Engaging with new drivers

RickyBeam · **Posted:** Fri Sep 27, 2013 3:23 pm

JamesMilko wrote:

If you have spambots signing up and posting on your forums your forums are configured horribly. This has been a solved problem for several years.

Indeed. It's called human moderators.

Andrew Jonell · **Joined:** Mon Mar 23, 2009 6:43 pm **Posts:** 1350

Manual authentication is unnecessary.

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Fri Sep 27, 2013 11:35 pm

JamesMilko wrote:

If you have spambots signing up and posting on your forums your forums are configured horribly. This has been a solved problem for several years.

First let me say it has been a good 12 plus months since I have looked into this. But as recently as whenever I looked it does take actual work to keep spambots out. I think that any popular forum software (such as ours) is a target and there are nefarious code libraries and/or tools that are built specifically to target this software.

Last I checked many forms of captcha were broken including the one used in our software. We effectively had to use a secret question process (which is part of the core software and is one of the configurable anti spam solutions) but it also requires some level of human intervention to make it work. But like I said I haven't seen what the current situation is regarding the battle between the spammers and the forum software authors. The pendulum swings back and forth regarding who has the upper hand.

Bottom line keeping spammers out is doable. I doubt it is easy to do without some level of human oversight. We do it today on this forum and the solution is not tied to open/closed nature of this forum. So I think everyone has missed what I think IMHO is the hard part in all of this. That is the management of users from a THSCC membership perspective. Verifying membership is an order a magnitude more difficult than filtering out spammers (from an admin task perspective). And again it is mostly difficult because of our early 90's tech method of member management.

Richard

Steven Carter · **Posted:** Sat Sep 28, 2013 5:26 pm

Since we have two visible-to-the-public subforums already (Swap and Sell and Visitors) why not make the Visitor forum accessible to new non-members? New accounts still have to be moderator-approved, and would/could still be real name-based, just make posting in the visitor subforum not reliant on being a member. If that is already the case, then it seems that exposure to spambots is minimal given how little traffic is in that subforum.

I am Certainly not an expert in forum software but that seems to be an easy pilot program.

shawnwhipple · **Joined:** Wed Aug 20, 2003 6:28 pm **Posts:** 603

I've been thinking about this since Michael originally posted his thoughts about opening up the forums. When we started up the forums, I was originally in the "keep it closed" camp but, I was considering that it might be a good idea to go more "open" format. It makes sense that the club should be able to use our successful forum to help encourage and engage new membership.

There was a more recent comment on this thread from John Byers that has really put me back in the "keep it closed" camp again. Every other club in NC has an open forum and their forums have very low participation. I've checked out a couple their forums recently and the content usually follows this pattern.
1. Hey we are having an event.
2. Here are some details about that event.
3. If you're lucky you get. Hey we had an event and here are some pictures, results, etc.
And about that's it.

The Tarheel forum has what all successful forums need and that is active participation. I honestly feel that one of the main reasons we have that participation because of the closed format. Personally, when I post something here I know the audience will be my friends that I race with. They are worth the effort and time it takes to type something out. The club members also don't require much moderation, with only the occasional thread that gets out of hand and has to be locked.

Having said that. I do recognize that the club probably does need a better way to engage new people and I honestly don't know what the best to accomplish that would be?

I'm hesitant to say this but, I do think the clubs overall online presence could stand to be refreshed. Of course, I'm not an IT guy so I have no real idea of what it would take to do that. If we ever make an effort to change it I'd be willing to generate content to help.

Donnie Barnes · **Posted:** Sun Sep 29, 2013 4:57 pm

I agree with Shawn. Open this forum and I'd likely skip it in favor of other more public forums I already frequent.

--Donnie

JohnByers · **Posted:** Mon Sep 30, 2013 8:32 am

I know I'm in the group of one of the "other guys" but a real perspective of the open format group I felt was necessary to paint the entire picture.

My suggestion, try something else in the meantime. I made a banner up with our direct FB link and we put it up at all our events and when we go to C&C or any other NCR events, it has helped some

Bill Aycock · **Joined:** Wed Sep 26, 2012 1:55 pm **Posts:** 117

As a "relatively" new member, I'll put forth my 2 cents.

From where I stand, you've really got 2 separate issues here: (i) helping people find out about the club, what it does, and how to participate, and (ii) keeping those people engaged.

