rdale
EF5
And it's good for discussing topics, interacting with others, finding out stuff you wouldn't see in a forum, and about everything else 
ST's Future Discussion
- Thread starter Bob Schafer
- Start date
- Status
StormChaseJG
Enthusiast
Please don't let ST die as the archives are really useful and j love reading through the treads. I don't have much to contribute as I'm only 16 and live in the UK but reading through this forum has taught me so much about Meteorology and storm chasing that it would have taken me years to learn, I think moving this group to Facebook would not be good as the structure of a forum in categories is how this site needs to be as there are lots of Facebook groups about storm chasers and weather but non are as friendly or welcoming as on her also they are no where near as informative. What could benefit would be having a page on Facebook where it shows off popular threads such as during severe weather outbreaks with links back to the forum. It would be sad to see StormTrack die as it is a place where the chaser community can come together and talk about chasing and their kit.
Joey Ketcham
EF4
As stated in a previous post of mine, I don't think anyone is saying to completely move ST to Facebook. That would not be a good move, but to embrace Facebook to get StormTrack's name and site out there to those (weather enthusiasts and storm chasers) who doesn't know that StormTrack exists. There could be "side" discussions on there, but this forum should always be the main forum for discussions.
Tim Vasquez
EF5
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2003
- Messages
- 3,411
Thanks all.... I kind of wanted to let the discussion flow back and forth a bit before stepping back in. I have been giving all of this some thought and weighing it against my own ideas. After reading everything in this thread and pondering over a plan for 2015, I will go ahead and implement a couple of key changes this weekend to get us on the right track. I will outline it in more detail after I do one more readthrough Thursday/Friday and make sure I'm considering all the issues that have been brought up, but it appears to me from the discussion here that this plan will address many of the issues:
* open up the discussion board more to the general public and allow immediate access upon a properly validated registration (no essay)
* simplify the moderation a bit, including scaling back the rules and limiting moderation to cases where people are trolling or being assholes
* implement the "real names" policy we had up to a few years ago (with latitude for pseudonyms); this actually works a bit like an "essay" at filtering out people who aren't reading the rules and are here to cause problems
* (optionally) allowing access to a private veterans section for users who have an account that's over a year old -- this can have a couple of subforums like Bar & Grill and perhaps the advanced weather discussion forum, under a different name. This might help give veterans a place to chat without the clutter, and we can always promote notable people (like SPC forecasters) immediately into this group.
That said, there is a lot of polarization on what needs to be done, and this is one of those situations where there's 0% chance I can make 100% of the users happy. But it's clear to me that catering to a broader audience is the way to go, as Stormtrack has actually always gotten a huge chunk of its energy from newer, enthusiastic chasers. Going back to 1990, Stormtrack didn't see much input from Chuck Doswell, Don Burgess, or Erik Rasmussen, the veterans of the era... rather we saw content from the new generation: Jim Ladue, Gene Rhoden, Phil Sherman and Jim Leonard. Did the publication decline because of this? Definitely not; if anything it kept getting better and better. As others have pointed out, it's not really even our job to cater specifically to veterans, and that doesn't deprive them of a good venue, since CFDG and Facebook are out there. Because of old friends and how habits get ingrained, I don't think anything we do here could even convince them to come back unless we were doing something better, and again that gets into trying to please everyone.
I think our focus needs to be on catering to the newer generation of weather enthusiasts in general: those just starting and especially those who are committed and who show up at a lot of the conferences but but have less than several years in the field. This captures the enthusiasm of chasing that brought us all to this crossroads. By opening things up we are going to see more nonpertinent content on the forums, but ALSO a lot of good content, since the veterans of today will be joined by tomorrow's veterans of 2020-2025 who are just starting out right now. We can do all this while co-existing with social media, and if Facebook takes off, awesome, Stormtrack will shift there to Skip.
It will be hard to do all this, of course, without getting an increase in crap on the forums along with the increase in traffic. Because of this we can't scale back the rules and the moderation a whole lot, but I'll try to get the rules as simplified as I can. "Don't be a dick" is good as far as I'm concerned, but I probably need to flesh this out a bit more so new users have appropriate expectations.
