Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss Labels??

Already water proof. Why would you want wires submerged in water anyway?

I was just trying to break it up a bit.

I have no personal issues with kicking in a few bucks to help out. What they do with that, is up to them. Good, Bad or Ugly!

For personal entertainment!!!!!!!!

Well, I'd like to say that I've got my thoughts in order and feel ready to comment yet again. Truthfully however, I'm still trying to sort it all out.

I guess it's best if I let it go right here. I was able to touch on an issue that has troubled me since its inception, and there has been very good commentary from both sides of the field. If nothing else, a different perspective has been exposed, one that was apparently, previously unrecognized. And I think that's a good thing.

As for the social aspect of PondBoss....I'm working on it, but It seems I have a long way to go.

Tony

kenc, where can I get some of those stars for my tool belt? I'm always doing home improvement projects, but this is the first I've heard about the tool belt stars. Surely I've earned some of those!!

My wife was a first grade teacher so I had a ready supply. If you are like me, you will get more mashed fingers then stars.

Might I say a very good job by all. The input helps. I know I had not paid much attention to these matters pre-thread.

Randy and Dudley - you guys are spot on again as usual. Thanks.

It was just a curiousity of mine that started this thread never thought it'd go one page let alone 4. And I guess alot of other members had the same wonders too.. Good input here and I'm glad everyone could stay civilized and state their own opinion..

BGK and all,

I was offline the last two days and when I got back online I saw this thread and felt compeled to post. Sorry if this thread was being sun seted, But I felt like I needed to add a few cents to the discussion.

It is clear to me to see that Bob and Mike added a donate button to the site for the obvious reasons. This site is part on a business, but Pond Boss is more than a business. it is a community and a passion.

Everyone here chooses how much they give and how much they take. Bob and Mike do not judge, after all, this is their passion and dream.

The truth of the matter is that if you look at the HOF 2012, you will see that 42 people donated. There are over 9800 members, with about 1000 core members in my estimation. The lurkers are even more numerous. So history tells us that donations don't fund forums. Businesses or passionate groups (save the fuzzy animal.org) do. So how does this forum do it, simple Bob and Mike choose to keep it running one way or another. For that I am grateful. And because of their passion, I have been inspired to participate as I have.

So what about labels, well there are two parts. Part one, some one has to do the work to keep the site up to date, and that is a lot of work and as we see some times there are problems. Part two what are the meanings to the labels. There have been several well intentioned attempts to codify the meaning of the labels, some have been successful and others have not.

For me the only labels I care about are as follows:

I am a good Christian trying to do Gods work
I am a good husband
I am a good father to my children
I am a good american giving back to my country
I am a good Texan giving back to my state
I am a good steward of our land and all it has to offer

I need to be able to look myself in the mirror and know I am a good person and that I am trying to be a better person than I was yesterday, because the me of tomorrow is a better person yet.

So where am I going with this, the simple answer is this , contribute if you want, how you want because it is part of your passion, Pond Boss is a business and a community. If you want or need labels, earn them for yourself, I have a wall full of them, but the only label I need is that I am a good man trying to do my best.

I love this community, I have found dam few like it. You guys and gals make it what it is, one of the best on the net.

Thanks and well stated !

