If nothing else, this thread inspired me to go and give Grant and Susan some money.

30 euros for a two-year contributing membership? I have most definitely gotten more than 30 euros' worth of benefit from HUBB!

The thread is back? and the likes are gone??

Mezo.

The thread never went away, and I see 21 likes at the top of the thread.

Not everything is a conspiracy.

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Bruce Clarke - 2020 Yamaha XV250

Funny. Same here!

No, Mezo is right. The thread disappeared for a minute. The admin probably pulled it for review.

why was ta-rider banned again?


mika

It was your post that i liked originally. and i knew the thread had vanished because i search all new post having my morning cuppa, but its all been explained now.

Mezo.

Lots of forums have two tiers of membership. Ordinary members have no access to PM or emails or certain value-added sections of files and information, POI files and the like. Full members pay a few pounds/dollars per year and get access to the lot. The owner could also recognise the value of certain members who are mostly givers of information that enhances the overall value of the forum and grant full membership at zero cost.

That way the site owners have a big incentive to keep things ticking over to encourage members to pay for the upgrade.

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Tony
Click here for Travel Photos & Travel Map

I think Tony Lee has point about finding a new strategy to encourage people to contribute wih money.

As I'm typing this and based on the stats of active users, there are about 4000 UNREGISTERED users using this website at the moment. They do use a lot of the servers ressources. Of course some of them are registered user that don't log in.
If the traffic of those 4000 people is not good enough to sustain revenu to pay for the extra servers ressources, maybe they should have a limited access and reduce the servers cost at the same time.

Also covering just the operation expenses is not enough. Grant, Susan and who ever is supporting the website should get some money to cover their time.

Patrick

As controversial as ta-rider is/was, I tended to appreciate his posts. The world of moto-adventure is a pretty big one, and there's plenty of room for all kinds of riders and all kinds of budgets.

I'll never be a Charley & Ewan expeditionist on a $25 grand motorcycle, but on the other hand ta-rider's shoestring and baling wire approach was a tad too cheap even for me - as I get older I find my aging bones appreciate a comfy bed and a dry roof at the end of a long day of riding.

Good for ta-rider though, for proving that a young person with lots of drive but little money can still go on a great adventure.

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Bruce Clarke - 2020 Yamaha XV250

I agree. Even though sometimes Toby is less than clear and he can be a bit of a pedant, (partly a function of language barrier), his comments can sometimes come off as offensive.

Is that against HUBB rules?

Toby is a legit veteran traveler with more years and miles than most. He is of the super budget variety. Not for everyone of course. But I can appreciate his perspectives even though I don't follow his guidelines. Takes all kinds ... and good ideas can come from anywhere.

Austin Vince is (or was?) against big money commercializing of ADV Travel, yet we don't see him banned or even questioned. Austin frequently makes cruel jokes at expense of the monied GS crowd, Ewan and Charlie et al ... yet no one comes after him. (Austin's film pedigree aides his world wide credibility)

In fact, if you've read Toby's posts for a long time, you can actually see similarities between Austin and Toby. The difference is Austin makes it all very humorous ... where Toby can be a little "too German" at times.

All to say it may be up to some interpretation.

I had this same discussion with my students today. It's all about tone and connotation. Because of the format here, voiceless written text, it can be sometimes impossible to detect sarcasm or the true meaning of what someone is saying. So you need to think about what you type before you click the post button.

It only further drives the point of Grant's earlier post. Don't be a dick. It's as simple as that.

Grant and Tim,
Thanks for giving us some insite into the moderation/banning process.
I enjoyed(although probably disagreed with) many of ta-riders and xfiltrates comments, and I can't imagine this site without mollydog.
Having said that, I see that banning is not done without a lot of thought.
Tim,
I followed your advice and was rewarded. I think I am going to have to buy Paul Pratt's book.

We have ALWAYS said that we will never charge for access to the site. We believe that what makes the site great is the users contributions. We don't believe they should be charged to see their own info, but if they want to support the site, wonderful. So we are depending on people realizing that there's no free lunch, and it all has to be paid for by someone, somehow.

We are facilitators and sometimes educators, but you guys are the ones on the road with the latest up-to-date information, information I couldn't possibly collect if I spent a lifetime on the road, as it's out-of-date in such a short time!

What we need to be able to do what we do is memberships, advertisers, and people buying our Achievable Dream series, calendars, and coming to events both as participants but also as presenters to pass on their knowledge.

For those who don't understand what it takes to run a site of this size and complexity, (I know some people think we have real jobs and this is a hobby!) it's FULL time plus for me since 1998, Susan also since 2009, and Grace part-time for the last three years, plus we have "contract" people to do the graphics, video editing and coding for site upgrades. We SHOULD do a lot more than we do, (I have a list of about a million things to do) and a whole lot of things would be a lot better than they are, but there just isn't enough money to pay the bills to do that, or the time, so we just do what we can, when we can. Progress is being made, slowly, not always visibly, but progress is made.

In the end, HU has to do more than cover it's costs, it has to pay our rent, our food, and eventually our retirement, although it will be somewhere cheap and warm!

__________________
Grant Johnson
Seek, and ye shall find.
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Inspiring, Informing and Connecting travellers since 1997!
www.HorizonsUnlimited.com

From having spent time on a number of different forums over the years, I feel that HU is more like a library than a saloon. People come to the library to learn and there is very little talk. Meanwhile, other forums of similar age focus more on the camaraderie. You get threads about bike builds, people purchasing homes, building garages, local photo tag games, all sorts of things. Much bigger audience.

I like your idea of paying to have access to a library.

Maybe all this is a good opportunity to think long term: One day Grant and Susan will decide to stop managing the website for various reasons. Having a new model to keep this website going is a good idea!

Patrick