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Years ago this forum had a kind, gently soul who also was a true, old school master of not only all Things VW but our beloved Thing. He was not only a master but had perfected the art of restoring the VW Thing without using any of the high dollar "Thing Only" parts.. In the 70s he was a Certified, factory trained, VW master mechanic in Bend Oregon (where my two older sons now live) After years of close friendship he asked me to be the joint moderator fo this forum. Things change and Bob needed to move on. He asked me to take over this forum. Out of respect and friendship I agreed. Since I have taken over, I have seemed to take this from one of the finest Thing tech forums to a seemingly worthless waste of time.

Here is the source of my request for advise.

I know that a number of fellow Thing lovers visit here on a regular basis, many of us have had a beer, swapped parts and met each other's family..

I seriously need help. I need one of a few things.

Advise on how to make this forum useful/meaningful

A comoderator to help me make this forum useful to fellow Thing owners

Step down and ask a fellow Thingster to take over as moderator so that this forum is of some real use to the Thng community.

K-man, any discussion forum is only as good as the active participants. I do regularly read here and other boards. I post when I have information that may be helpful. There are few times when a specific moderator hurts a forum. It's only the cases when they do not allow the members to interact. I, for one, have not seen any such actions from you as moderator. My opinion is that the mod. should only be seen in an official capacity when someone's behavior is beyond the rules.

That all being said, I think your doing a good job.

9 agree w/ MedicTed 100%.. you are doing a great job.

maybe when someone (who reads various forums) posts on other forums they can also post it here. that way if some one who doesnt read other forums/just this forum, they can comment on that post. hope that made some what sense.

just a thought

caspar

Thanks for the support. My only goal is to help to create an open forum where all technical and other Thing issue can get a free forum to be discussed. I appreciate your feedback and kind comments. I will try to follow the ideas you have presented above as well as support to my best ability the sharing of our collected knowledge and experience with the VW Thing. K-mann

It's not the moderating, K-man.

As a relative newbie, I drop by her a couple of times a week to see what's going on, but I hit Samba multiple times per day.

Why? First, compare the classifieds for Things on STF to Samba and it's no comparison. When I purchased my Thing through Samba I got used to going there for information and I've kept going back.

Second, I have three forums that I regularly read on Samba: Thing, Performance/Engines/Racing and Body/Paint. If I want to get the same coverage here, I have to look at the newbies forum, the thing forum, the speed and drag racing forum, bodywork and paint forum, engine rebuild forum, tools/tricks forum, transaxle forum, etc.

Obviously, some of these forums get more play than others, but you get the idea. Also, I don't know if this is a widely held view, but I've always thought of STF being dominated by the type 4 guys -- which is fine as I'm interested in a type 4 conversion and I know where to go for info, but the perception causes me to post more at Samba where I think I'll get more eyeballs.

It's kind of a self-fullfiling prophecy.

As far as what should be done about it, I have no idea. In the end, the Thing community may not be large enough to support two forums -- or at least two forums that seem to have identical coverage. Perhaps the answer is to differentiate this forum somehow? Focus on restoration or type 4 conversions for example. Or start providing unique content like specific how-tos on Thing-specific items.

From doing searches, I can see that at one time this forum had more traffic, and that's changed. I don't know why that happened, but I do know that it wasn't because of you K-man.

HTH,

Ben

Again thanks for the feedback. The transaxle forum and T-4 forums here are fantastic. One thing this Thing forum has that Samba Thign forum does not is that I am able to access this forum at home and work and as a result can give immediate answers to tech questions here. At one time this Thing forum was part of the off road forum. The Thing portion got busy enough to get its own list. At one point Topic had over 30 posts per day and then the long continious ads started and that slowed that forum down. Doc supports this forum ad free and I just wanted to make sure that I was not inhibiting the usefullness of the site.

The reason Type 4run and transaxle are so strong is only because it they are a distinct classification on to themselves on the Internet. People don't care much were they are located. If there was a transaxle forum on theSamba, and it was the best, people would go there because there just isn't that many of us. It will be interesting to see what happens to the type4rum now that Jake starts up a new one covering T4, because there will be a new more narrowly defined place/categories offered to the people who do these conversions. I agree that The world might not be able to support two user based Thing forums.

Couple of notes:
Moderators mission really isn't there to answerer all the questions. Many might not even participate if all the answers come from one place. While in the short run Bob may have helped the forum because so many came her for his advise, in the long run he may of hurt it because it was overlying dependent on him as the only advice giver.

For me selling kills my trust in what people advise because it makes me think this is the primary motivation of the advisory is not to help but to make some money. On the other hand if I say were can I buy XYZ and someone responds I have one this is a totally different situation. The difference is not that hard to see.

Moderators mission really isn't there to answerer all the questions. Many might not even participate if all the answers come from one place. While in the short run Bob may have helped the forum because so many came her for his advise, in the long run he may of hurt it because it was overlying dependent on him as the only advice giver.

For me selling kills my trust in what people advise because it makes me think this is the primary motivation of the advisory is not to help but to make some money. On the other hand if I say were can I buy XYZ and someone responds I have one this is a totally different situation. The difference is not that hard to see.

Couldn't have said it better myself!

doc