This Forum needs more people posting.

[DirtySmellingPropBlast]

Scud - Keep up the good work. I bet if you give it more time, in appx. 4-5 years this site will be ROLLLLLLLLING  O0 C:-)


Chuck - May I ask, sir - Why is it do you think, that people are registering accounts and not posting immediately?


Why do we have people with accounts that are not posting as much as you Chuck. My thoughts are maybe religious-like daily visits are quite unusual for an aviation forum, even if it's small. Perhaps some people come and go, being active temporarily during off periods based on what's going on in their life, career, or even down to the season as well like Scud said.


What does our ideal member [i]look[/i] like? Does it matter if they are an aviation enthusiast who has never flown (yet!), a pre-solo , post-solo, PPL licences? Employed CPL? How many hours do they have in their logbook?


What actually matters and makes this member ideal? Is there any advantage to having an account and not posting? Are people registering accounts with the intention of posting and not following through? Is it simply their frequency of activity or does experience, attitude, beliefs come in to play?


Chuck, suppose I loved TC, like, fucking loved them- am I ideal? If I hate their guts, am I more ideal?


If I have no opinion, but ask a ton of questions, am I ideal?


What do we want? Why do you even want more people posting? What do we have to gain as a forum?


If you truly wanted more people to post, just one thought is that you could simply start topics here on subjects that were HOT on other aviation forums, Canadian or otherwise, big or small. What get's many visitors elsewhere probably did relative to the rest of the population for good reason(s). Why not just pick and choose and regularly start a hot topic? If the site is getting traffic, there's a good chance if it's traffic that will ever post, they will then.


Just my two cents?  O:-)

[Chuck Ellsworth]

[quote] Why not just pick and choose and regularly start a hot topic? [/quote]


Excellent idea!


Thanks for posting and thanks for the suggestion.


So I shall start a new thread that I feel to be an important subject for a lot of pilots.


The thread is going to be called " The last fifty feet. "

[Liquid Charlie]

One can't compare this site to the other one. Remove the topics related to "jobs" from there and the traffic would fall off by a big percentage. Our demographics are a little different. It's more light aircraft oriented. Take the "heavy" iron, job listings and questions on what's the interview and working conditions and money away. This is what you get. Still flying and making money after 50 years in the biz I find this a wonderful place to hang out. To be able to call a spade and fucking shovel or an aircraft without someone getting upset with your adjectives is refreshing. To the low time guys, ask as question and get a answer or opinion and remember sometimes it's just an opinion and not necessarily completely correct. Some guys are rough around the edges but don't be afraid to post. For sure if you are an idiot you will be called out but if you put some thought into it you will be treated with respect and get feed back. 

[Colonel]

Pretend you're posting with your real name. 

Try not to get drunk on the power of internet anonymity
and start kicking all the old-timers in the nuts when you
first walk in a room.

If you do this, expect some fireworks.  Possibly even
[i]hurt feelings[/i].

There are a couple of guys who are spectacular repeat
offenders at this.  One of them lives in the Peg, another
a strangely-named town in BC with no airport.  Both of
them run away and hide when you unmask them.  Neither
are much in the way of pilots, but like to pretend they are,
and love to pick fights.  Sometimes, they get one.

PS  Why are hurt feelings such a national tragedy?  Why
are hurt feelings far worse than crashing and dying and
killing your passengers?

Never understood that.  Must be a generational thing,
like no one ever losing at soccer.  Or a Presidential
election.

Growing up, I can assure you that no one gave a flying
fuck at a donut about hurting my feelings.  I try not to
burst into tears when that happens.

Sometimes, even at work, my feelings might get hurt.

It must be wonderful to live in a world where everyone
around you, is so considerate of your delicate feelings.

Is everyone in Canada employed by the CBC?

[Colonel]

As someone that instructed continuously for a quarter of a century ...

Aviation is both challenging and extremely dangerous.  There is a
lot to learn, and while you will some mistakes, it can be terribly
unforgiving.

There is a lot of knowledge and skill that you need to obtain in
order to survive, and your precious ego might just get a dent or
two along the way.

But have no fear, your ego will mend.  Honest.  Really.

If your ego is so delicate that it cannot endure the necessary
education to survive in aviation, perhaps you ought to take
up a more gentle hobby, like lawn bowling, ok?


Time for my personal flight instruction story.  Again.

