IMPORTANT ... MEMBER CONSULTATION NEEDED! READ THIS!
Dear All,
I have some thoughts about discussions presently going on about our forum.
There was a service outage a few weeks ago and our forum was not available for many days. I was unhappy and other managers were even more upset about this. An
idea was suggested that perhaps we should consider moving our forum to another
website, another place where we hoped that the service for our forum would be better.
Managers suggested other websites where they were familiar and discussions actually took place with one website about what they could do for us. Keep in mine, the reason for any commercial website to help us, to invite our forum, is for their website to draw more visitors. Another website, oriented around English study materials was also considered but some felt its size may overwhelm our style and we may lose our unique family-oriented environment.
After much communication, suddenly I was told that a notice in Chinese had been
posted by Hongen on their home page about a new server being located there and that there would be some interruptions in our access to the forums. Alas, no one
of our management or members had either seen the notice or if they had, they did not pass it on to me or the other mangers. Our frustration reduced, we shelved
our considerations and waited for the new server to supply us with reliable service.
Then the server went down again, on more than one occasion, and discussions about moving began again, in earnest.
We are being offered a website now by one of our members to move Canuck's Comments or start a new forum. We can either continue with the existing forum if Hongen allows it or try to mange two forums and watch to see if the new one successfully entices members and new visitors to join as well as keeping the old Canuck'
s Comments operating.
My thoughts:
Hongen has maintained our forum now for 7 years as of this March. They advertise
their forums throughout their website and we have continued, successfully I think, to help many English learners with our friendly style, encouraged by our "star system, and our activities, especially Maryk and our managers efforts to respond to member postings. We must not give up on them so easily after such a long
relationship.
I read everything, respond to direct enquiries to Canuck and police the entries
to ensure our friendly style is maintained. I do not wish to double my time needed to do this by trying to maintain two forums.
I believe the most important reasons for the ongoing success of Canuck's Comment
is threefold:
1. We have continuous monitoring by me and mangers to ensure a welcoming attitude, no chat-room English, no profanity, flaming or meaningless postings.
2. We have a wise woman native-English writer who writes and responds daily to our visitors along with writers from other English speaking countries.
3. We have a star-system maintained consistently by a native-English speaker that encourages writers to improve.
This formula has proved successful over our 7 years of existence. We should not
do anything to damage or ruin this winning combination.
Members who are away for long periods of time often return to our forum, they remember Hongen and can find us in our usual place. We must not lose them forever
. Hongen MUST provide a notice for them so if they return to Hongen they can be
referred to our new website address.
Why should Hongen do this for us? If they won't, as I think may be the case, then I do not think we should move unless service gets much worse here.
Maryk, as one of our most important writers, must be part of this discussion. We must not make any decisions until she has considered and told us her thoughts
on a move.
I do not wish, if possible, to make any changes that will lose members or discourage them. A move is certain to cause disruption to our visitors. We should give
Hongen time for their new server to work properly....if service gets worse, then we should begin this discussion again but ,in my opinion, service here must get much worse.
I wait patiently for Maryk's return and her wise comments.
Canuck
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