For me personally, the first part was the real challenge, and I only learned about the club by accident. I knew nothing about autocross, knew no one who participated in it, and wasn't really sure such a thing existed around here. I was checking out the VIR website, as I wanted to take my car to the track, when I looked at their calendar and saw a particular weekend was reserved for a group called the Tarheel Sports Car Club. I then googled the club and found the website. I found the website to be a great resource in terms of finding out about the club, when events were, what I needed to do to participate, and when the meetings were. It was sheer luck that I found it however.

This is where I think facebook can be really handy. It allows for a level of visibility that you are not going to find anywhere else, particularly not for free. All it takes is a single "Person X is attending THSCC Autocross this Saturday" appearing in a buddy's facebook feed, or a couple of pictures and videos, and you have people one click away from learning more.

The second half of the equation, keeping people engaged after they have done an event or two is a separate challenge. I pretty much decided I wanted to be a member as soon as I found the website. I actually came to a club meeting out of the clear blue, before ever having attended an auto-x, so I may be somewhat of an anomaly, I was just determined to get into this thing. Other people will likely require more coaxing, and have my experience in the reverse order: event -> repeat attendance -> Member -> Meetings. Here is where I think the forum can be useful.

If you would permit people who have attended events to join the board, then you would be able to maintain the closed nature of the forums, but permit newbies to browse and interact. You could print up some business cards with the forum address and instructions on how to sign up and they could be passed out during the Novice walk. Of course, if you deal with it this way, processing applications should happen on a timely basis. I don't remember how long it was when I signed up before I got my account activated, but I think it was a day or 2. The quicker people can get in and read and ask questions, the more likely it is they will come back. Maybe the cards could include a pre-set password, allowing instant access?

Anyway, I don't believe that you have to completely open the forums up to make them an effective tool for keeping people interested, you just need to streamline the process so that people know about it and can get in and ask their question when they are thinking about it.

Karl Shultz · **Posted:** Mon Sep 30, 2013 3:32 pm

I haven't been to a Cars and Coffee in a pretty long time. Are they still well attended? That could be a way to get some exposure. Not necessarily to go there and recruit and hand out flyers or anything like that - just to go be social and introduce ourselves.

JohnByers · **Posted:** Mon Sep 30, 2013 3:45 pm

Karl Shultz wrote:

I haven't been to a Cars and Coffee in a pretty long time. Are they still well attended? That could be a way to get some exposure. Not necessarily to go there and recruit and hand out flyers or anything like that - just to go be social and introduce ourselves.

This has been a secret success for NCR in the last season and a half. We have been growing steadily the last two seasons and this is 100% one of the reasons why for us. Get out there and shake some hands!

Pete Guthrie · **Posted:** Fri Oct 04, 2013 7:02 pm

without starting a firestorm, i think limiting it would be prudent. I surf youtube waaaaay too much to know that being totally open, would be a bad idea. Far too many people post utter nonsense on youtube, just for the reason to post something. If we do this, I think getting useful information from the forum would disappear. I am all for new people joining the club, i realllllly am. I want the club to be huge, so many of my subie freinds want ot do autocross and rally cross. They really do, but I think if we open the forum up to the "youtube children" as i call them. I think the forum quality would go downhill. This could be discussed and voted upon at the meet and the christmas party most effectively.Let everyone vote upon this at the party, as well as who goes into what department in the club. This would be most effective i think.

Brett_Murphy · **Joined:** Thu Jan 12, 2012 2:02 pm **Posts:** 355

A hybrid forum is the compromise that I may solve some of the issues Michael C. is talking about, and the Facebook group is probably helping, too.

Word of mouth may work, but odds are pretty good that the car enthusiasts we all know are already in a club or are interested in events we don't have (drifting, car shows, etc.)

I've tried to get a few people involved in autocross and the primary a few concerns that always come up are:
1. It will break my car (this is always said as an absolute statement of fact)
2. When it does break my car, my warranty will be voided.
3. I don't know what I am doing and I don't want to embarrass myself
4. I don't know anybody in the club and I'm nervous
5. This all sounds really espensive

In my opinion, points three and four are probably the biggest reasons for most people showing up. They kept me away for *years* even though I had an interest in driving. Since we don't present ourselves as welcoming and we don't go out and try to recruit new people, the assumption is that we're not that friendly and we're not that interested in new people. Obviously I got over it and decided, "Screw it", came to a few events and well, here I am. I even made the jump into autocross this year.

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