My turn.
When we started the forum, in 1998, it just seemed like the thing to do. It was pretty cool, even early on. At the beginning, I was the only person answering questions and I learned a lot, too. I'd wait until everyone in the house was asleep, kid's homework was done, dishes clean and put away and when everyone was down, I'd go online with our dial-up internet and answer questions. Then, after a few weeks or months, Bill Cody showed up. Soon, there was Dave Davidson and others who began to chime in. Later, the software we bought was overloaded and took up too much bandwidth. Our webmaster, JP Greeson, suggested we buy a different software, which we reluctantly did. We lost all the data from that first forum. We basically started over. In that new software, which we still currently use, were all kinds of cool stuff. The number of posts you made determined your standing. That's where the "fingerling" and "lunker" thing comes from. The stars came from rankings from other members. That seemed pretty cool at the time. But, then the little personality conflicts started to arise. Someone would answer a question and someone else would dispute it. Then, the first person would rank the disputer with one star or something. The conflicts basically would decrease the number of stars someone had. This started probably in 2009-2010, through there somewhere. I started getting pm's and emails and even phone calls from people who were distressed about being targeted to decrease their ranking and decreases in their stars. I thought about for about one minute (seems like) and decided to do away with the stars, so we turned it off. I certainly didn't have time to referee guys upset about their stars. We didn't take away anyone's stars or even consider it because we were paying for IT help and I didn't want to spend money on the time it would take to find everyone who had stars (there were probably 3-4,000 at that time). So, we left it alone.
The labels of ambassador and field correspondent came two years ago when we rebuilt the Pond Boss website. As you can see, the Pond Boss website and the forum are two different, autonomous creatures. The forum is designed to do exactly what it does. The website is designed to spread the word about Pond Boss, its extended family and to sell subscriptions, books, and other products. That page you linked to that references "fingerling I", ...to "Lunker" was set up to give some organization to the donation program for the forum. The whole donation idea came about from moderator discussions. Honestly, I wasn't thrilled about it, but the idea was to generate some revenue to help offset the costs of keeping the site up. If it helps, that donation page you guys linked to was launched with the new website in January, 2011 and it has received no activity. We've never seen a contribution through that page, which is okay with me.
Early on, our forum members didn't want us to offer banner advertising, so we resisted that for quite some time. But, it costs well over $5,000 per year just to keep it rolling. That covers our server and 24hr technical support in case of issues, which we've had on quite a few occasions.
When we started the Ambassador and Field Correspondent Progam, we asked for volunteers. The Ambassador's "job" is to help organize meetings, spread the gospel of pond management and help bring more people to Pond Boss and encourage them to buy subscriptions to the magazine. The Field Correspondent's "job" is to write about things of interest, like local meetings, neighbor's ponds, people and what they do with their land and water and then I'll publish those articles and photos on the website. Some will make the cut for the magazine, too.
But, since we've been short-handed for a long time, we didn't really push that program when we first started it. Now, with Matt Rayl on board, we will. Walter Bassano is working on "Pond Boss Connect" as we speak. He just sent his latest draft to Matt and I for review. You all will want to hear about "Pond Boss Connect". It's going to be a meaningful way to connect people and grow the Pond Boss family.
There's the truth and reality about the stars, ambassadors, field correspondents and the hall of fame.

On to some other things pertinent to this thread...Pond Boss Connect is just one thing we're working on. Matt, Debbie and I spent four hours Saturday with the guy who helped us start our forum, JP Greeson. JP runs a number of forums. The Texas Fishing Forum is his biggest and best, yet. He knows the forum business. Part of Matt's first tasks since joining our team about a month ago has been to analyze both the website and the forum. He's spent a lot of time doing that. Our stats are pretty darned impressive, actually amazing. For every member online at any given time, we have 8-9 "lurkers" at that same time. We plan to try to capitalize on that traffic without disturbing the chemistry of the forum.

Part of what we did Saturday was to go into the back office of the Texas Fishing Forum with JP to see how that thing works. He and Matt will be having some good tutorials over the next couple of weeks so Matt can have a better understanding how to change things, add things and so on.

We intend to increase the number of advertisers we have, plus add more advertising spaces and using some the white space on each side of the forum. In a few weeks, you'll see some minor changes in the way things look.

Pond Boss is driven financially by the sale of subscriptions and advertising. At the same time, the Pond Boss family on the forum drives quite a bit of business to many of the forum participants. But, the most profound thing, to me, is the camaraderie and relationships that have been formed. Just like Eric says, there are things that most people don't even know about that go on with the relationships from here. I'm constantly amazed at the stories I hear. We've even had it happen to us during a time of need. The people who frequent this forum are caring folks, helping each other in many, many ways.

