class forums

The GP14 forum is rubbish, you can only rely if you are a member of the association and the traffic is poor.  Shame really because the website is great!  As with all RS classes the 300's use the yahoo group, which now i have got to terms with it don't mind.  There is a sometimes a good bit of banter on there as well.

Whilst being "actively involved" in setting up the RS Q'BA Owner's Group, I'd say that some sort of point of reference is vital.

Y&Y? Probably not what I'd like - The Class Association website is where you want to find information about the boat, rigging/tuning, 2nd hand boats for sale, builder/sailmaker info, etc. The Supernova Class Association is very good for what it is. Their forum is open to all, which importantly provides potential owners with the opportunity to ask questions about the boat! Closed forums are pointless.

RS are aware that an Owner's Group/CA is beneficial to a Class, and they provisionally suggested Yahoo Groups (which I dislike for many reasons), along with Google Groups (which I cancelled due to spam). Both of these tend to have badly-linked discussions, as mentioned previously. There also isn't much scope to prevent, say, the RS Vision Group from looking any different to any other Group on there.

For now, I've gone down the Facebook route, until RS are willing to get something "proper" up and running here.

B14 forum is open to all, though thanks to an unfixed bug in the installation you have to mail the admin after registering. This does, though help keep out anon posters and spammers. I think especially with doublehanders completely open is good, as in most only the owner of the boat will be a paid CA member. Plenty of friendly banter as well as damn good advice present. Well used by both the Aussie and UK fleets, though I think the nascent French fleet doesn't always manage to follow what's going on.

Can i just say Mags you do a sterling job with the Merlin Website.  The Forum is probably the most active dinghy forum out there.  Fantastic.  I think it would be a good idea for there to be a classes section of the forum with sub categories/threads for each class.  Trouble is moderating the class bashing that will inevitably happen!

Originally posted by ASok class forums for smaller classes?  Surely the effort for this wouldn't be huge and they could charge a small fee or recover costs through web advertising?  I won't pretend to understand the internet traffic when related to advertising revenue, but its just a thought?

Um, that's how I started this thread....The topic appears to have widened to the good and bad of various established CA forums...nice to think somebody else is on my wavelength.

As Rupert pointed out earlier,  the Projections appear to have adopted a thread as there own forum..

Sorry got to go, the live tdf coverage is hotting up.....