Dry Lakes Racers Australia

There has been a recent ruling here in Australia where the owner or administrator of a forum or Facebook or similar will be held responsible for anything derogatory publish on that medium.
This is very similar to a problem that I personally faced back in 2003 which cost me considerably financially and also the ability for me to enjoy of my interests.

As I see it we have couple of options here, one is to close the forum down another is to make it private and a third is to force any posts to first be approved by an administrator or moderator.
The first 2 options drastically reduce the ability of a forum to promote and benefit the club. Only the third option gives us the security we need and still provide access.

Any comments?

PS I still don't know how to handle the Facebook thing yet.

Having followed Greg with the incident in 2003 and doing my best as a DLRA member to help Greg run this forum I fully support what ever the final decision is. I would not like to see it go but at the same time I would not like to see Greg or the DLRA have to go in the same direction or have to deal with an outcome from anything like that after the 2003 incident.

I vote for the whole forum to be private and available to DLRA members only. We do see the odd spammer and scammer on this forum and I try my best to remove them as fast as I can.

As for Facebook I do not use the site and have my own issues that have led me to be wary of identity theft via that site.

This situation is affecting every forum in Australia and rightly so. I have been a member , constantly active for over 10 yrs , of possibly Australia's most successful and professionally run forum , that being the Aulro forum, Australian Land Rover Owners. The forum is privately owned and managed by an elite team of administrators and moderators. I am quite sure that you could contact Dave (Inc) and discuss with him the successful changes he has made to comply with new rulings.You may use my name as reference as Dave knows me over the years . It isn't doom and gloom if all members using your forum abide by your rules , in fact the forum is likely to improve in it's content . Good Luck.

I hope we don't have to shut the Forum down. Approving posts is the option I support, but it is also another job that needs to be done.

Ramblingboy's suggestion make sense, see what others are doing.

I just re read the Guidelines and we can all do our part by simply following our own rules.
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=391

Pete

What concerns me is the posters that join up and post rubbish. Some times these posts offend and it may be some one that sees the post that is not a member. I do my best to ban spam on this forum.

If we have to approve every post before it is made visible that does create a lot of work.

Other forums outside of Australia are just a little confused by the new rulings as to how it affects the running of the forum in day to day management.

Sorry I am a bit late to the discussion.
I think it would be a good idea to just have fully paid members being able to post but anyone being able to view. I have been a member for 15 years and I think it is a great way of us keeping up to date with what is happening in the club.
Gaz

BIG GAZ wrote: ↑Tue Oct 26, 2021 12:34 pm Sorry I am a bit late to the discussion.
I think it would be a good idea to just have fully paid members being able to post but anyone being able to view. I have been a member for 15 years and I think it is a great way of us keeping up to date with what is happening in the club.
Gaz

Im with Gary on this,,

We must keep this site,, for me FB is much to disjointed in accessing and trying to keep abreast of DLRA "real" information due to all the other non club related stuff that gets posted,, (try finding something from a week back, let alone a cuppla months back, almost impossible),, at least on here there is a navigated parth to whatever one is lookin for

Stayt`ie wrote: ↑Tue Oct 26, 2021 10:35 pm

BIG GAZ wrote: ↑Tue Oct 26, 2021 12:34 pm Sorry I am a bit late to the discussion.
I think it would be a good idea to just have fully paid members being able to post but anyone being able to view. I have been a member for 15 years and I think it is a great way of us keeping up to date with what is happening in the club.
Gaz

Im with Gary on this,,

We must keep this site,, for me FB is much to disjointed in accessing and trying to keep abreast of DLRA "real" information due to all the other non club related stuff that gets posted,, (try finding something from a week back, let alone a cuppla months back, almost impossible),, at least on here there is a navigated parth to whatever one is lookin for

In keeping the forum and making it DLRA members only the site would need to be hidden from the public access and non DLRA members not allowed any forum access.

I think the Forum and the FB page both serve the DLRA well and are used by many for different reasons.

The Forum is def more structured content and easily referenced and maybe should be that only financial members can comment. It did take a hit once we started putting some time into the DLRA FB page, however now with comments turned off on facebook maybe some members and others will start to look towards the forum. Maybe we need to post on FB that the forum is there and advertise that fact. New Builds, Tech support etc.

The FB page is to grow the awareness of the DLRA as a whole to spectators and racers from around the world that may want to attend. The FB page now has 85000k followers, but reached 13000k last week, I think it only had half this only 3 years ago. We have all seen the growth of crowd numbers at the lake in 18,19 & 2021, some of this must be attributed to social media. We must also remember as we all get older we must bring new racers in and what they look at is FB, Instagram etc. This year I brought Hare & Forbes to the salt as a sponsor, they donated $500 and were testing the waters, now I think this year they may double that and in future years maybe more, they need the social media posts for brand recognition. They need to see where their money is going and what a great sport and event we have.

So there is room for both to co exist and thrive.

JP