Suggestions to fixing and organizing the 928oc site

Ed, you are doing an excellent job and I look forward to the development of the tool program. Just let's me know what, if anything, you need from me. If you feel we need a new forum for the program and you find it is widely supported, then I am happy to accommodate. Keep up the good work!!

How about a spot for build or project threads?

I enjoy reading start to finish picture documentation of people's projects. Most of the motor related sites I use have such a forum and I find them very interesting. I know some members have some really neat projects in the works and it great to preserve the entire build process in single thread.

Or, one could just create a build thread and drop it into the general discussion?

thx
Tass

Tass 928;12604 wrote: How about a spot for build or project threads?

I enjoy reading start to finish picture documentation of people's projects. Most of the motor related sites I use have such a forum and I find them very interesting. I know some members have some really neat projects in the works and it great to preserve the entire build process in single thread.

Or, one could just create a build thread and drop it into the general discussion?

thx
Tass

Personally, I have used the Member Car Profile forum for this purpose as others have also. I think that would be the best place to include such posts.

Maybe this will be viewed as self-centered on my behalf, but it seems to me that the better approach to this subject may be to avoid the apparent duplication of efforts that seems to be built in here. We are starting to do a periodic Newsletter for email to all of the members. In that publication we intend to include just about any kind of technical article that any member might like to submit to be included. Such articles will be edited, and/or even written, by me and may be broken down into segments to be published in a series. I am going to initiate that kind of series about one of my anticipated 928 projects and it will start in the next issue of The Shark Vibes. Successive segments of the series will depend on progress on the particular project.

One thing President James has mentioned in the context of The Shark Vibes is that technical articles submitted there could then be expanded upon and then put in the OC Forum somewhere after being published, or simply being put there just as published in The Shark Vibes.

At this point, since this Journal has essentially never actually come to life, I suggest that we abandon it and in its place we simply lodge each issue of The Shark Vibes, in sequence, in its own forum or subject within the OC Forum, and then perhaps add some sort of index so members could locate technical articles, or maybe even any kind of article, and then go to it in the sequence of Issues that have been published and then stored there.

In fact, I will resent it if a member actually submits a technical article to be put in the Journal without having an opportunity to first publish it is the Newsletter. If it is published first in the Journal, I will not be inclined to republish it in The Shark Vibes. Just me.

The short of it is that I think we should, at some point, begin to look at The Shark Vibes as the "Journal" of the 928 Owners Club. Maybe it is too soon for the rest of you to see it that way, because I am at this point, in the overall heirarchy of things, just the tail trying to wag the dog. I respect that all of you will need to see just how capable and willing I am to hold up my end of this overall effort.

What I suggest is that the name of the subject Forum be changed to:

The Shark Vibes, Journal of the 928 OC

Some questions......
If the Journal and Vibes were combined, how would submissions that didn't make it into Vibes be handled?

Is there an advantage to the members to articles being published immediately?

Is there an advantage to members to articles being published in a consistent format, .pdf, for example.

Or, in the spirit of using the Forum structure for all OC member interactions, should the editor create a post from whatever format the article(s) were submitted?

If the Journal and Vibes were combined, would there be a searchable index of articles?

How would 'letters to the editor' be handled?

Vibes is not designed or intended to be a magazine. It is an informative newsletter to keep all members up on what is happening and/or has just happened since the last Vibes to introduce them to new members, new products for 928's, new businesses catering to our cars and to let them know what new articles have been uploaded in to the "Journal" area of the forum.

The Journal is for FULL length articles but is also NOT intended to be a magazine. It is to be A LA CARTE articles so you can start reading an article online and if you like it you can finish it there or download the pdf file of it and finish it on your e-reader whenever you can get around to it.

The Tech forum is completely different and designed so you can easily find the articles you are looking for. Some folks might need special tools (others may not) so the plan is to have the Tool Loaner thread as its own (very short) forum (since we only have like 3 or 4 tools to loan out so far).

The member articles for the "Journal" will be published after they have been reviewed at the very least or edited at best, but we need a good editor for that. Austin can convert them to pdf and post them for us. Barbara Koster is handling the acquisition of all of these types of articles.