Is it about to get busy on here? Blatchat to close...

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I was a member of the Lotus Seven club for many years... I even kept up my membership for a while after I sold the car as it was such a good forum... I gave up when I felt it became over moderated and many of the characters that made it good left.

Although I couldn't post any longer, it was always on my browsing list as I really liked the simple, quick, clean look of the forum. Sometimes interesting threads on there... Seems that is about to change and they are migrating to a new forum...

I had a brows today and it seems members are not happy! (I can see why!) Why the hell the management felt the need to change from what I thought was one of the best forum layouts I visit is beyond me...

maybe its about to get busy on here

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PurpleMeanie said:

buzzer said:

Why the hell the management felt the need to change from what I thought was one of the best forum layouts I visit is beyond me...

A forum (and all the other parts of the club's tech) is so much more than "layout" though, isn't it. It is about underlying architecture.

BC was hand crafted by one person, who did a great job. But it is probably entirely unsupportable by any one else now, and at risk of technology redundancy that could be very damaging.

Moving to a free and open platform, that has a huge user base, thousands of modules, and is largely tech neutral is a sensible decision. In fact the only decision, given "let's hope Barry never gets fed up or unable to support it" isn't very clever.

Yes, it looks a bit weird. But that is easily fixable.

A small number of people are arguing about the colour the front door whilst ignoring the fact the house is on the edge of a cliff.

Difficult decision, very difficult. But you could never do it by trying to please everyone. You had to make the change, then sort out the minor bits. And a certain type of person was going to complain, whatever happened.

The whole L7C tech was close to end of life. It needed changing before it HAD to be changed.

PH has had similar problems, the classified are still a bit of a pain, but given they wanted to make much more of that area (revenue generating!) the original architecture wouldn't support it.

To be honest though, this is 2014. Opinion in web technology stopped being relevant decades ago. Data will tell us whether it is used more or less. I am willing to bet there will be more daily traffic in 6-12 months time.

Edited by PurpleMeanie on Monday 29th September 08:47

after reading that... I can see why it needs to change... its just that the replacement is so poor! lets hope they sort it quick!

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ash73 said:

So the Caterham owners club still calls itself the Lotus 7 club? Missed opportunity for a re-brand.

Ah... But many caterham owners like the lotus link and are keen to keep it... plus there are some (I wonder what the percentage is?) genuine Lotus 7's in the club.

I was at the local bikers café one day sitting in the sunshine with a few fellow bikers. A Caterham pulls onto the car park and a guy and his girlfriend get out, collect a coffee and sit at one of the tables outside...

Fellow biker says "nice car mate, did you build it yourself?"... Yes, says the Caterham owner proudly... another biker chips in... "I always fancied building myself a kit car" to which the Caterham driver replies "its not a kit car its Caterham, its the same as a Lotus 7"

the conversation degenerated from there...A fairly heated exchange followed, which I found strange as the bikers were genuinely impressed with the car, but the owner was emphatic it was not a kit car... and kept referencing Lotus, as if caterham had little kudos and Lotus did...

Caterham owner leaves his coffee and flounces off...

I always found it a bit strange owning a Caterham and being in the Lotus 7 club, a car that stopped being produced in the early 70's

I never really understood why it never changed to reference both cars...

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Eugene7 said:

And I agree, for any website/forum to not be responsive in this day and age is a major no-no!
All the websites/forums I do are responsive...

in this context what do you mean by responsive?

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ash73 said:

Supplied in bits, but called "kits"... love the careful wordsmithing

Or... Lotus sold them as kits, Caterham sell them as kits = they are kit cars.

No No NO! They are component cars... definitely NOT kit cars... they come from the factory as a collection of COMPONENTS… Not in a kit of parts. In the eyes of a Caterham owner using the term “kit car” is a derogatory term that should never be used in the context of their cars… that term should only be used for much lesser cars like Westfields, Dax, and numerous others…. But definitely NOT for a Caterham.

