New UK Club site

[Phil Payne]

http://www.quattroownersclub.com

IMO this site is a tremendous improvement on the old one - it substantially enhances the
Club's image.  It's quicker to load, aesthetically more pleasing (at least to my taste) and
better structured for the search bots.  The only remaining question is currency - but if it is
kept reasonably up to date then I think the UK CLub has a great asset.

The old 'free for all' forum has been replaced with a structured one, and I think this is a
great move - though my reasons may be different from the Club's.  It's been my experience that
structured fora simply don't work through the web interface.

As an example, check out the difference between the IBM mainframe mailing list (reflected to
Usenet as bit.listserv.ibm-main - got to http://www.deja.com and enter just that as a search
argument) and an attempt to implement a similar resource at http://www.mainframeforum.com -
the latter using the same type of software the UK Club is now using.

I don't know why this doesn't work these days.  The old Compu$erve fora worked very much like
this, but had the addition of sysops (a.k.a. threadmanglers) who sorted everything into the
threads it really belonged in.  I don't think multi-area bulletin board structures work
without pretty dedicated sysops.

The old forum was a free-for-all 'stream of consciousness' idea.  It was very immature and had
the usual problems such things always have for the first year or two.  Once these things have
matured they can be very efficient - see the German Type 44 board at
http://www.audi100-online.de/Forum_/forum_.html  for an example.

I think the new forum has been designed by someone who (charitably put) has given little
thought to the structure.  There are separate sections for WR, MB and RR-engined ur-quattros -
which doesn't reflect the reality of ur-quattro problems, as comparatively few are directly
related to the engine.  The window lifters and central locking are the same in all, as are all
the many wheel alignment, bodywork, heated seat, ABS and other issues.  Whoever designed this
split has just not intelligently observed how the old forum was used in practice and knows
little about the way owners' problems manifest themselves.

Anyway - I was never happy about the existence of yet another technical forum.  IMO all
English-language technical traffic should be on a single resource - there are simply not
enough cars and owners to spread them over more.  The situation is very different with
common-as-muck cars like MGBs.  The new UK structure's subfora just mean more effort in
checking them all, and there's enough to do already.  I suspect it is below critical mass for
this and will become moribund, just like the IBM mainframe forum I mentioned above.

--
  Phil Payne
  http://www.isham-research.com
  +44 7785 302 803
  +49 173 6242039