THSCC Forums

I'm fine with that, and even fine with making the private sections *readable* by non-members.

As for the name thing, you can't enforce that unless you tie to Facebook. And even THAT doesn't REALLY fix it. And I'm not a fan of tying to Facebook. The only way you enforce the name thing is on MEMBERS. That's the biggest reason I don't want the current forum moved to public...I'd be much more in favor of that (maybe not completely, but close) if you could enforce it. *shrug*

As for new forum software that handles the registrations, is more closely tied to social media, etc, I'd say if we have people who want to tackle that work, I'm all for all of that.


--Donnie

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My Blog

I've been behind on this thread, and just read the last ~6 pages to catch up. A few points:

AXware does natively support class bumping. It's a fairly simple config change in the classing database/event configuration.

Voting and having a democratic procedure is nice in theory, but for a club like this I don't think a simple "majority rule" works for every change. Firstly, there is no central medium where all members are represented. Lots of folks frequent the forums, but not the events. Other folks frequent the events, but never even look at the forum. Same goes for meeting attendance. What this means, I think, is that the elected staff (VPs, Prez, plus the appropriate people who get impacted by the decision at hand, ex.: registrar for registration changes) need to make executive decisions, and implement them. We have smart people in charge, who I really believe have the best interest of the club and its members in mind. It's our responsibility as club members to support them (even if we disagree with decisions) and vote them in/out when we get our chance.

As stated about the website/social media/membership management/registration, it is time for a change. I am willing to help with this - but I cannot do it all, I will need help. And we will need mutual support from the people who previously held the post in its non-electronic form, like memberships, registrations, timing & scoring, etc. I also do not have any skill AT ALL in building websites, so that is certainly a large role we have to fill before doing any web site revamp. I can provide web hosting, backend server support, and assist with AXware stuff.

Do we have officer's meetings? Can I attend one?

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2015-2017 President
2014 Track VP
2013 Autox VP

2002 Subaru WRX [dd]
2002 Honda S2000 STR #3 (retired...for now)
1992 Acura Integra ChumpCar #118 (retired)
2004 Toyota 4Runner V8

http://beastmoderacing.com

Wow....self-railroaded. I've heard about it, but hadn't seen it occur in vivo.

Bravo, sir. Bravo.

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Steve Carter
1972 Datsun 240Z-- resto pics at http://picasaweb.google.com/srcartermd
2007 GPW Honda S2000-- STR 86

Only for THSCC-IT interests, of course.

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2015-2017 President
2014 Track VP
2013 Autox VP

2002 Subaru WRX [dd]
2002 Honda S2000 STR #3 (retired...for now)
1992 Acura Integra ChumpCar #118 (retired)
2004 Toyota 4Runner V8

http://beastmoderacing.com

Post.
of.
the.
year.

You guys have great ideas, keep pushing things forward.

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02 Focus SVT
STF 9

In times past when I was a more active member I was occasionally allowed to attend an "officer's meeting." The club was much smaller then and most things were voted on at monthly meetings. With the now larger club it is not as practical to bring everything to a vote. It also makes for a boring meeting have to bring so many decisions up in public.

On the forum issue I am in favor of opening up the on track topics to be read by all. I am in favor of keeping real names for posting and thus members only. I think we could allow non members to post to an expanded guest section and keep the current general topics members only.

I think we could also open the newsletter to public reading.

I was once an active auto-x er. Part of the reason I drifted out of running was that our events got so big and lost some of the loose feel we had. In order to run so many cars we had to bee more regimented in our time scheduling. The events became less of a social event. And since most events were sold out you could not come and run if your weekend freed up at the last minuite. During my time we also did class bumping so there were not so many trophies handed out. There were also fewer classes too. A bigger part of my drifing away was increasing costs of running and a downsizing of my income which I still have not overcome.

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George Bright Member # 141
One of the youngest of the old farts.
Yes I voted against you joining the club.

It's the manual part that really sucks. And it's manual because membership is still a wholly manual process... a piece of paper is filled out, brought to a meeting, read before whomever is there, and voted on. (has anyone ever been turned down?) I do not know the fate of the papers after that point. It would be great to have an electronic process, or at least an electronic version of all those papers (someone would have to key them in.) At such a point, validation is automatic... a forum account is created by member application. Account renewal / deactivation would similarly be automatic.

Manually sync'ing the forum list to the member list, by paper, is indeed a pain. (and in my opinion, a little insane.)

Am I volunteering to fix this... not if I can avoid it. :-)

Do we need to vote on new members? I know we have some peculiar requirements due to our club nature with the IRS, is that one of them?

Could we just jump to making fun of new members instead of voting on them?

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In need of car.

Agreed.

