ST's Future Discussion

[Rob H]

NOW threads didn't go anywhere. The MISC threads are supposed to include the NOW posts, but that concept didn't seem to latch on. The changes in Target Area structure and rules were hard to keep track of and turned a lot of people off I think. It's probably worth reverting back to an original format, or would that be another change that people have to learn?

I've been here posting for 5 years, and lurking for 8, and I have no idea how to post in the Target Area now. It's not complicated, but I haven't bothered to figure it out when I can just quickly post on Facebook and be done with it - no hand slapping. I'd be all in favor of a simple "one day, one thread" rule. If you chased you talk about it in there, if you didn't chase, you ask questions in there. Everyone interested in that day reads just one thread and doesn't have to think about whether to start a MISC thread or whatever.

$20/year per member is way too much. The site could easily run on $1/year from each active member and there'd probably be some left over for some sort of Stormtrack project, meeting, upgrade, or sponsorship. In its current form, the site could run for $0/year per member if somebody hosts it on their own site.

If Tim or someone else wants help, I'll throw in my hat. Those that know me personally can vouch for what I do career-wise. Yes, it's simple to run a site, but if you don't do it efficiency you end up with site outages and costs that you don't want to incur and donation drives and all sorts of things that detract from using the site. I can at least give some input if wanted (I don't really have the time to commit to doing all the work).

I think Skip does a fabulous job, his detail is incredible, his thoughts are well spoken, excellent, but when I log in and read his essays, I think to myself, "what else is left to say?" and I click X in the upper right hand corner and move on. It's a thread killer and it's overwhelming

Skip is a friend, but I disagree with him all the time - no one person can bring everything to the table. Roger Edwards missed Pilger. Skip (sorry, dude) missed Wakita, Rozel, and Langley. Roger Hill blue sky busted on 5/24/10 (Faith). Reed Timmer sat at home a few miles away from the Sulphur/Roff/Ada tornadofest on 5/21/11. You don't hear about these instances because people aren't prone to brag about the times they don't succeed, but it happens all the time. Good, smart chasers don't have all the answers. Even collectively as a group, we miss out on things like the Bakken Oil Field tornado this year. I used to read Bill Schintler's forecasts and I felt the exact same way you describe. It caused me to step my game up though, and when I only read Schintler's forecasts I realized I would miss other key pieces of information. There is so much intricacy in the atmosphere, there's no way one person can do more than scratch the surface.

I do agree that the site shouldn't necessarily be concerned with driving personal business or even attracting traffic. It's cheap enough to run on donations/good will, and if the content/participation is there it will remain the sole bastion for storm chasers. reddit.com/r/stormchasing and americanwx.com don't come close to scratching the itch.

I think resurrecting this forum would be the best way to have everyone stay in contact in an organized matter, social media only supports selfish motives.

Word.

 

[Skip Talbot]

but when I log in and read his essays, I think to myself, "what else is left to say?" and I click X in the upper right hand corner and move on. It's a thread killer and it's overwhelming.

That's surprising to me. I'm always hugging the warm front or triple point, and so many of you are playing down the dry line or geeking out hardcore on 5% setups with 1000 J/Kg and zonal flow. Why? Why are you chasing there and then? There's certainly room for varied discussion on the forecast threads, even on synoptically obvious setups

Dan, perhaps you should get a core group and start up a brand new forum.

That's exactly what Chaser's Forum attempted three years ago and it failed. I think mainly because this format is dead to chasers, driven by the migration to social media. Dan suggested it divided participation between the forums. Either way, another forum isn't the solution I think, unless the other forum manages to address all of the issues that are plaguing forum participation, which might be impossible if the problem is forums themselves.

There are a lot of long time veterans that are prolific on social media, folks that I wouldn't consider greedy profit seekers, but those who just want to share a genuine passion for chasing. Folks like Dave Hoadley, Tim Marshall, Gene Moore, Roger Edwards, and many more. The love for the hobby is out there on social media. I think Stormtrack can still bring that together.

