mikecart
Well-Known Forum User
My Reply!
Funnily enough I was thinking of suggesting something along these lines for the book reviews that Steve has appealed for in the past (and maybe even magazine article / Television Show / DVD or Video reviews too?) - perhaps instead of or in addition to a piece of prose reviewing a book a poll could be conducted where anyone who has read that book can rate it against a set criteria (e.g. technical accuracy, quality of photographs and so on) and make some brief comments - in today's busy world it might just work better than hanging on for more 'proper' literary reviews. With a bit of thought this could be structured to enable anyone considering purchasing a Z-related book to compare properly. Maybe I am just a zedless bookworm though
, but it certainly encourages participation.
I have also mulled over what would make the site (and I guess indirectly the club) better more generally. I honestly think the site has already got Forums and 'community' in spades, and amongst some of the members there is obviously both a depth and breadth of knowledge - often scattered across discussions. I personally think there is scope to do more outside of the Forum to try and formalise that knowledge - e.g. How to do certain tasks, problems and pitfalls with certain models and guides on consumables for each model (by consumables I mean anything that an owner may purchase or replace regularly - a previous club I was in had a wealth of this kind of knowledge). This reference information could well then attract more visitors ... A good recent example of this was the discussion on cylinder heads recently - I found myself cutting and pasting some of that into a text file while thinking 'Hmmm that might be useful information one day...'. I guess it would be better if someone could tidy up any salient results of discussions into a reference guide. Another example would be for anyone involved in a project to create a record of that project - not just by placing photographs in the gallery, but by adding some brief descriptions too - concentrating particularly on difficulties or things that went wrong (I am sure we have all been there - having wasted a couple of hours to put something together the wrong way around ... sharing what went wrong might save others the same pain) - this kind of thing would add real value for anyone thinking about joining up.
This would require some input by the club to validate and approve reference material submissions, but I am sure there are ways and means of facilitating that. Make it is as easy to submit something as 'potential' reference material as it is to post to the Forum and you would be heading in the right direction ... Or even offer a button where any thread reader could propose that thread as a candidate for reference section (democracy in action )
Mike
Funnily enough I was thinking of suggesting something along these lines for the book reviews that Steve has appealed for in the past (and maybe even magazine article / Television Show / DVD or Video reviews too?) - perhaps instead of or in addition to a piece of prose reviewing a book a poll could be conducted where anyone who has read that book can rate it against a set criteria (e.g. technical accuracy, quality of photographs and so on) and make some brief comments - in today's busy world it might just work better than hanging on for more 'proper' literary reviews. With a bit of thought this could be structured to enable anyone considering purchasing a Z-related book to compare properly. Maybe I am just a zedless bookworm though
, but it certainly encourages participation.I have also mulled over what would make the site (and I guess indirectly the club) better more generally. I honestly think the site has already got Forums and 'community' in spades, and amongst some of the members there is obviously both a depth and breadth of knowledge - often scattered across discussions. I personally think there is scope to do more outside of the Forum to try and formalise that knowledge - e.g. How to do certain tasks, problems and pitfalls with certain models and guides on consumables for each model (by consumables I mean anything that an owner may purchase or replace regularly - a previous club I was in had a wealth of this kind of knowledge). This reference information could well then attract more visitors ... A good recent example of this was the discussion on cylinder heads recently - I found myself cutting and pasting some of that into a text file while thinking 'Hmmm that might be useful information one day...'. I guess it would be better if someone could tidy up any salient results of discussions into a reference guide. Another example would be for anyone involved in a project to create a record of that project - not just by placing photographs in the gallery, but by adding some brief descriptions too - concentrating particularly on difficulties or things that went wrong (I am sure we have all been there - having wasted a couple of hours to put something together the wrong way around ... sharing what went wrong might save others the same pain) - this kind of thing would add real value for anyone thinking about joining up.
This would require some input by the club to validate and approve reference material submissions, but I am sure there are ways and means of facilitating that. Make it is as easy to submit something as 'potential' reference material as it is to post to the Forum and you would be heading in the right direction ...
Or even offer a button where any thread reader could propose that thread as a candidate for reference section (democracy in action )Mike
