The Importance of staying in contact
Jun 9, 2016 3:14:21 GMT 10
Post by AusNick on Jun 9, 2016 3:14:21 GMT 10
I wrote about this on the old SLB after the Boardhost purge.
We need to stay in contact.
Because every time we take a hit - Boardhost and now Voy - we lose people. And they lose us.
This happens because when the common ground of a forum goes away, so does that means of staying in touch, typically because it is the only means that any casual acquaintances have of communicating.
Now, I'm not saying that everyone should have everyone else's email address, that would be retarded, and overkill. And the internet by it's nature, makes it difficult to impossible to tell if the person on the other end is who they say they are. The sexy supermodel you think you're talking to may be a fat middle-aged sh*tlord typing with one hand, while the other is…busy. The obvious exception is, if you actually know the person with whom you are having a dialogue, and even then, you can never be completely sure it's them, unless you're Skyping or Facetiming them, and even then…but I digress…
In my case, as the Editor of SBD, NSC, TSTT…you get the picture, I use SBD Editor GMail address for a lot of my contacts, and as a result I have the email addresses of a few people in the community, and so in the event of a disaster, I can get in touch with them easily, and they with me. But not everyone has that, or wants that. So suitable alternatives need to be found.
One method of communication can be through other forums, as long as they aren't from the same host, which had been the case with Boardhost and Voy, because if the host goes down, that means of communication is lost.
A workaround would be to use other related but more established forums, which in this case would be places like SFF-3 or SFK, but the problem there is, you need to keep your post count up so you can retain your membership, and for what it's worth, I've been a member of both, and both of my memberships have expired, because I wouldn't bother posting if I didn't have something to say
There is of course Smoke Signals, which is for many, our ancestral home, the place is pretty quiet, it's backed by some money, being the web side of an established business, and they don't have draconian posting rules.
But myself, once I go somewhere, I put down roots, which makes being uprooted, a bad experience. Others have no trouble spreading themselves around, great.
Plus I'm old skool, email is handy, I still use it, I'm not into instant messaging and social media, so if I can't speak to someone face to face, I compose an email, which could take anywhere from a couple of minutes, to several hours, depending on what it is I want to say. And this is where my short list of contacts comes in handy, I can get in touch with half a dozen casual acquaintances and friends pretty quickly if I need to. (Speaking of which, I still have to email people to say this forum is up.)
When this happened last time - the Boardhost Purge - and I wrote on the (then new) forum imploring people to reach out and make connections, almost nothing happened, I can only assume people read my post, but they didn't act on it, and now Voy has gone…
It doesn't have to mean giving your email out to people to don't know, nobody in their right mind would do that, but what about if you gave it to, say, three other people that you've managed to build up a rapport with, and they could do the same, and in the event of a disaster, all you'd have to do is email three people, and that's it, job done. That was what I suggested, anyway, but as I said, not everyone in our community would want to exchange email addresses with people they didn't know. That said, GMail is ubiquitous, and it would take an act of nature or an EMP to disrupt something that massive. Additionally, most modern email clients have the capacity to handle as main mailboxes as you want to give it, so it wouldn't be hard to set up an emaill address for that purpose, and plug that in to your client. But that's sort of hard work for some.
An alternative would be for someone to sign up with a bulk mailing service, something like Mailchimp, and use that to push out announcements, then people could opt in or out as it pleased them.
I dunno.
But whatever methods people choose, we do need to stay in contact. Because every time we take a hit, our number gets smaller.
Nick
We need to stay in contact.
Because every time we take a hit - Boardhost and now Voy - we lose people. And they lose us.
This happens because when the common ground of a forum goes away, so does that means of staying in touch, typically because it is the only means that any casual acquaintances have of communicating.
Now, I'm not saying that everyone should have everyone else's email address, that would be retarded, and overkill. And the internet by it's nature, makes it difficult to impossible to tell if the person on the other end is who they say they are. The sexy supermodel you think you're talking to may be a fat middle-aged sh*tlord typing with one hand, while the other is…busy. The obvious exception is, if you actually know the person with whom you are having a dialogue, and even then, you can never be completely sure it's them, unless you're Skyping or Facetiming them, and even then…but I digress…
In my case, as the Editor of SBD, NSC, TSTT…you get the picture, I use SBD Editor GMail address for a lot of my contacts, and as a result I have the email addresses of a few people in the community, and so in the event of a disaster, I can get in touch with them easily, and they with me. But not everyone has that, or wants that. So suitable alternatives need to be found.
One method of communication can be through other forums, as long as they aren't from the same host, which had been the case with Boardhost and Voy, because if the host goes down, that means of communication is lost.
A workaround would be to use other related but more established forums, which in this case would be places like SFF-3 or SFK, but the problem there is, you need to keep your post count up so you can retain your membership, and for what it's worth, I've been a member of both, and both of my memberships have expired, because I wouldn't bother posting if I didn't have something to say
There is of course Smoke Signals, which is for many, our ancestral home, the place is pretty quiet, it's backed by some money, being the web side of an established business, and they don't have draconian posting rules.
But myself, once I go somewhere, I put down roots, which makes being uprooted, a bad experience. Others have no trouble spreading themselves around, great.
Plus I'm old skool, email is handy, I still use it, I'm not into instant messaging and social media, so if I can't speak to someone face to face, I compose an email, which could take anywhere from a couple of minutes, to several hours, depending on what it is I want to say. And this is where my short list of contacts comes in handy, I can get in touch with half a dozen casual acquaintances and friends pretty quickly if I need to. (Speaking of which, I still have to email people to say this forum is up.)
When this happened last time - the Boardhost Purge - and I wrote on the (then new) forum imploring people to reach out and make connections, almost nothing happened, I can only assume people read my post, but they didn't act on it, and now Voy has gone…
It doesn't have to mean giving your email out to people to don't know, nobody in their right mind would do that, but what about if you gave it to, say, three other people that you've managed to build up a rapport with, and they could do the same, and in the event of a disaster, all you'd have to do is email three people, and that's it, job done. That was what I suggested, anyway, but as I said, not everyone in our community would want to exchange email addresses with people they didn't know. That said, GMail is ubiquitous, and it would take an act of nature or an EMP to disrupt something that massive. Additionally, most modern email clients have the capacity to handle as main mailboxes as you want to give it, so it wouldn't be hard to set up an emaill address for that purpose, and plug that in to your client. But that's sort of hard work for some.
An alternative would be for someone to sign up with a bulk mailing service, something like Mailchimp, and use that to push out announcements, then people could opt in or out as it pleased them.
I dunno.
But whatever methods people choose, we do need to stay in contact. Because every time we take a hit, our number gets smaller.
Nick