 

[Mark Blue]

No councils will be necessary to decide whether or not I should get in touch with missing members to prompt them to chime in. The problem is, I might not know or be thinking of the same 2-3 members another participating member has in mind, thus my offer to do the legwork if anyone wanted to send me their particular names. My offer still stands if someone doesn't want to bother with it, as I can just add them to a group email of sorts if there's even any interest shown going forward.

 

[Rob H]

Thanks for the offer, Mark. I was gently joking with you - the point was that if anyone thinks some people should weigh in, just shoot off an email or a FB message to them.

My only thought is that if they're not here reading this thread, what do they care about the site? Should the future direction of ST be driven by a handful of people that don't participate? What if they don't even visit/read the site any longer? It's a legitimate question with no right or wrong answer outside of what Tim feels.

 

[Mike Marz]

Whenever I log in and see that Skip has posted an "essay" or anything else, in any discussion or report, I am very excited to read it. I never take anyone's forecast as the absolute final say on what a setup will do, but hearing from people that have had as much success as Skip has had is awesome, and I hope he doesn't stop writing his long and detailed discussions.

 

[Jeff Duda]

Science-minded people love putting rules and constraints on everything, but that's a quick way to end up with bland posting, a lack of content, and a lack of interaction.

I'd love to hear where this is coming from.

You wouldn't really have much of anything interesting (smartphones, computers, weather forecast models, cars, etc.) without science-minded people. People put rules and constraints in place for the purposes of organization or basically keeping things from going chaotic and impossible to follow or understand. Sure some people take things too far and go for the control aspect, and moderation on this forum in the past has occasionally been tyrannical (although not really since I joined in 2008), but I resent being lumped in with the people you think you're talking about.

 

[Shane Adams]

My only thought is that if they're not here reading this thread, what do they care about the site? Should the future direction of ST be driven by a handful of people that don't participate? What if they don't even visit/read the site any longer? It's a legitimate question with no right or wrong answer outside of what Tim feels.

Could not agree more. The number one thing that should be addressed and CAN be addressed at this very moment in time, is to stop pining for namesakes that no longer care about the forum. As has been said, anyone who gives a damn will be around on this thread sooner or later. If outside notofication is needed to bring "names" into this discussion, perhaps that's an indication that those individuals aren't needed.

As for the forum itself, I love this format. Before I quit in 2010 and had my original profile deleted, I was a top-5 all-time poster. I was on here daily with multiple offerings. But like someone else said, posting constantly loses its luster when there's nobody else in the conversation. I get the "lurker" reasoning but still find it more a deterent than anything else. I'm a broken record, but my #1 peeve against forums is membership that simply does not participate. It does nothing for me to think "maybe 1000 people are seeing what I write" because immediately afterwards I think "then again if they're not posting why would I expect they're even watching?" And then I simply lose the urge.

 

[Shane Adams]

Sure some people take things too far and go for the control aspect, and moderation on this forum in the past has occasionally been tyrannical (although not really since I joined in 2008), but I resent being lumped in with the people you think you're talking about.

I'm fairly certain Rob was specifically talking about some past moderators on this forum, not every science-minded person in general, at least not in a negative way. IMO he was simply stating that science-minded folks like rules and order (naturally, nothing wrong with that at all) and that some of the past mods tried applying that general mindset to moderation. Which did not go over well at all. Lastly, I'm pretty sure Rob knows exactly who he's talking about.

Lookie here, a new fresh thread born from the original. Might be hope for this place yet ;-)

 

[Dan Robinson]

I'm wondering what features/functions the site could offer some of the smaller chaser groups around the country. There are many small chase teams, spotter groups and organizations around, surely there are ways we could integrate space for them. Sub-forums maybe? A global events calendar would also be a good start. I myself can't even keep track of all of the conferences and conventions. The goal of course is to bring as much as possible together in a central location by providing some sort of value. I'd almost see ST as becoming the chaser's "LinkedIn".

One that note, I'd be willing to donate the old Storm Chaser Database from my site. http://stormhighway.com/cdb/ It is way out of date right now and needs some fresh code, but might offer some value over and above what the forum profiles do.

