Fast Marina Magazine

Dear Forum members,

I would like to keep you all updated on the inner workings of FMM. Here I will set out to you the way the board will be run from now on.

Moderators

After a fantastic response from members of the site, I am now proud to announce that we have three new moderators to FMM.

Balmy – David Balme
norway_triumph – Jan - Ivar Sørensen
Number 63 – Fergus Mallon

Please wish them well and treat them with the respect they deserve.

The role of “The Moderator”

The primary role of a forum moderator is to promote interaction, encourage member involvement and encourage a sense of community within the forum. They should be helping out members with their queries and they should be keeping threads alive be asking questions.

I want to get away from the idea that moderators are a type of forum police and adopt a more laissez-faire approach by allowing members a large amount of freedom.

Moderators should be on the forum as a point of contact for other user’s issues and problems. I do not want to go back to the approach of deleting or locking posts the moment a user steps out of line as it does send a negative signal to the rest of the community that free speech is not tolerated. It makes people nervous and discourages them from getting involved.

Before taking action against a member, moderators will contact them via PM (so that there is a paper trail of events) and try to get them to remove or edit the posts themselves, by referring to the rule the moderator feels that they have broken. In this way we are trying to make the user feel far more valued at a personal level. This is far preferable to the member simply returning one day to find their post(s) or account deleted.

Rules for the forum

The current rules can be found on the main front page under: Forum/Garage Rules. I think these are fair and cover most of the events that could happen. I have no intention to change these at the moment. If in the future there is a need to revise these then I will be letting members know and we will be able to open up a discussion.
Please have a read of the current rules if you are unsure.

My role

I will be continuing to administrate the forum on a day to day bases, this will include the activation of new user accounts. In the past this has been done by the whole moderation team but I have wanted the moderators to be more involved with the content of the forum.

My main responsibility will be the server management and security of the forum. This includes backups, updates and new features to the forum. I will also be responsible for the content overall as I am the legal owner of the site.

I will still be the main point of contact for all forum questions; I will also be the team leader for the moderators. If they have any problems with the way they are being treated or have an issue with any member then I will be able to give support and advice. This will of course be the same for the global membership also.

I would ask that all forum users treat the site and the people that use the resources with the upmost of respect.

Input from Users

I have always seen this forum as being very friendly and never too serious! I would like to ask all users to remember that it is their forum and all suggestions are treated with the upmost respect. Therefore if anyone would like to suggest ideas that they feel would help the forum progress please feel free to get in contact with any one of the moderators or myself.

Software

I have reinstated the forum garage after a while of absence. Please feel free to add your projects to it and update the information as you progress with ownership. I will be updating some of the information that you can add as we go along.

There are other mods that I will be implementing once the forum has settled into its new version. Please keep an eye out for that.

Best Regards,

Ben

Thats great news that the forum will live on. Thank you Ben for all your efforts in making this possible and to all those behind the scenes that have also helped. Good luck to Balmy, norway triumph and number 63 in there new roles as moderators. Also its good to see the garage section back, hopefully our members will update it with lots of new cars and pictures over the coming months.

Cheers Barry

Thanks Barry,

Yes the forum is here to stay.

The garage is back, I am glad you are pleased. It is running a beta version at the moment so there may be a few creases to iron out. If people do find any issues please inform me ASAP. There is a problem at the moment when adding more than 5 modifications, I have mentioned this to the developer team.

I will be working on an ebay mod that will alow users to post thier own ebay links quicker. This I hope to have working very soon.

There is also a youtube mod I have got to install as well that means video can be inbedded into the forum.

Ben

Well done lads was all sounding a bit negative for a while , i'm new to this and wouldn't have got very far with out this forum so its doing some good , good luck to the new guys and good on you Ben for toughinhg it out.

Rob,

(one of those guys that dosn't get involved) :mrgreen:

Thanks Rob!

Hope you have found this site usefull!

Ben

Just a thought, PHPBB has a spell checker you can install.
Sometimes when you are trying to be serious, odd words get typed and you dont notice.

Any chance?

jiversteve wrote:Just a thought, PHPBB has a spell checker you can install.
Sometimes when you are trying to be serious, odd words get typed and you dont notice.

Any chance?

You missed an apostrophe in dont. It spelt don't.

Sean

ado28 wrote:[You missed an apostrophe in dont. It spelt don't.

Sean

You missed an "is" from "it spelt". :P :P :P :P

No, sorry Locost, you are wrong.
It was actually an apostrophe s ('s) that ado28 missed out.
All I had missed out was an apostrophe (')

A spellchecker might have found all these acts and omissions.

jiversteve wrote:
Just a thought, PHPBB has a spell checker you can install.
Sometimes when you are trying to be serious, odd words get typed and you dont notice.

Any chance?

You missed an apostrophe in dont. It spelt don't.

Sean

I think I have seen a lot worse spelling and grammer on this forum than the above!! Probably on my posts.
Also on BL Classic Forum, no one is perfect and again easy to pick holes.

As long as people understand the post thats all that matters.

Even spell checkers can't check for correct grammer.
I refer to 'Eats shoots and leaves'

It was only an idea intended to help!

Having done the first two, I'm now about to do the third, before we get told off by Ben.