the top of the appropriate subforum to make it more easily identified and accesed by everyone.  That contains excellent info. and really needs to be easily found by everyone, especially newbies.

Another suggestion.  There are just a couple to many 'subforums' on the forum.  The Classifieds are good and the water cooler is good and the other guns subforum is good but some of the subforms in the main forum should be combined.  The thing to remember is this, all message boards are cyclical in nature.  The same topics will be brought up over and over in a certain time span.  The worst thing to have is everything catagorized  so that a newbie just goes to the appropriate talking point and reads some and doesnt feel the need to say hello and ask some questions.  The goal is to get people involved and sharing information.  It is death for a message board to become just a place to read the FAQ's about whatever the topic happens to be.  It is not a message board if that is what happens.

Mike

[Fud]

 Duane, Mike and whoever else might be interested:

I co-own and been operating FFF since 2000. If anybody want to swamp ideas on board operations, I'd be more than happy to share what I know and learn what I don't.

[DDGator]

For the record, I am the owner and operator of the forum.  I own the domain and have since it started.

The forum runs on a small budget.  The money that comes in over and above expenses goes to pay something to Tech Guy, who does all the techie stuff.

This forum runs Yabb software, which is very inexpensive.  It does not permit many of the more advanced features like uploading photos, spliting threads, moderator-only forums, and the like.

For us to advance signficantly would require an influx of cash--for better software, more storage, etc.

Combining or eliminating sub-forums is possible if desired.  Most feedback I have gotten over the years has been for more sub-categories.

I welcome everyone's thoughts.