The moderation level thing is going to be sticky. There are those that will leave if it gets too heavy-handed, and those that will leave if it's too relaxed. One thing is for sure, we are not going to be able to make everyone happy all of the time. The "I want this forum to be exactly how I want it to be or I won't participate" people, we're going to lose them if we haven't already. That being said, I'm willing to concede some of my own moderation preferences for the good of the forum. Especially after experiencing Facebook, these days I'm a little more willing to tolerate some annoyances here and there.

One concern I have is what level of commitment we have from Tim to keep the site running and to keep it under community control. I'd ideally like some assurance *in writing* that after we've poured money and effort into this thing for years, building it into something great, that the site doesn't just get sold off to the highest bidder, shut down OR even just the reins of control taken back. If we are successful, this site will have some real value. I want that value to go to the storm chasing community, and not the site owner's pockets - especially if the site owner isn't involved at all in the effort. I think I speak for everyone there.

 

[Danny Neal]

The more I think about it..... I think a relinquishing or co-ownership is the first step, then a clearinghouse of everyone. Reformat the forum as a pay to play and re add those who wish to participate. If a good core of 20 refill the forum with valuable discussion then it will self restore it's luster and more will come through word of mouth. Some remodeling could get that negative connotation off of here.

Forgive me if I restated something already uttered.

 

[Rob H]

I'd love to hear where this is coming from[...] but I resent being lumped in with the people you think you're talking about.

I'm including myself as 'science-minded', so don't take it negatively

(It's actually one of the reasons I dropped out of my CS program and went to business school. I already thought like a CS nerd, but I couldn't think like a business-minded person.)

Obviously we can't have complete chaos, but there are some elements of this site that have perhaps been over-analyzed, like Target Area. I'm not saying the current moderation is tyrannical or even bad, but the key takeaway here is that rules don't automatically make more content or bring more users. Everyone in this thread has a vision for the way these forums should work, but the reality is that none of us have it nailed down 100%. We would ideally take some of the more popular ideas that aren't restrictive in nature and let the community shape the rest. Right now the Target Area is a cold, dead husk of a creature. Is anyone surprised that this is also the sub with the most rigid structure and the most rules?

So yeah, don't get bent out of shape about it. All I was saying is that as a group of science-minded people, we might have a tendency to over-think and over-structure things to our own detriment. Specifically in regards to this forum. If this applies to any of you individually for something in your personal life, I'm not talking about that, and you'll have to work that out on your own

edit: sprinkled smiley faces all over so people would hopefully see I'm not just crapping all over any group or individual

 

[Shane Adams]

The more I think about it..... I think a relinquishing or co-ownership is the first step

Agreed 100% but....

then a clearinghouse of everyone. Reformat the forum as a pay to play and re add those who wish to participate.

IMO that would be the same as just starting another new forum, in essence killing off any "street cred" Stormtrack.org has built over the years. The one thing this place still has going for it is it has always existed since 2003, while other forums have come and gone. I definitely agree it needs massive changes, but I think those can be done within the existing shell. I'm all for wiping out the membership starting with all nicknames (how tough is it to re-register with a real name? I don't agree with the "grandfathering in" idea.) Next, all accounts that haven't been active for over six months. Just like it shouldn't be a few financing this place for the rest of us, it shouldn't be a few dozen of us providing all the content.

I mean, in all actuality, we're all still using this place right now. It works. The "fixing" is much more to do with attitude and approach than it is anything technical.

If a good core of 20 refill the forum with valuable discussion then it will self restore it's luster and more will come through word of mouth. Some remodeling could get that negative connotation off of here.

I think that would be the death of ST for certain. Imagine this place with a few dozen members, almost all of which know each other and have similar backgrounds/experience. What will there be to talk about? We all already know about each others' accomplishments and none of us are going to ask what a dryline is. That would mean the educational archives are now worthless. This place needs fresh blood that's willing to participate. The idea above, to me, just sounds like a pay CFDG. I dunno, maybe someone just needs to take over, BE THE MAN, BE PRESENT, and just implement changes as he/she sees fit. I mean we've got 15-20 people of over 800 actually trying here, and we can't even agree. My only issue with the TV dictatorship is he's never around.