Regarding the issue of a management change, I don't mind having a discussion early on, but just the decision alone on even who to bring in is important enough to where it would take weeks. From the discussion I'm not even sure that's the right course of action unless it's clear that I'm not making any headway with improving the site this winter and becoming more involved. It should also be pointed out that a management change is always a huge unknown and almost always brings in new problems and new sets of personality conflicts, whereas I've been with the site for 16 years and you all have a pretty good idea how I run things, with my absence being the main problem in the past few years. Please trust that I will do right by the Stormtrack community as we go into next year, and rest assured I am fully committed to turning over the site if I'm unable to keep up with it.
Hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving. I'll be here over the holidays and expect to hammer down a plan and get it implemented over the weekend, and adjust it as needed. A total of 17 pages of suggestions is definitely a good signal... if we were looking at three pages that would be a completely different situation.
Tim
* open up the discussion board more to the general public and allow immediate access upon a properly validated registration (no essay)
* simplify the moderation a bit, including scaling back the rules and limiting moderation to cases where people are trolling or being assholes
* implement the "real names" policy we had up to a few years ago (with latitude for pseudonyms); this actually works a bit like an "essay" at filtering out people who aren't reading the rules and are here to cause problems
* (optionally) allowing access to a private veterans section for users who have an account that's over a year old -- this can have a couple of subforums like Bar & Grill and perhaps the advanced weather discussion forum, under a different name. This might help give veterans a place to chat without the clutter, and we can always promote notable people (like SPC forecasters) immediately into this group.
That said, there is a lot of polarization on what needs to be done, and this is one of those situations where there's 0% chance I can make 100% of the users happy. But it's clear to me that catering to a broader audience is the way to go, as Stormtrack has actually always gotten a huge chunk of its energy from newer, enthusiastic chasers. Going back to 1990, Stormtrack didn't see much input from Chuck Doswell, Don Burgess, or Erik Rasmussen, the veterans of the era... rather we saw content from the new generation: Jim Ladue, Gene Rhoden, Phil Sherman and Jim Leonard. Did the publication decline because of this? Definitely not; if anything it kept getting better and better. As others have pointed out, it's not really even our job to cater specifically to veterans, and that doesn't deprive them of a good venue, since CFDG and Facebook are out there. Because of old friends and how habits get ingrained, I don't think anything we do here could even convince them to come back unless we were doing something better, and again that gets into trying to please everyone.
I think our focus needs to be on catering to the newer generation of weather enthusiasts in general: those just starting and especially those who are committed and who show up at a lot of the conferences but but have less than several years in the field. This captures the enthusiasm of chasing that brought us all to this crossroads. By opening things up we are going to see more nonpertinent content on the forums, but ALSO a lot of good content, since the veterans of today will be joined by tomorrow's veterans of 2020-2025 who are just starting out right now. We can do all this while co-existing with social media, and if Facebook takes off, awesome, Stormtrack will shift there to Skip.
It will be hard to do all this, of course, without getting an increase in crap on the forums along with the increase in traffic. Because of this we can't scale back the rules and the moderation a whole lot, but I'll try to get the rules as simplified as I can. "Don't be a dick" is good as far as I'm concerned, but I probably need to flesh this out a bit more so new users have appropriate expectations.
Regarding the issue of a management change, I don't mind having a discussion early on, but just the decision alone on even who to bring in is important enough to where it would take weeks. From the discussion I'm not even sure that's the right course of action unless it's clear that I'm not making any headway with improving the site this winter and becoming more involved. It should also be pointed out that a management change is always a huge unknown and almost always brings in new problems and new sets of personality conflicts, whereas I've been with the site for 16 years and you all have a pretty good idea how I run things, with my absence being the main problem in the past few years. Please trust that I will do right by the Stormtrack community as we go into next year, and rest assured I am fully committed to turning over the site if I'm unable to keep up with it.
Hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving. I'll be here over the holidays and expect to hammer down a plan and get it implemented over the weekend, and adjust it as needed. A total of 17 pages of suggestions is definitely a good signal... if we were looking at three pages that would be a completely different situation.
Tim
Shane Adams
Just to reiterate, my lone issue with Tim being at the controls was his absence. If he can be here and wants to be here, then IMO full speed ahead. For me it's about a leader who is enthusiastic and available, not change for the sake of change.
Jerry Prsha
EF4
This was one of my issues as well.
When I first subscribed to ST, it was locked down and you had to create the essay and use your real name. But upon arrival, there were a lot of snobs on here and it really wasn't a learning environment like I was hoping. And then the snobs left and it was all new people who just wanted to argue. The mood changed drastically and I even got flagged for posting something that somehow got misconstrued. I can only guess that there was such a "free for all" that some kind of meanly directed comment was expected. It was as if the moderators couldn't put in the time to really keep things civil so they'd pop in when they could and it was just a melee.
