Cycling UK Forum

Hello Cycling UK forumers
http://forum.cyclinguk.org

I had wondered why I had to re-enter my login details. I suppose the name change is all about promoting inclusiveness and awareness, come what may.

I do hope we don't get a rash of "which £80 Tesco bike is best?" types questions, now that we are all inclusive.

God, I wish someone had given notice before a major change to the forum as changing the URL. It's like sticking a notice on the door of a meeting room to say the location has changed and not telling anyone beforehand.

It's not major, but it's confusing and I was worried why my saved login in LastPass wasn't working.

If you're going to do it, give us warning and do it properly and change the logo too.

The old URL still works, it redirects to the new one.

The logo is now changed

I'm working my way through the many other small updates needed.

Freddie wrote:I do hope we don't get a rash of "which £80 Tesco bike is best?" types questions, now that we are all inclusive.

Maybe the mods could set up a special "Questions that aren't worthy of the attention of Proper Cyclists" section so that new people can be excluded?

admin wrote:The old URL still works, it redirects to the new one.

The logo is now changed

I'm working my way through the many other small updates needed.

AND thank YOU Happy admining

Bez wrote:

Freddie wrote:I do hope we don't get a rash of "which £80 Tesco bike is best?" types questions, now that we are all inclusive.

Maybe the mods could set up a special "Questions that aren't worthy of the attention of Proper Cyclists" section so that new people can be excluded?

Well, the fact of the matter is, the entire name change has reoriented the organisation from one for cycle tourists to one for everyone. The selecting effect that came from being called the CTC, probably prevented much in the way of questions from those who had no intention of being serious cyclists and just wanted the cheapest bike they could lay their hands on, false economy or not.

The new name is obviously an effort to cast the net as wide as possible and whilst I have no problem with people new to cycling, that want to invest the time and effort to really enjoy the pastime, I don't think we should be happy if the forum becomes a repository for questions that are better posed to Tesco, Halfords or some kind of hotukdeals.com of cycling.

Freddie wrote:Well, the fact of the matter is, the entire name change has reoriented the organisation from one for cycle tourists to one for everyone.

Reoriented? Or reflected? It's mix of both, but various people would probably disagree a little as to the relative weighting of the two.

The thing is that CTC has, over the years, evolved into (or evolved as, depending on how you view its history) one of the most prominent organisations regarding cycling for the masses. I don't see the rebranding per se as much if anything more than an acknowledgement of this and a reinforcement of it as a goal.

Freddie wrote:The selecting effect that came from being called the CTC, probably prevented much in the way of questions from those who had no intention of being serious cyclists and just wanted the cheapest bike they could lay their hands on, false economy or not.

What's wrong with those questions? How do you think people become the sort of "serious cyclist" that you think should be members of CTC/Cycling UK? We all start from somewhere. And the forum is already fully open to non-members anyway.

Freddie wrote:The new name is obviously an effort to cast the net as wide as possible and whilst I have no problem with people new to cycling, that want to invest the time and effort to really enjoy the pastime, I don't think we should be happy if the forum becomes a repository for questions that are better posed to Tesco, Halfords or some kind of hotukdeals.com of cycling.

If you don't mind me paraphrasing you (and you probably will), what that appears to say is the following: "I want others to invest time and effort in becoming as enthusiastic as I am in something that they're not necessarily so enthusiastic about right now, but I don't want to see their questions, because I don't want to invest the time and effort in deciding not to read them. They should go and ask questions to lesser people who don't really understand cycling, rather than have access to the experience of people like me."

To be fair it is incredibly annoying when somebody hasn't done the most rudimentary of Google searches for information. Experience of previous threads also suggests that people deciding between two £80 Tesco machines don't tend to be receptive to the suggestion that these won't be fit for purpose and that they should spend significantly more or buy second hand. I've wasted slightly too much time typing welcoming and thorough replies to new posters who never even log in a second time in order to see them.

That said, I don't really predict these threads increasing in number as a result of the change. Forum traffic will arrive in the same way it always has ie. via search engines, bypassing the CTC/CUK website and I don't see why the name should make any difference to this. The much criticised "touring" word has never appeared on the forum anyway, so speculation of people being put off by it cannot apply to the forum.

I understand the change - but I'm still thinking of this as the "CTC Forum". Would a TLA help? CUK? Doesn't sound right. People hearing that will ask, is this a cookery forum or something?

Bez, this forum in generally populated by enthusiastic cyclists. Every now and then somebody, often a former enthusiast, will say they want to get (back) into cycling and others will offer help. The CTC title served as a filter for this.

I don't think it'll do the forum much good if many people come in posting about how their BSO doesn't work or which BSO to buy, and then go on to baulk when you suggest spending £150-£200 on a decent second hand machine instead.

This is the point I was trying to make. I can make it no simpler than that. I have nothing against newbies or returnees; I do not, however, want to see the forum overtaken by people who would baulk at spending £150 on a bike, irrespective of the massively increased utility and quality compared to the BSO. Will that happen...who knows, but I suggest the name change might make such occurrences more frequent.

There was a chap on here some months back who kept posting ultra cheap Tesco "deals", I think he was warned a number of times, then banned. This suggests that the standards I want set are not ones the mods necessarily feel are a bad thing for the forum either.

I hope you understand what I am suggesting and why, because I really can't put it any plainer.

Ive just put ten cycle related queries into Google you can't get cycling uk onto the first page now.
I even put in
Cycling uk...........British cycling tops
We are Cycling uk......... Britshishcycling.org wins

Funnily enough I tried searching for Cycling UK yesterday and couldn't find it (though CTC does appear down the results). I was going to hold off the criticism for a few days because I think it might take Google a few days to catch up with the changes.

Beware! If "Cycling UK" isn't sufficiently indexed, it may fall victim to 'google bombing'. Is it still possible to 'google bomb' a phrase as it was a few years ago (remember "failure" and "liar")? I can just see people searching out cycling stuff, being taken to a rabid anti-cycling petrolhead site - or even the Daily Heil: horrors!

admin wrote:The logo is now changed

I'm working my way through the many other small updates needed.

Good luck.

FYI:
- I use the Prosilver Special Edition board style. Now I'm getting a phpBB logo instead of either the CTC or Cycling UK logos
- The favicon is still the swooshy cyclist (although I wonder if the browser will take a while to refresh that one internally)