Have you noticed the daily additional registrations? We will be over 2000 before Christmas!!

By the way, tommorow is my Pepipoo first birthday

Chris,

Happy birthday and how about acquiring a few ‘birthday presents’:



That way you will have something to hand to the magistrates, on the next occasion they award your costs.

The membership is now 2500, 500 in just 3 months!!!!

By next Christmas, 4000+

Whilst this is good, unless we now start to plan how to dicipline postings from new members, and structure how the more experienced get to notice cases which fall into thier area of knowledge, it will reach critical mass, and implode.

May I suggest that we re-look at catagories eg. s172, speeding, road signage, equipment(lti2020 etc) I think we all have particular key areas of knowledge, but by next year it will be a full time effort to keep up with enquiries.

What do you think? Not another bloody working committee

I agree Chris.

I actually think the whole structure may have to change (Hi Fred  :D ).  The level of posting is huge.  Try not loggin' on for a few days and see what happens when you log on...

I've said before that PHP is not my language of choice, but from what i am aware of, the back-end is a MySQL database

It would therefore be possible to create a web page form with preset options / choices / text boxes to complete, and automatically generate a new posting to a set format.

In the next week or so, I will be getting a new server on my desk to use phpBB (the software that powers this forum) and so hopefully will learn more.

As for the MySQL database, it supports standard SQL so shouldn't be a problem.

Of course, Fred possibly knows all this! It's just a work commit / spare time thing.

We can all certainly see that the rapid increase in activity on the open forums means that we need to introduce more discipline to postings than has been necessary in the past, and that more automation/control over postings would help in this respect.  As others have observed, just keeping track of the new postings has become a significant task in iteslf!

The forum software does lend itself to customisation: it's all open source, written in PHP and with the backend provided by a MySQL database.  The reason we haven't undertaken any major cusomisations recently is that the forum software we use, phpBB, is about to undergo a major update.  We therefore don't want to make changes that will have to be completely re-engineered in a month or so.

We welcome suggestions for improvements, but do ask for your understanding if these take a while to implement!

I think there are enough senior members to look into dividing up the forum into sections. (dependant of course on who is willing to take ownership of each section) Another idea would be to split into regions, but that may cause problems for people with specialist knowledge/experience in one area.

As others have said, it has become very difficult to keep track with cases, threads we have been involved with and new cases.

I would be willing to take on responsibility for something, whether that is large or small.

i believe the best way forward is the questionnaire which will enable us to extract the right info, i.e each section/question will help establish what exactly is required - is it a para 4, or is it something chris the summons expert can answer for example,

we could also put links for each member's pm who has knowledge of certain areas, the links could also notify if they are online or not.

the questionnaire could have the answers/links to answers for specific questions, in a way the faq would need to be incorporated.

is there any way to allow an automated message to be sent once a specific key word is posted i.e if somebody were to post 'i need summons help' could an automated message be sent to chris' e-mail or pm inbox? this could be implemented for other key areas too.

i also believe the headings/titles need to be made more specific by posters i.e many post 'help needed' etc (i myself have been guilty of this in the past!) we could encourage a more detailed title such as PACE sent 12/1/05>S172 Summons just received 19/3/05, etc etc

cheers,
matt

Yup, try 2 weeks  :roll: , it's called log on - how many pages ! , read a few, drive yourself mad with the massive number.

Log off.  :?

And I would agree with a 'bigger' split-up, maybe the next phpbb will allow 'subforums'? haven't looked yet. As i believe they would make it a bit more manageable..and possibly a couple more mods with ability to 'tidy up' and move posts, JA,FF, Mika & Fred must be overworked (and underpaid)

I am not singleing out this new poster. BUT, we have got to address this problem of long narative first posts.
All that regular readers/advisers, really want, are details in a chronological order. This problem is ofcourse exaserbated on subsequent visits to the thread when we want to quickly refresh our recollections of the same details.

With some urgency, we must set up a pro-forma method to open a 'Judicial process' new thread. Which of course regulates both the question sequence, and the mandatory answers fields.

Interested....  No, dedicated as I am to assisting where possible fellow victims, it has become frustratingly hard work.



http://pepipoo.com/NewForums2/posting.php?...e=quote&p=46988

I dont think it matters how many catagories you have (but I dont think thats a bad idea either), newbies probably wont get the right catagory when they first post anyway

Perhaps the FAQ forum needs to be renamed to 'Read This First & FAQ' and put up the top of the list of forums. But you're always going to get people (who are most likely in a state of panic in their defence) who dive right into the first catagory that appears to fit the bill and post their diatribe about how the road was straight and clear and the conditions & visibility was good....

But I think Chris' idea of a 'form' style post where the poster just fills in the answers is probably the best way to go if its possible

I see the unfortunate by product of more members is more moderation....

Today 1st April, 2603.. 603 in three months. WoW!

On a linear expansion, we will add  603x4 = 2412 by end of year.

In real terms the rise will be exponential, and  we will definately double our current membership by then. Probably 5000 !!!

It's scary.  :shock: It's hard to keep up with just the current cases derived from only 2600 members.

Today 14 August we have 3525 members!!

922 added in just 4.5 months!!  205 per month'ish.

It looks like the 5000 by Christmas 2005 is a real possibility?

 :shock:

I'd love to see some stats on how many individual Lurkers we have who have not joined... at a guess 70% of them are happy gathering the info to fight without joining...

There have been a few brand new posters who have joined primarily to post their success story  :wink:

I think a number of the LURKERS  are cps,  trying to see if they can pick up any clues as to how to argue a case..

Now they should pay !

rgds
bill

Here are a couple of breakdowns for you to ponder, then.  First an update to the total registrations chart I published back in January:



This one's interesting: active registrations (visited during the last 90 days) who aren't Members compared with "lapsed" visitors and paid-up Members:

PMSLMAO @ CPS seekin advice on here!!!! ....perhaps they should make a donation too!!!!

inactive members? = lapsed but greatful members - scumbria and cps.

Hunting season presently in full swing.  Cull anyone?

Mind you, old walter seems to have winged a couple!!

20-00   Thursday 26 October

Just had our 4000 member. Wow!!

My estimate of 5000 by Christmas will be eaten alive.

Brace yourselves guys, with the latest headline-grabbing cases and articles about the scammers i think we'll be swamped around christmas.

No time to talk turkey!!!

Was it me??? was it was it?

I'm afraid you were a mere stripling - 3398, back in July.

Number 4000 was....

Tadger !

OIC, I thought member meant "paid member"

Ah well

I think you should offer a mug or something for the 5000th

Ooh - and for novelty value, how about a competition, for a mug

Tell you what, if it's approved, I could do with a couple more - so I'll buy a set of 4 and Insider could hang on to the other two

Amazingly, and despite high levels of publicity, the new memberships have slowed dramatically.

We have missed 5000 by a long way!

16000 now!

Sounding more like the Prisoner all the time. Who is number 6.

That'll be Talion.. But he is not a number,...

I don't suppose they are from Portmerion by any chance? That would be too spooky!

On the numbers increase - it's phenomenal - less than 5000 December 2005 and over 16000 by March 2008! Sadly it's also a sign of the times.

17000

Another thousand in just over a month. The Scammers must be doing a roaring trade?

This is a graph of registrations rather than currently valid members, but I think it illustrates the point:

Click to view attachment