At some point, I realized that all of the people whom I wanted to discuss weather with were just on Facebook and I just stopped reading anything here.
Looking back, I just feel that there's no serious interest by Tim (too busy or otherwise) and everyone just got tired of the needless bickering. I know that I did.
Mike Tobin
EF0
I agree with the above mention. I Feel as though I am not a meteorologist but a writer and photographer I get shamed upon. I use this site to learn and meet fellow weather enthusiast to learn off of and chew the fat. Now I am also apart of several other forums who have also embraced both having a forum and Facebook page and its very successful. I think if we could work as a collective instead of trying to one up each other or degrade one another this page will be successful. I look forward to the success of this page as well as having great discussion with you all.
Justin Wilcox
EF2
Everything has been pretty much covered, so I will just add a few things that came to mind real quick. And I know my post count doesnt say much for my participation level, but I have become somewhat active in chat room for the past year and a half or so.
A DIY/How-to sub forum. I know there are a few how-to posts throughout the past, but they are buried and things have changed a lot over the past decade. Im sure if one was made it wouldnt take long to fill. Sticky the good ones.
Chat room Q&A's
ST needs a new outfit and hair-do. Its not very appealing to the eye and believe it or not, people take this stuff into consideration on whether they get past the front page of a forum or not. The logo needs help too. No offense to whoever made the current one.
A DIY/How-to sub forum. I know there are a few how-to posts throughout the past, but they are buried and things have changed a lot over the past decade. Im sure if one was made it wouldnt take long to fill. Sticky the good ones.
Chat room Q&A's
ST needs a new outfit and hair-do. Its not very appealing to the eye and believe it or not, people take this stuff into consideration on whether they get past the front page of a forum or not. The logo needs help too. No offense to whoever made the current one.
Marcus Diaz
EF5
It's been about 5 years since we changed the logo. Might as well see about a new one since we're pretty much revamping the forum.
Patrick Marsh
EF5
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2006
- Messages
- 783
I would be willing to be part of a somewhat regular Q&A session/chat. Although not an expert on the latest chasing trends, I could answer meteorology questions.
Marcus Diaz
EF5
Its been a few days since this subject has been brought up. Any further updates on the matter?
Dan Robinson
EF5
I'm disappointed in both the day-long outage yesterday and that I never got a response about a request for access to start working on the new SCDB. I'm still on board with this, but we need better response to outages and coordination for server access if we are going to succeed. A day-long outage won't fly in the spring (or any time for that matter).
Dan Robinson
EF5
One suggestion I would make is to separate the forum from the main site on a subdomain, so if the forum goes down, the main "portal" site is still there. Things like the SCDB, the target game, etc can also be on their own subdomains so that if one goes down, it doesn't kill everything. We should still be able to pull content dynamically into the main page from the forum.
Dan Robinson
EF5
As of tonight, I've decided to declare this effort dead and concede that the Stormtrack institution has truly ended. We clearly don't have the support from the ownership or the community to proceed with any of our planned activity on this site.
At this point, I'd entertain the idea of starting a new community-owned-and-supported site under a new name if a similar core of interested people would be on board. I know we could easily and quickly find the backing to cover costs of operation. At the very least, a new site will allow us to start working on new features and ideas to give the concept of a central online storm chasing community a fighting chance, something that is unfortunately not going to be possible under the Stormtrack name.
At this point, I'd entertain the idea of starting a new community-owned-and-supported site under a new name if a similar core of interested people would be on board. I know we could easily and quickly find the backing to cover costs of operation. At the very least, a new site will allow us to start working on new features and ideas to give the concept of a central online storm chasing community a fighting chance, something that is unfortunately not going to be possible under the Stormtrack name.
Joey Ketcham
EF4
I think I'm in the same boat. Tim comes on and makes a few posts regarding the future of ST, then Dan made his suggestion about the SCDB and no response from Tim and then the forum is down for an entire day and even still we hear nothing from Tim. Nothing against Tim, personally, I just don't think he has the time to dedicate himself to StormTrack. If he's not willing to hand StormTrack over to someone else who is more than capable enough to manage this site and forum, then I agree that it's time to start considering the possibility of a new site.
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