Spreading the AFA word.....

[graham]

Gents, we know that some of you have done sterling jobs in getting AFA noticed on other forums that you use and as such, have persuaded new members to join us here. For that we are most grateful. We now have around 300 members but there's always room for more. More members gives a wider scope of knowledge, differing areas of expertise, a larger geographical spread across the country for reports and logs and of course, all that goes to attract more members as they can see for themselves how broad a spectrum we have here before deciding whether to sign up or not.

If any of you do use other forums then please, subject to the mods on those forums agreeing, do spread the word about AFA. I truly believe we have the friendliest aviation forum on the web here and I for one have made some great friends in the 21 months since we got the ball rolling. More than happy to put a reciprocal link on our navvy bar for any other forum who would add a link to AFA on theirs.

Thanks for all your help gents, the forum would be nothing without all of you.

Graham, Jeff & Bill

[rugbyref]

I am a member of a Sydney Spotters group on account of our occasional trips down under. I have posted a suggestion on that site that they may want to have a look, and maybe apply to join. Cheers
Phil

[graham]

That's great Phil, thank you, and as you can see, we already have a new recruit from Sydney.

[rugbyref]

I see we have since picked up a second member from the Sydney group - have we been as successful elsewhere?

[graham]

Indeed we have a second Antipodean member Phil, so many thanks for spreading the word. I don't recall any other new members these past few days but it's certainly great to have a couple of members on t'other side of the globe. We really appreciate your help...;0)

[rugbyref]

Graham, I have been a member on another proboards site, which was suddenly closed down without warning and no real explanation. Do you have a plan b if proboards decide they dislike afa?
Phil

[graham]

Hi Phil

Was there a problem with that other forum do you know? Was it closed by Proboards or did the forum admin decide to close it down? Was there any contentious material posted or members scrapping it out on open forum? I found the Support Forum extremely helpful when we first set up in January 2015 so if indeed it was Proboards who pulled the plug, then they must have had a very good reason.

As far as a "plan B" is concerned, then, no, we don't have one. I can see no reason why they would want to pull the plug on us, but if they did, then we would have to find a new home. It's physically impossible, both from the aspect of available time and sheer volume of posted material to stash all the stuff that goes on here to a "safe " site "just in case". One thing for sure is that we (me, Jeff & Bill) will NEVER walk away from AFA, it's been a steep learning curve but we have a great, friendly forum and every second has been worth it.

One thing me "might" consider for the future is starting a Facebook AFA page, but that, if it happens, would run alongside the forum here and us three can assure every member that the forum would stay as it is. It's just an idea at present, we appreciate that not everyone "does" Facebook and the last thing we'd want to do is to alienate any members on here who didn't want to sign up to it. The forum here will always be our priority; we might not have the biggest active membership out there, but we have a massive spread of expertise and knowledge, many of us have met up at shows and the like, and I have to say that as a group, it really is the friendliest of any forum, whether aviation or other, that I've ever been involved with.

[rugbyref]

Hi Graham,

If you google Bus Forum, and follow the proboards links you will see the message that appears, and Googling that message suggests that proboards can close down on a whim. I certainly found nothing contentious on the site.

Perhaps just worth gathering email addresses from those members willing to share. 'just in case'?

Cheers

Phil

[graham]

Hi Phil

The site was closed due to it contravening section 25A of the Proboards T & Cs. This essentially allows our hosts to close it down and not give a reason.

One aspect is that Proboards do not like or approve of any forum placing links on posts that lead to another site where there is contentious material. I really don't know anything about the bus forum so obviously can't even imagine what the issue was. Proboards hosts 1000s of forums and the advertising revenue must be enormous so I'm sure that whatever they did was well thought out prior to any plug being pulled.

So, thanks for the heads up Phil, I will post a polite reminder to all our members about what can or can't be linked to, although I really don't think we have an issue with that.


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