I'm ten years old.  It's 1973, and my fanged fighter pilot
father giving me dual in our fire-breathing Maule, which
he neglected to tell me, cannot be flown by most airline
pilots.

No headsets, no boom mikes, no intercom, and the
loudest cockpit you can imagine, at least when you're
10 years old.

I turn base and don't let the nose drop.  Speed is bleeding
off.  All I have to do is relax and let the nose drop and
descend.

My fanged fighter pilot leans over and screams in my ear
(remember, no headsets or intercom and a noisy fucking
cockpit)

[b]IF YOU DON'T DO SOMETHING, WE'RE GOING TO DIE[/b]

My fanged fighter pilot father was a military instructor,
and as I learned later, military flight instruction is performed
slightly differently than civilian flight instruction.

So, I'm 10 years old, and I'm going to die.  Great.

Lots of people worrying about my delicate fucking feelings
when I was growing up, and getting flight training.

Ever read the book (or see the movie) The Great Santini?
Probably not.  But it's a glimpse of how the world used
to be.

However, there is an upside to having your feelings
hurt.  You acquire valuable knowledge and skills, and
you can do shit like this:

[youtube][/youtube]

[Trey Kule]

[font=Verdana]"For myself, I seem to find most of these sites non-relevant for me as a lowish time IFR rated PPL. Im not flying jets, Im not flying areobatics, Im not an instructor... Im just some long-haired dude that burns a bunch of gas in an old thirsty twin for shits and giggles."[/font]


[font=verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Besides being envious of you, you are exactly what aviation should be about.[/font]

[font=verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Unfortunately, it does attract some types who need to constantly brag about what they fly, or that the part of aviation they specialize in , is the top of the pyramid, and all others are incompetent idiots.[/font]
[font=verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]But if you can get by their gigantic inferiority complexes, and overcompensation, there is some wisdom to be found.  [/font]

[font=verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Dont go away. Contribute.  I, for one, am always interested in hearing about an aircraft someone flies.  Costs, fuel burns, mods,  [/font]

[DirtySmellingPropBlast]

So do we celebrate that we're different than AvCanada - is general aviation and light aircraft our main focus? Should we try and 'compete' with AvCanada or differentiate ourselves, or both?

Maybe our conversion from newly registered members to active posters is normal and we just need more traffic.

Do we NEED more people posting or just want more people posting? Chuck why do we need more posters? What will happen if we don't get more posters? Why do *you* want more posters?

Of course there are ways to drive traffic in the internet I know Scud is already doing some of them for sure.

What are we doing as individual users of this site to increase the likelyhood of someone wanting to read, post and become active here. What are we doing to bring more people to our doorstep?

When someone arrives here they likely want to start by spending very little time and receiving high value while they judge the website / forums. Why not let them only see hot topics until they register , and have a incentive ladder for posters.

Ie 5 posts you get to see and post in the HOT AIR section? There's certainly lots of things that you *could* do if you got creative.

If we had more people who shared their aviation stories, you could require 50 posts to read and post in that section. Now there's a greater incentive to post and and actual need-payoff in that context.

Any thoughts? I love the stories and asides, especially that one from the Colonel about being high on base! I thought this thread was about scudrunners.com?

What we choose to collectively focus on as a group - will become what defines scudrunners. Why not make it amazing? If 90% of our new users were pre-liscencing - we could probably tailor the site to that. I wonder if scud has gathered any information on our traffic / users.

Do hurt feelings convert newly registered users into active posters? Does the status quo?

[Rosco P Coltrane]

Looks like I was the problem. After I left plenty of people showed up. Welcome DirtySmellingPropBlast.


I hope it is not looking like I need to fix this forum. I don't think it is broken. It is difficult not to compare us to AvCanada but I think we are fairly distinct. [font=verdana]I agree that it would be nice to have a few more posters sometimes. I also miss some that have been active and added some good things in the past. As has been said, sometimes there are plenty. [/font]

[font=verdana]I try hard to let everyone do their thing here and even though I occasionally move a topic that does not belong in the aviation area. I will never delete anything that is not outright and obviously wrong like racism or something. In fact the only time I recall something I was considering deleting, I deferred it to Scud but the the poster changed their mind and deleted it. Most of my time here is repairing those random tags that show up. Yesterday it was trying to insert them in one of my posts. It is now trying to do it again. [/font]