 

[Mark Blue]

My only thought is that if they're not here reading this thread, what do they care about the site? Should the future direction of ST be driven by a handful of people that don't participate? What if they don't even visit/read the site any longer?

Could not agree more. The number one thing that should be addressed and CAN be addressed at this very moment in time, is to stop pining for namesakes that no longer care about the forum. As has been said, anyone who gives a damn will be around on this thread sooner or later. If outside notofication is needed to bring "names" into this discussion, perhaps that's an indication that those individuals aren't needed.

I never said I was pining for past namesakes that no longer come here. The days of Mike Hollingshead and Dick McGowan are long gone and I'm fine with how it has turned out. I'm talking about targeting the audience and adding any names other members want to have included that I didn't think of. I'm actually having second thoughts about extending this courtesy though, since it seems no good deed goes unpunished.

This thread has been here for about a week now. At this time of year, not everyone who is normally considered an active, contributing member is going to login everyday - simple fact of life. Some members might not be able to login due to extenuating circumstances, perhaps a family member is sick, who knows in this day and age. We could just throw them under the bus for their transgressions, but that seems like a harsh way to try and improve participation for an ailing forum. Have you ever not logged in for a week and when you came back the discussion was all but over? I guarantee that's happened to just about everyone of us.

Here is what I discovered and want to share. I ran a detailed search from the control panel to provide me with all members who were active this chase season, but haven't logged in since October. The result, 74 names that everyone here would easily recognize and who would be worth hearing from. No bots, no lurkers, just longtime members with a few hundred to over two thousand posts to their name. I will just go ahead and contact these members to let them know and will otherwise consider it a done deal.

 

[Sean Ramsey]

I think there has been plenty suggested from the contributors to this thread to get a good base direction going and start moving on it, if people aren't contributing now they can when they come back when chase season comes around. Also, there is no need to purge everyone and start over again. Cull the inactives and have the nicknames re-register under their real name as Shane mentioned, and move forward with the active members and grow from there.

If we can get some of these ideas set, the sooner the better. I do think we need leadership that will be a part of the ST "community" and participate not just as a thread starter, but within discussions themselves. No one expects that person to be on here posting everyday, but participate as a regular member would be expected to. If the forum is important to them, it will be important to others as well.

Now it's just a matter of putting things into motion and making it happen.

 

[Danny Neal]

Agreed 100% but....




IMO that would be the same as just starting another new forum, in essence killing off any "street cred" Stormtrack.org has built over the years. The one thing this place still has going for it is it has always existed since 2003, while other forums have come and gone. I definitely agree it needs massive changes, but I think those can be done within the existing shell. I'm all for wiping out the membership starting with all nicknames (how tough is it to re-register with a real name? I don't agree with the "grandfathering in" idea.) Next, all accounts that haven't been active for over six months. Just like it shouldn't be a few financing this place for the rest of us, it shouldn't be a few dozen of us providing all the content.

I mean, in all actuality, we're all still using this place right now. It works. The "fixing" is much more to do with attitude and approach than it is anything technical.





I think that would be the death of ST for certain. Imagine this place with a few dozen members, almost all of which know each other and have similar backgrounds/experience. What will there be to talk about? We all already know about each others' accomplishments and none of us are going to ask what a dryline is. That would mean the educational archives are now worthless. This place needs fresh blood that's willing to participate. The idea above, to me, just sounds like a pay CFDG. I dunno, maybe someone just needs to take over, BE THE MAN, BE PRESENT, and just implement changes as he/she sees fit. I mean we've got 15-20 people of over 800 actually trying here, and we can't even agree. My only issue with the TV dictatorship is he's never around.

I disagree. If only 20 actually participate, what's the point of having 1200 lurkers or inactives. It would make far more sense to wipe the slate clean and see who comes back. That is the true gauge of if this forum needs the plug pulled.