Just so everyone knows...we won't make this forum a paying forum. We do intend to try to sell as many subscriptions as we can, because we are a business and I completely believe in the mission of Pond Boss. We want more people to join this family and we want to have a voice. The reason I started the, Pond Boss is _____ thread is because I wanted to see how people on the forum view us. Those statements fundamentally show exactly what we are. Pond Boss is a cause, it's a feeling, it's a giant book of friendly knowledge, that feeds the Pond Boss family, which feeds Pond Boss. Oh, and yes, there is a magazine, too. We'll be helping as many people as we can and in turn, we expect everyone on this forum to help each other in ways we can. Mike Otto and I can make this forum available, so we do. You guys offer your insight, experience and knowledge. We all do what we can and what we want to do. That's life. Some folks can offer some money to help offset the costs, so they do. Some want to be recognized, some don't. Some are indifferent about being recognized. For the record, when a donation comes in, we note who made it and then they are added to the Hall of Fame. But, often, the donation is made by someone who's forum handle the girls in the office don't recognize. On those occasions, we can't add the hall of fame label because we don't know who it is. If someone would rather be anonymous, just note that and that's how it will be.

I love the Pond Boss family and it's good to receive this input from everyone. Keep it coming. We know we'll need to receive ideas and input and we love it. Now, we've got a big enough team we can actually do more things with Pond Boss and the website and the forum.

Wow Bob thanks for the clarification.. Also I can't believe there was conflict and arguments on this site at one time.

"With malice toward none, with charity for all." A. Lincoln

Here's something else you guys might find interesting. We didn't have moderators until 2004.

And didn't need them until then.

Need them, want them, respect them, and abuse them. Dave, IMO you guys are the glue that hold all this together.

FireIsHot,

Here, Here! Special thx to the mods.

Bob....I know you get tons of free advice, but one thing you guys may think about with your subscription department is to automatically notify people that give a gift subscription when the gift subscription is about to run out. I gave out a few gift subscriptions a couple of years ago to try and spread the "PondBoss gospel". I assume some of those gift subscriptions have run out. I may have re-subscribed a few of those folks if I had known their subscription was about to run out. I know I could have called your office and found out...but ya know sometimes we get busy and forget about stuff like that...so a reminder e-mail or card showing the person had renewed themselves or that the subscription was running out would be nice. Just a thought....

Since I joined the forum back in early 2009, this forum has grown an awful lot. For the originals, this forum can in some ways be almost unrecognizable. So many new faces have come along. Some old timers have not been seen for a while. Sometimes when I look back at extremely old threads, almost everyone posting in them isn't active anymore. Makes me wonder where they went... I guess things change in life. I know since I joined this forum I have gotten engaged, gotten married, had a baby girl and have a lot less time to be on here. I have also met some of the nicest people on earth through this forum. I look forward to seeing where the PB forum progresses from here. No matter where it goes, there is no doubt that it will continue to be the greatest place on earth to find information on building and managing a private water.

CJ, I may be one of the guilty ones not responding to questions because of two reasons....
One is that I don't feel qualified unless I have experience in the topic - I only share expereince.

Secondly, I have heard the same old questions and tired old answers so many times that they have become boring.
I scan the topics to see items of interest and to keep up with my friends.

Too much clutter and joking around on "new" format
for me - but what do I know....

... Chaff and grain together;
Certain that a faithful hand
Will take and sift them,
Keep what is worth keeping
And with the breath of kindness
Blow the rest away.
Dinah Craik

Nice work guys.

" There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. …. I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. "

I didn't realize you were a Byrds fan.

George, I don't consider you an inactive poster. I was referring to posters who literally have not been on the forum in 5+ years...

New members do sometimes ask the same or substantially similar questions to ones that have already been asked over and over again. Iff they simply searched a bit they could find a suitable answer. I try to be helpful when I can regardless of if they are duplicate questions or not.

Perhaps it's a good thing I don't post as much anymore. Dwight can't make a new updated Excell spread sheet comparing posting statistics, it just wouldn't be near as entertaining as the past one.

CJ since I've been here I've asked all those repetitive questions myself, and they've been asked many many times by multiple posters since me.. The search function is just not efficient enough to find anything you need so you might aswell just ask it again.. I'm glad I can answer those easy question now so I don't mind answering them and I still refer some to the search function..

I have good success with the search function but it takes work. It could be better. If I have a real hard one you can Google it as per Dwight. I don't do that often. Research is one of the big things we do in my profession so it helps with this to.

My hope is people will at least go read a link given to answer their question. I am real glad when people hang around long enough to start answering the questions.