Forum Future?

[Graham Breeze]

Text of an email that I have just sent to Olga Wood, in her capacity as FRA Communications Officer:

Dear Olga,

I’m not sure whether the following is within your responsibility as FRA Communications Officer; if not, please pass on to the relevant person (who should be the webmaster, but I can’t find any contact link for the webmaster on the FRA Website).

The FRA Forum is a mine of useful information, as well as a great venue for discussion on all matters relevant to fell running. However, when the FRA website was refurbished a few years ago, the link to the forum was hidden in a menu linked from the FRA tab. Worse still, the facility to register for the Forum has now disappeared, so although it can be viewed as a guest, no-one new can now register and post comments on the Forum.

Please urgently investigate and rectify the disappearance of the Register facility. Then put a link to the Forum on the masthead of the home page of the FRA website, so that it becomes easy to find.

Best wishes,
Anthony Kay

Anthony

For what it is worth...the FRA Executive has long switched its loyalty to facebook but I applaud your initiative in pointing out that some people have noticed what is happening.

Graham

[brett]

Whilst I am still an admin on the forum, I stepped down as webmaster a while ago and don't often fiddle... and prob shouldn't but heyho.

I turned off the "new members" button because of the incredible quantity of spam registrations which I couldn't cope with.

The forum uses vBulletin (well outdated which needs upgrading to a new version or importing into a different format). I assume this hasn't been done because the Committee feels that FB (even the Yoof don't FB now) is the way forward.

Many forums (fora Graham, but probably not ) are dying on their bottoms which is a shame because FB is so transitory...

It's a great shame when looking back at the forum when it was at its finest, I made so many friends, had so many good times and met so many people at races...

I too feel that the end of the forum is imminent

edit - missing a few , and .

[Wheeze]

You dont know what you had till its gone.....

Nicely put Anthony.

[Graham Breeze]

Whilst I am still an admin on the forum, I stepped down as webmaster a while ago and don't often fiddle... and prob shouldn't but heyho.

I turned off the "new members" button because of the incredible quantity of spam registrations which I couldn't cope with.

The forum uses vBulletin (well outdated which needs upgrading to a new version or importing into a different format). I assume this hasn't been done because the Committee feels that FB (even the Yoof don't FB now) is the way forward.

Many forums (fora Graham, but probably not ) are dying on their bottoms which is a shame because FB is so transitory...

It's a great shame when looking back at the forum when it was at its finest, I made so many friends, had so many good times and met so many people at races...

I too feel that the end of the forum is imminent

edit - missing a few , and .

Yep. That's all true.

I think the Forum's last chance was The Forum Fights Back in the Spring 2022 Fellrunner.

For a long time the Forum was brilliant, informative, hilariously funny, witty, edudite, a vicious blood sport,
chamelionic,... because of the people who frequented it; but that population has gone.

Like other aspects of fell running things have changed and there will be no going back.

Oh Antonella Acciaiuoli - your time was so fleeting and now we will never see your like again.

[anthonykay]

I got this reply from Olga:

Hi Antony,

Thank you for bringing it to our attention.
I forwarded it to Jamie, our IT person. We will look into it and come back to you when this is clarified.

Jamie, is it something that we could investigate when you have time, please?

Kind Regards
Olga W
FRA Communications Officer


Brett, did you tell Jamie what you were doing with the New Members button? If he does upgrade the software, will that deal with the spam registrations problem? If the Forum does die, that would be a great shame, especially so soon after an effort was made in the Fellrunner mag to draw attention to it.

Incidentally, I did my little bit to highlight its existence recently. There was an enquiry on the FB page about Morton's Neuroma, and I vaguely remembered that there was a discussion about this condition on the Forum a few years ago. So I searched out the relevant thread here, and posted a link to it in a response on the FB page. I'm sure something similar could be done with quite a lot of enquiries on the FB page.

[Travs]

I too try to direct people to the forum when they have queries on facebook.

I agree with the above, given the great efforts of Charmian to bring attention to the forum, via the magazine article, its a shame it doesn't seem to have been coordinated with admin side of things.

Forums are generally declining due to social media.... sheer numbers are keeping the more popular sports/music/etc ones going. It would be a shame if all forums die out and social media is the only remaining avenue.... you only have to look at facebook etc (and i'm not just picking on fellrunning, i mean everything) to see that it is definitely a case of quantity over quality.

A music forum that i was a member of for nearly two decades, finally got shut down during covid lockdown. We now have a Discord chat group for the remaining 75 or so long-term members.

[Witton Park]

Facebook isn't appropriate for what has historically been discussed on here.
The indexed format of the forum allows folk to go check out race discussions from years ago as an example.

[Wheeze]

"....I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... "

[Mossdog]

Like other aspects of fell running things have changed and there will be no going back.

Yeah but. No, but. Even vinyl's making a comeback, so I've been told ( numerous times over the last decade).

[Wheeze]

I remember when Gravymuncher, at the height of all the shenanigans caused by the Gravy Boys raid on the forum, opined that one day in the future, Fora would slowly fade away to become a thing of the past. That was nearly 20 years ago. As the "forum" generation of fell runners becomes less active, I guess it is inevitable given that there seems little appetite for younger memebers to use it.

But....but. Surely it can be kept running at the level it currently is, a bit like an old folks home for ageing fell runners. After all, we have all given our heart and soul to the sport!

And I sincerely apologise to the many active contributors who are still fully engaged in the sport and racing hard! I love reading about your exploits. I just cannae get on wi' Bookface!