+1 to Augie on UBB being old school, and not in a good way. I've been part of many forums - mostly related to vehicles and motorcycles I've owned that have felt much easier to navigate. I think they have a more intuitive "sticky" function at the top of relevant categories. And the many remaining dead links (pondboss.com/forums/ instead of forums.pondboss.com/) can get annoying. I think the encouragement to use photobucket image hosting and the subsequent letdown has made it more difficult to use and enjoy as well. By the way - nothing is free, folks!

Now that the negative feedback is dispensed with, this forum has been hugely helpful and valuable to me. I joined 6 months ago after a word-of-mouth recommendation from a colleague who has a pond. And I would be happy to make a donation! But I haven't. And in a world full of people asking for donations, I think someone taking the time to lay out where the money is going would be helpful to me and to others. Business do it, churches do it, etc. An annual financial/vision for next year post and discussion.

And honestly, until now, I thought my magazine subscription was paying for the forum! Consequently, I thought that people donating were just trying to earn a gold sticker from Bob or the moderators and to get recognized in the Hall of Fame... or maybe just feeling exceptionally generous.

I think there is a communication gap. Some members have been here since the beginning - for years and years - but newer members probably don't know all of the backstory and history and things that have happened with ex-members, financial structure, etc. If you want to induct a new generation and carry the fire (er, water?) forward, we need to think more about drawing in newcomers so that they don't post 3 questions and then vanish after they get an answer. We need an explanation of the present, a vision for the future, and something to work toward. Something along the lines of "these are our current operating costs, if we want to upgrade it would increase our costs to this amount, here is how the experience would improve, there are this many active users, etc."

Like I said, I have already benefited enormously from this forum, and it's something I hope to be engaged with for years to come. I'm interested in keeping it alive, let's come up with a plan to - as RAH joked - Make PondBoss Great Again!


Kris