Best not to use the words “kit car” around a Caterham owner as this upsets them and they will spend hours debating, playing on words, delving into minutiae and trying to convince you they are a cut above a mere kit car…

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IBDAET said:

I think the new site is very poor in terms of its contrast from an onlien accesibility perspective, but that pails into insignificance with what I am about to say.

By making tech talk "Members Only" the Lotus Seven Club has taken it upon themselves to take intellectual property it does not own, and charge people to use view it. This is plain and simple IPR theft from the authors of the posts.

I for one will be writing to the Lotus Seven Club and asking them exactly when and where from they got any licence to resell the information in posts I and others made.

I didn't realise they had made Tech Talk members only? I cant see it on the site now though...

If they have, what a disgustingly spiteful thing to do... not only from the fact that all that knowledge given free by the members since 1998 is effectively now hidden, but any prospective new purchaser has lost the ability to do any research.

I have to say that I would now NEVER re-join the club under the current management.

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7heavensoon said:

The management team seem to have completely lost touch with a large part of the membership with their recent actions.

Agreed, its arrogance of the highest order.

All the technical contributions made with goodwill by people including myself have now been lost. poor show.

So many people are saying they wont renew the membership. In a way I hope the club fails and that forces a change of management and the way its run. Time will tell.

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V7SLR said:

IBDAET said:

So should this tread not be split into a discussion around the theft of information for profit (for which I think we should start a class action - anyone on here a lawyer with no previous professional affiliation with the Club?). The other thread should focus on simply how crap the new forum is?


And another observation of people who are members is thats if you posy something for sale, your market is limited to members only as you cannot Blatmail any more (or equive non member contact)

Its great, to get around this, evene members are posting their personal email and phone numbers where all can view.

Arnie, you surely cannot be serious! I tell you something in the pub, you tell a mate, does that mean I can take you to court over the information? Any (personal opinion) technical advice was offered previously on an open to read forum by paid up members, the inference being that the L7C could continue to host that information in whatever way they wished, they can even take the site off-line if they wished. I'm no legal expert but I suspect you're onto a loser with that one, don't let your axe to grind get in the way of common sense!

Legal is one thing... Moral is another. Hiding the information freely given by people for the good of other people (members AND none members from when none members could post) is a spiteful thing to do.

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Chrisp5782 said:

RedCat7 said:

Making Tech Talk members only is an own goal IMO.
After asking for help in Tech Talk, I've been contacted and helped by non-members with solutions via Blatmail. If they can no longer view then they can no longer help members this way, which I think devalues the membership.
TT was also one one the things that attracted me to the club - one benefit of joining the club (being able to ask for advice on Blatchat) was obvious for non-members to see.

Edited by RedCat7 on Thursday 2nd October 12:58

From the email I've just received from the L7C the members only access to Tech Talk is only a temporary measure and it will become open for non-members to view but not post.....just like it used to be.

yea right... so why not say that at the beginning, all it would have taken was a post on the new or old forum, or both.

More like they have come under pressure from the members...

Its good news anyway

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james7 said:

A totally unrelated youtube clip
http://youtu.be/ubU-dB8B-94

Probably the thought of Arnie mounting a legal challenge caused them to u turn

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sjmmarsh said:

The latest fixes to the 7 club site are live now. Still not perfect, but much more usable now.

Steve

Not very busy is it :-)

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Crossflow Kid said:

V7SLR said:

I'd also felt that in the last couple of years the forum had become dominated by the same people posting over and over again, not that they don't have something to say, but more that the posts were appearing almost "for the sake of posting", rather than adding any meaningful depth.

Tenuous link

Thanks,
CFK

CFK, you are beginning to annoy me with your constant links... its getting just like Blatchat on here

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This place is getting like Blatchat was 10 years ago

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Not bothered to look at the site since it changed... is it any better? do people like it now?