Cosford 2011 (10th April)

[Weaver]

Nothing wrong with having a section of the forum for people who are in a particular club to discuss it's business privately: after, all there's no law or moral principle that says you can't have a private discussion face-to-face, so why not on-line?

However, I would STRONGLY urge the admin team to make the forum header visible to non-SIG members on the main menu, with note explaining why it's blocked to them (I'm not the expert, but I have seen this done on other forums which apparently use the same the software). Why? Because in the past, I've seen another forum, one that I cared about deeply, utterly, utterly destroyed by the sh1t storm that blew up when it came out that it had a secret section, even though said section was only created to protect certain members from aggressive cyber-stalking and trolling. No amount of explanation could repair the breach of trust, and I still know people who won't talk to each other IRL because of it.

Please don't let that happen here.

[Supertom]

Just thought I'd throw in my bit here as well - there really isn't anything going on in there that would interest the non-SIG members - it's not some secret, exclusive society or whatnot, just a section for club business.  It REALLY is just for the UK guys to organize events in the UK, like meeting locations, show tables, and various other items.  This colonial doesn't even look at it much as it doesn't involve him (unless it has plans for retaking the continent). 

As emphasized earlier, it's not a secret club where everybody in there is wearing tuxedos with masks and sipping sherry while making snide remarks about the riff-raff on the general forum or folks in robes hiding the secret existence of descendants of Jesus or some nonsense like that.

[The Wooksta!]

We told you not to mention that - no more Sherry for you!  We'll have to change the name now...


Anyway, if you're not a SIG member and have no wish to join, why would you need to know that that section is there?  So you can rail away against how you're allegedly barred?  How you're badly treated for being kept in the dark?  Conversely, as someone who pays his subs, why should those who haven't paid and who are not members have access to something I have to shell out my hard earned for?

The SIG is widely advertised and Martin says he's Gruppenfuhrer in his signature - for cliff's sake, the various forum members making noises now have even displayed as part of the SIG so how can they claim no knowledge?  

It seems that, like so many other things these days, some people want everything for nothing.  If you want the benefits of a club, you join said club.  But if you don't join, you cannot complain about what goes on.

[Martin H]

ok , this thread has drifted way off course. I would recommend that the member who started this thread or a member of the admin team lock it down.