Current state of Spyder forums

Just got a text back from Gerald, apparently Dev got to him first.... lol 😎 

I need my post count up so I can post pictures!!!

Posted by: Dev

I want to give you guys an interesting thing that just happened.  

Im starting a light recruitment on Spyderchat.  I figured the best way to do so is to ask the person to give me their Email address because you have some information you would like to give them but don't feel safe sharing it in the PMs.  After the Email is given I would share the link over here. 

I asked for three people Email address last night and this morning without asking CSPIDY (who I was planing to send an PM this evening) sent me a PM asking where the new website was.    

The Admins locked the PM.   Its one thing to solicit and another for someone to ask where the website is and have the PM locked.  Its a freaking gulag over there.  

My hunch is correct that they are monitoring my PMs for recruitment.  

My suggestion is to ask who ever you want to recruit to request their Email and don't talk about the website or post a link to the website.  

Im kind of shocked that I wasn't being hyperbolic.   

 

I sent PM to Cspidy with my email. He has the forum address now.

Anybody get Haloruler yet? 

I got HeelToeHero already

Man I feel like a Hare Krishna. 

Anyway cool with Cspidy cyclehead.  I was able to contact him finally by telling him there was no forum but I needed his email .   

It looks like we are going to get some new blood this evening.  The responses have been good because I only recruited those that expressed their displeasure with the current  Spyderchat. 

Its good to have a huge uptick but I think we might overwhelmed Patrick with issues as features that need to be implemented. 

So far so good.   

I feel like doing a "who is John Galt" on Spyderchat.   

You can try, I held off . I like Dima as he is a real enthusiast but  he is more or less agreeing with the new Spyderchat which is fine. I thought I would hit him up over the weekend but please do. 

Posted by: pwnzor

I'm sending text messages to the people who I have traded parts or had other dealings with outside the forums... sent them the link and asked them not to post on SC about it.

Thats fantastic.  

When the time is right Im going to do my email bomb form all of my sales. I don't ever solicit anyone after a sale but this is the one exception and I have been saving it for a very long time.   Who knows maybe it might bring back old members.   

I'm going to purchase the plugins to allow "advanced embedding" of videos and pictures. I'm also going to get the PM plugin. 

I also looked into the post count. I can enable the post count under the user avatar, but for some reason it's bundled under a layout setting. If I change that setting, a bunch of stuff changes. Otherwise you can see your post count on your profile. 

 I’m happy to contribute to costs for the forum.   Not sure if it’s already been discussed,  but I’m thinking of a “peer pressure” style recognition for contributors.    Plastic, bronze, silver and gold “recognition” for forum members that contribute at various levels.   That keeps us out of the mandatory pay schemes.   I think the peer pressure would be plenty productive in what’s basically a mutual-benefit forum to start with.

test video post

https://imgur.com/a/hUWRyWf

I'll throw some wood on the fire... let me know

..

You really need to think of it like a gentleman's handshake. The forum in its infancy was run by its members. all of the moderators and administrators were members of The forum who owned the car and were active on a daily basis. After Time went on the forum switched hands and one gentleman so I won't name but most people know who he was was the sole owner and administrator of the site. when he was no longer involved with the site he was either approached by or approached on his own the current owner of the site. He then made the decision on his own without anyone else to sell the site to them or receive monetary compensation of some sort. The primary issue all of us had with this was that his reasoning was that the overhead cost in the time of sociated with keeping up the forum was too great for what he was comfortable with. Right as the exchange began a lot of us on the forum expressed our desire to take over the forum and would handle the finances and time on our own.

Home now there was also a second forum that many of us were apart of that was slower but was again owned by the users. there were some issues there in terms of handing over the domain name and the overall hosting of it which ultimately led to its demise and the losing of all data associated with it. At the time that was the outlet we would all go to when we were fed up with Spyder chat. So that's kind of the run-around of what happened and why were here. I'm sure I missed some of the details as I'm using voice dictation to write this out so forgive me if the grammar or writing is off. if anyone else that knows stuff about the situation wants to chime in and fill in the Gap that I missed feel free.

I know I already posted in another thread, but wanted to say here again to reinforce (and build my thread count) that I am grateful for the work that has gone into and continues to go into building this forum and am ready able and willing to contribute to help defray the costs.  That is the least I can do to support the community of people who have been so supportive of me learning about my car over all of these years.  Again, thank you . . . and again, let me know when and where to send the money.

Posted by: Patrick Lipp

You really need to think of it like a gentleman's handshake. The forum in its infancy was run by its members. all of the moderators and administrators were members of The forum who owned the car and were active on a daily basis. After Time went on the forum switched hands and one gentleman so I won't name but most people know who he was was the sole owner and administrator of the site. when he was no longer involved with the site he was either approached by or approached on his own the current owner of the site. He then made the decision on his own without anyone else to sell the site to them or receive monetary compensation of some sort. The primary issue all of us had with this was that his reasoning was that the overhead cost in the time of sociated with keeping up the forum was too great for what he was comfortable with. Right as the exchange began a lot of us on the forum expressed our desire to take over the forum and would handle the finances and time on our own.

Home now there was also a second forum that many of us were apart of that was slower but was again owned by the users. there were some issues there in terms of handing over the domain name and the overall hosting of it which ultimately led to its demise and the losing of all data associated with it. At the time that was the outlet we would all go to when we were fed up with Spyder chat. So that's kind of the run-around of what happened and why were here. I'm sure I missed some of the details as I'm using voice dictation to write this out so forgive me if the grammar or writing is off. if anyone else that knows stuff about the situation wants to chime in and fill in the Gap that I missed feel free.

 That is a nice synopsis and I will fill in the blanks, some of it might be inaccurate but this is what I know. 

Spyderchat was started by some 17 year old kid on some late 90s message board a year before the car came out.  The kid wanted to buy the car but it didn't happen but what did happen is a group of people in Florida decided to take over and eventually made a Spyderchat forum. It was funded mostly by the group but a great deal of funding came from a generous man named Ed Black.  

The forum was run well with good admins and moderators but as time went on there was infighting and one of the disgruntled parties  who had access to the data base decided to delete the entire forum.  They nicked named him something like "the  name that will not be mentioned".  

Spyderchat was reborn again sometime in 2003 and one member volunteered to safe guard the server.  Not too long after another big fight emerged where racial stuff against  one of the vendors /owners became furious and the board entered another turbulent period with people taking sides.  Around  2004 I joined with a good number of people at the time, there was peace and good times with lots of mods coming out and it was just the golden time for cars in general with lots of meets and discussions.  

Because there was a big fight earlier Don who was suppose to safe guard the server decided to seize more power and some founding members just left because they did not agree with what Don was doing with the board.  Eventually Don now has the board and with it more control, this is where the fundraising started to keep Syderchat going but thats not all, Don wanted to have fun giveaways and membership badges to encourage others to donate.  We also had some advertising that wasn't intrusive but if you clicked the affiliate links to places like Tirerack Don would take that money and buy himself a steak dinner.  The money that was donated did not make Spyderchat a premium site and it is suspected that he cheeped  out on the server and the bandwidth  which had slowdowns regularly. We came to know by his own arrogant admission when promises weren't kept that he used the money for his own personal use justifying it as gratitude for keeping the site going. 

I will have a part 2 later this evening.  

Curiouser and curiouser...

Posted by: pwnzor

Curiouser and curiouser...

As am I I've been around since 2009 and everything before Don is new to me. Very interesting history of the site