Subscribers Only area changes

Mike

Moderator
May 23, 2000
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Herefordshire, UK
www.newrider.com
I've been thinking about this section of the forum for a while and I feel it is time to make some changes to it. It is mostly a hang-over of history that we still maintain a partially private area of the forum. Most of the members in it got grandfathered in when we had various forum changes many years ago.

I think the forum overall would now be better served if we merge the three sections here - Cafe Area, Members Diaries and The Sofa into the main forum. This will make the posts in them publicly visible. At the moment thread titles can be seen by all users but not the content and in reality, that is only private to the sum of 99p and a copy and paste operation. I feel splitting content between visible and non-visible sections doesn't help the forum and valuable content is lost to some people.

I do understand if some members wish to remove content they have posted in these three sections and to aid that I will enable members to delete their own content in these sections up to the point we finally merge them into the main forum.

There are a few members who pay for access to these sections. If you've paid for a year and would like a pro-rata refund at the time of merging please let me know and I'll sort that out. Otherwise the subscription will be gratefully used for the ongoing server costs.

I've set a date of 01/07/2020 for the merge to happen so that gives nearly 2 months for any editing or deletion of posts you may want to do.

Please do consider if you do delete a post and that destroys the flow of a thread, perhaps a few edits would suffice instead?
 
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I think it's a sensible idea Mike, and will make the forum more attractive to potential members.

Given that we don't vet or consult existing subscribers about who becomes a new subscriber then the privacy was never that great, and maybe lulled people into a false sense of security if they posted things they wanted to remain private.
 
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Yes i must admit if you log out then find the new posts bit. Then look at the threads posted recently, it makes it look like its not a very active forum. So it wont attract new members to the site if it looks inactive. So on the one hand im with you on the change mike. I must admit im one of those whos guilty of also starts threads in the subscriber section, rather than the ringside chat. So maybe it should go in the top section.

On another note.
I dont look at the new members profile posts. Ive been making more of a point recently, maybe this needs some changes not sure what though. I also dont use the media posts section. Dont know how others feel about these.
 
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Yes to the merging etc. We do need more members. It's the same backbone members keeping things ticking over.

I can't see the point in the profile posts, I don't use or read them. So personally I would lose and maybe use that area for advertising or something.

Does this alter the albums? I have one private album.

Can I just take this opportunity to say thanks @Mike for keeping the forum going and online at a time when many of us need to be chatting.
 
I logged out and did a search on the name.
This is what comes up for this site on my first search.
It tells people that it is for new riders, a forum to discuss their first lessons, what to expect, how to prepare.

https://www.newrider.com › forums
New Riders | New Rider Forum

Then a search for horse forums brings this site up on the first page, number two on the list of three options.
And a few photos on a photo search.

What I like about this site is the members diaries. I use it and from what I can tell nobody else offers this, or the photo albums, another thing I like using.
 
@Mike while I wouldn't want to change the name of the forum would it be worth changing the description so it doesn't sound like it's aimed just at new riders?
 
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In that case it is picking up the description of the New Riders forum in New Rider.

102338

Might be better to rename that forum slightly so it doesn't show so prominently in the search engines.

The generic descrption for the whole site is

'Friendly horse riding and training help for all riders'

I'm sure we can improve that?
 
All Riders? New and Old Riders? New Riders and Old Hands?

It's not as easy as it sounds!
 
Yes there was someone who joined the other day looking for advise and quoted the fact that the site was for new riders.
 
It is for new riders, it's just that's not all it's for. I'd hate to lose the new riders and those in the early days of riding, as it sometimes seems there aren't a lot of places they can go.
 
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How about just 'Horse Riders' ? - I do think continuing to cling to calling it New Riders we could be missing and putting off a big section of possible new forum members and I seriously do believe we need to be encouraging as many new people as we can.

I try my very best to stay loyal as I love the ethos and general underlying good nature and helpful content on the forum. However, sometimes even visiting every day reveals nothing new or interesting or further comments on some interesting topics. . Having a rather small and restricted number of regular posters does throw fairly innocuous threads into an unnecessarily confrontational spotlight not intended by opinionated and gobby people like me. Just makes the particular post seem like a huge splash in a very, very small pond. I do feel if we could increase the regular posting from a larger number of new and existing members this sort of thing would be avoided and we could happily discuss (joust even?? ;) ) a much wider range of horse related topics, thereby making forum content more interesting to read and less 'fluffy' and discouraging of alternative opinion.

Unlike certain members I do NOT feel we have driven away the more active and helpful members, life moves on and sometimes more interesting and experienced colourful characters do drift away. But I do think with a really serious re think and presentation this forum could spring to life again and equal if not surpass its glory days and other forums out there that are still attracting far more new members than we do on here ;)
 
If I came across the name it would put me off. I'd introduced to the forum by someone else, so sadly for you, you are sort of stuck with me.
But, we do need more people thinking of topics to start.
 
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Hopefully, we get some new members!

I tend to post mostly on another horsey forum these days, as was finding I was getting bored of the same one or two members constantly disagreeing or trying to find flaws in the posts I did start. So I got bored and gave up starting anything new and now just try to comment where I can.

But, it's on the whole a lovely friendly forum, so hopefully some new members will help balance the forum :)
 
I agree we need new members to keep things flowing. I think the sooner we can merge the forums and end the subscribers only areas the better. I know we need to give people time as not everyone visits daily but I'd propose moving the merge date forward to 01/06/2020 or earlier if everyone is happy.
 
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That would be fine by me Mike.

If less frequent visitors get caught out by this and want a post deleting after that date they can always ask one of us to do it for them, though hopefully few people will want to delete posts and will either do nothing or just modify a few details.
 
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