I really think I remember that voting was a requirement. There was some comedy gold in some of those apps.

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02 Focus SVT
STF 9

I'll be dead honest, Ram, Carlton and I were dissuaded about membership automation when we were considering a retrofit. I think it'd be exponentially easier to start from scratch using modern frameworks, technologies, tooling, software etc. And doing so in parallel so that new functionality (website, forum, registration, membership etc) could be demoed while the site continue as usual until it's satisfactorily hardened before go-live. I'm sure between Zach, Noah and Carlton we can mock a webserver similar enough to our web hosting to test on before the swap (or just get new hosting). Me, Jeremy, Ram and Carlton can do web/app dev.

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2011/2012 Autox VP
2013/2014.5 President
2013 Top Gun

2015 Fit

22R-EC => 4G63 => D16Y7 + D16Y8 => EJ255 + K24Z2 => K20Z3 + K24Z2 => K24Z2 + M54 => L15B

That's a bad measure as there are rather few events per year, and there's really not a lot to talk about. Does Chin, TrackDaze, AV measure their track programs by forum traffic? (no) A lot of the THSCC track people don't use the forums (and some aren't even registered.) People who frequent track days are interested in track time; internet forums may have little value to them.

As for the lack of "youth interest"... (what counts as young?) Track time is expensive. Track cars are (can be) expensive. I was in my 30's before I had the income to dispose of in motorsports. And it was years later before I started disposing of it :-) Autox can be cheap, but the more you get into it, it can get just as expensive. Rally should have more interest, but the younger crowd has grown up with dirt bikes and ATVs and thus have little interest in doing that with far more expensive cars. I'd do rally if I had a car for it -- the bug isn't much of an off-road critter.

TL;DR motorsports are costly; people don't have as much money to burn.

I'm not saying new members should be automated, just "electronic" -- and that doesn't necessarily mean "on the web". The forum is a SQL database. Comparing that to a stack of paper is not ideal. Even a Micro$oft Access "db" would be better. (might a bit tricky linking it to the forum, but still doable.) A savable, printable, PDF form would be nice. (Rodney cannot always make sense of what's written on some applications.) However, I do think an approved new member app should generate a forum user; then there's no guess work or validation of a new forum registration. (registration can be turned off entirely)

[disclaimer: I've not used access for years. And no one who understands databases will call it a database; 'tho it can talk to one.]

Regarding my prior comment about young drivers, or actually the lack thereof, it wasn't based on an opinion of mine but actual factual data. I posted some charts in another thread recently. The net of it is that you can add that new demographic trend of the millennial generation waiting much longer to get a driver's license along with a growing number who don't even obtain one -- add that on top of the expense issues which have grown significantly, including in just in the past few years. The whole point was that these trends were not favorable growth prospects for track programs...all headwinds that should at least be understood.

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Current stable:
2019 BMW M2 Competition slicktop 6MT
2011 BMW M3 sedan slicktop 6MT
2007 BMW 328i wagon (slushbox for now)
1975 CanAm 125MX2

Yup, automated as in electronic, no manual excel spreadsheet, real db (mysql, postgres, etc) generated PDFs based on web input etc etc. You obviously didn't see my powerpoints last year .

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2011/2012 Autox VP
2013/2014.5 President
2013 Top Gun

2015 Fit

22R-EC => 4G63 => D16Y7 + D16Y8 => EJ255 + K24Z2 => K20Z3 + K24Z2 => K24Z2 + M54 => L15B

It would be nice if you fugNutz would at least learn the correct spelling of my last name. I've been a member since 2004 for Crissakes........

On to more serious stuff.............. yeh, right.........

Public Forums / Public Participation requires more Admin participation to keep the "Brand" pure and on track. Trolls can devalue the brand and in a hurry. Just think about some of the pissing contests I have seen since I have been here............

Additionally, going public will mean that opinions not commonly held within this tight knit AutoX group will be brought up and feelings will get hurt. Butt-Hurt I believe is the new term. Ya'll can't handle my criticisms and those are mostly tongue-in-cheek. Granted I am a complete stranger to most of you newbs but you know where to find me if we need to share a brewski or two to sort out our differences.

The Track Program Forums................ absolutely they should be log in and join. Given the various factors contributing to the downturn in people seeking education, we need to be as visible and accessible as we possibly can be thru whatever means we can muster. And Hot-Damn, I hope the AutoX Program can prop up the Track Program.......... but if Ya'll want to prop up the Track Program how about Ya'll start attending some of the club sponsored events................. ????

IMO, RallyX has run its course. It needs to run whatever it can support.

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BenchWarmer Motorsports

another one of those damn LeMons heads

just another Chump

we are an Autocross Club Dammit............