Why the Forum link has gone from the CTC Home Page banner?

[thirdcrank]

This forum is an important resource for all cyclists and something the CTC should be shouting about not hiding it.

Possibly so but the point has already been made by gaz that this isn't an official channel of communiication so a thread like this is unlikely to get the explanation sought. Whether the forum has a more subtle influence, who knows?

[Mark1978]

The fact that its a channel of communication to other cyclists is the important part. I got here by searching for cycling forums.

[Si]

To try and answer some main questions raised up thread (sorry if I miss any out).....

Forum link on the Website.
We did have talks with those delivering the website and suggested that the forum was pretty important and so should have a high(ish) billing on the website. As I'm sure everyone knows by now, the development of the new website has been hit by a number of hitches along the way which resulted in a very late delivery and a number of technical issues. As such the website is still in a state of development and fine tuning, thus I assume that they are experimenting with various layouts and have decided to move the forum link around a bit - problem is that everything that the CTC does is really important and so should have top billing in the website home page (I can't actually remember where the forum link was before ). To be honest, I'm more concerned about the speed of the website and the fact that it still has "beta" in the URL.

As a side issue to this, you might have noticed that some time ago Cycleclips had a few stories on it linked to the forum, such that readers could come to an already set up thread where they could discuss issues that would be relevant to members. This was an idea that came from us and it was meant to increase the interactiveness of cyclieclips and give members the feeling of more involvement and input with the CTC. It did seem to work quite well initially with a few more people signing up to the forum from this channel, and the threads being quite popular. But for some reason the people that produce cycleclips decided to give up on it without any explanation coming to us (a little annoying after all the work that we'd put in to get it there in the first place- so if you'd like to see this return please let someone at National Office know).

Regarding the forum being important as a channel of communication.
I sympathise with the CTC a bit here. Given that resources are stretched, having paid staff continually scanning the forum in case there was something on it that they needed to answer would seem to many as a bit of a waste of membership money given that 99% of the stuff on the forum doesn't need any input from the CTC. We have also had a few cases where CTC staff have ventured onto the forum only to be attacked and insulted...which understandably put them off coming back (and anyway, why should paid staff have to be the subject of insults when the volunteers will do it for free , and we have also had CTC Staff being moderated by the forum staff due to breaking the forum rules which might have put them off further). This is part of the reason why the old forum was pulled. To counter this the current forum has a quite rigid moderation policy. We have also implemented a new section of the forum "About the CTC" which means that CTC staff don't have to trawl through the whole forum to find things that might need their attention (assuming that posts are put in the right place...I'll just move this one over there now ). And furthermore, our new CEO, Gordon Seabright, recently sent an email to all CTC staff to encourage them to play a more active part on the forum....since then I've noticed that a few have done so, plus, if we get a thread that really does need input from National Office staff but hasn't had any then I tend to send a link to it to some random person so that it comes to someone's attention (e.g. some recent issues with membership).

However, if you want a fast reply to your concern then it is always better to go directly to the person responsible for what ever area it is at National Office rather than taking a chance that it could take some time for anyone to notice it on here.

Also, to be fair, I think that we lost the link back to the main website during a software upgrade some time ago..something that we really ought to sort out some time!

[thirdcrank]

On the subject of the ease and / or likelihood of anybody finding the forum, if I google <CTC.ORG.UK> one of the options offered is to come straight here.

On the subject of the CTC picking up things from the forum, my entire life seems to be monitored by cookies, loyalty cards, market research and the like. Everybody with something to sell - with the notable exception of the CTC - "heeds my frowns," even if, in doing so, they have me glowering. -> <-

But then we "531 throughout" BOF's are so very last century.

[chris_suffolk]

If you don't like the change let National Office know. The simplest route to leave feedback on the new website is the dedicated page, here.

However, if you want a fast reply to your concern then it is always better to go directly to the person responsible for what ever area it is at National Office rather than taking a chance that it could take some time for anyone to notice it on here.

Well I have filled in the info on the 'dedicated page' so awaiting to see if I get a response, and whether anything happens as result.........(twiddles thumbs while waiting for the corporate cogs to grind)

[Alex L]

Without the forum, I would never have become a member of the CTC. I searched for a UK cycling forum to ask for help planning my route to Uni. After I'd been on the board a few months, I decided to start my membership. So really, the CTC owes the forum I think

[Mark1978]

I was not the person who wrote the post you quoted.

[Ray]

If you don't like the change let National Office know. The simplest route to leave feedback on the new website is the dedicated page, here.

Not my words. No offence taken, but it seems you need to be more careful with your attributions.

Cheers

Ray

[Ray]

Thanks to gaz, Si, TC and others for informative replies. 'Work in progress', I suppose.

Ray

[chris_suffolk]

Not my words. No offence taken, but it seems you need to be more careful with your attributions.

Cheers

Ray

Sorry,

I just used the 'quote' feature off the site (as I did for this too) and it seems not to have attributed either of the quotes to the original author. Will check they are right in future, as this would seem to be (another) IT glitch on this site.

Have to say I'm impressed with the info on the site, but not the level of IT that drives it

[Mark1978]

This is a pretty standard forum software install. So it's not the CTCs fault!

[thirdcrank]

I don't think that mixed up quotes, this example or more generally, have anything to do with the software. IME, it's caused by the way somebody uses the quote facility and then edits the post they are quoting. If the bits in square brackets [...] are inadvertently deleted, the quote will get a different attribution.

[chris_suffolk]

Agreed, but if the original name were deleted by editing, leaving no name, then who would it attribute to> Or does it does randomly select an author as it knows it needs to have one? Either way, I'll be more careful to check in future as IT clearly can't be relied upon

[thirdcrank]

I know so little about computers that I can't bring up a picture of an unposted post to demonstrate this.

If you highlight text within a post you are preparing, then click the <quote> button at the top of the POST A REPLY screen, the highlighted text will be preceded by <quote> in square brackets [ ]and followed by quote/ also within [..]. When that's submitted it will appear in its own box, preceeded by a large pair of quotation marks.

If you click the <quote> button on an existing post, you will end up in the POST A REPLY screen, with the whole post ready to be edited. The opening square brackets will also contain the user name of the person being quoted. That can all be edited, but that has to be done with care, especially if the post being quoted contains qhotes. If a set of square brackets is deleted, then the attribution will be to the poster (if any) whose username is in the preceding set of {...]

Describing it like that makes it sound more complicated than it is in practice but there's nothing random about it.

[Ray]

The main thing is to click on 'Preview' and check carefully before posting. OK, easy to say, and we all boob occasionally, but the great majority of folk on this forum are 'of good will', and I'd be embarrassed to upset them, even accidentally.

Ray