Quote Originally Posted by Curran View Post
Ciars is the owner and has been renewing the hosting. Site sponsors had funded most of the earlier subs but he definitely paid the last one of his own pocket and if not a few beforehand.

Spam by PM is difficult to control from my perspective. I approve anyone who looks like they are a genuine username / email address....granted I should check more frequently but there usually isnt many new profiles. Anyone can set up a profile and PM without prior approval and this is why the odd one will always creep in!

I discussed recently with Ciars about how to proceed. Personally I prefer the forum over Facebook route but the forum will continue to struggle to bring in new blood given most young folk are using social media type groups and that combined with the fact that a hell of a lot less people becoming of age are into cars than there were when we were in our teens into 20s.

Open to suggestions on how to liven up the place, even if it's just for the people who are active. I feel a planned cars and coffee would get the ball rolling on solidifying the community!
Thanks Dave, especially for all your efforts at steering the ship.

Firstly, I think it’s unfair on Ciars to be footing the costs single handedly and I don’t think it’s realistic to expect sponsors to pay the bills.

While I appreciate there’s a general debate about the decline of forums and dwindling interest in cars in general, I think we need to decide if we want this forum to survive and if so sponsor it ourselves, and not worry about the macro picture.

I like the structure of a forum compared to FB groups or WhatsApp chats for the reasons mentioned previously and am more than happy to share the costs of running it.
Whether that’s split between 2, 5, 20 or 100 people is a detail.

Secondly, I think there needs to be more mods to monitor new registrants and posts, which would share the burden then.