Members Only

[milliemarlin]

Re: Members Only

Hi Steve,
I was surprised by the strength in the term “Pretty shoddy” you used to describe a minor glitch.
As you say you have been a strong advocate for PayPal and the committee has listened to your argument. Inevitably any change to a system comes with some risk and this must have been an unforeseen circumstance. With any established system change requires some work and the committee should be applauded for listening to its members and taking the time and effort to make requested changes.
I know you as a member who has helped me and many others through this forum in the past. The venom in your append seems out of place and out of character. There is a phenomenon that I have noticed in forums that comments can be made without any real thought as to actual meaning or potential offense.
Did you really mean to be so strident in your append?
Paul

[stevejgreen]

Re: Members Only

Hi Steve,
I was surprised by the strength in the term “Pretty shoddy” you used to describe a minor glitch.
As you say you have been a strong advocate for PayPal and the committee has listened to your argument.

I do not know if the committee listened to my argument, Sue Roedell (remember her) was a great advocate of PayPal but she departed at the development stage. it's the best part of 10 years since discussions started and were flatly put down.

I still believe that the introduction of PayPal can benefit the Clubs finances further with its expansion into Club Goods it can only improve sales, 'click, click, bought!' No searching for cheque books and posting letters. All for the benefit of the club.

The initial introduction of the new system of membership did cause a bit of confusion some months ago, with password/login problems, even one committee member changed his username to work around the issue. I may be wrong but this is part of the same system. And a glitch that effects at least 10 established members, and an unknown number of others because they have not commented, or are simply not aware.

That is all.

[The Moog]

Re: Members Only

Steve, I have been denied access to members only since I joined over a year ago, I queried this with Cameron in Feb, however still no change for my access. Clearly there has been a "glitch" for some time. I have received the latest pit stop however!
I trust given your horror at the state of the forum you will be standing for the post of website co-ordinatior at the upcoming AGM! Meanwhile lets chill out and enjoy something.......

[B_Williams]

Re: Members Only

And another one.

[cameronfurnival]

Re: Members Only

I will be giving a statement to the members at the AGM tomorrow but essentially the issues arise from converting a paper based system to an electronic one. For those who think that's simple let me assure you it isn't. One of the reasons I am stepping down is that I simply don't have the time to devote to the task and feel it's unfair on members to get anything less than perfection. However, I will continue to work with the committee to complete the implementation of the new systems.
A manual system is a very rich system but with so much data it is often impossible to make it machine friendly without intensive data cleansing. Our membership data is held in a spreadsheet but the data has been amassed over several years and is far from easy to migrate by a simple csv type export. There are in excess of 50,000 entities in the spreadsheet and just one non-data-correct entity will cause a machine based upload to fail. There have been lots of these and the two gentlemen above are part of that problem, I hope they will trust that it will be resolved soon, both require completely new database entries creating.

Currently the new system is working beautifully for those who pay electronically but everyone else is still being managed manually by me: Poor old Tony also has the unenviable task of inputting subs info updates manually for now (however, once done it should become easy for subsequent years)- and there were over half the members' data-sets which required some alteration. With over 600 members that means at least 300 can't import as easily as we hoped - it takes around 10 minutes to create a correct entry from scratch. Now that's about 50 hours of work just to get it working. To rectify this I have tasked someone (at my own expense) to begin data entry and get the new system correctly populated. The web site company who host our sites have been really accommodating and have worked -as a favour to me most of the time - at no charge, But there's only so much we can expect them to do for their maintenance fee.

I am hoping someone with a good degree of enthusiasm will take over from me and the club site will continue to thrive. I still believe we have one of the best, and most knowledgeable forums on the interweb; we have a flexible website which looks good on all devices and browsers, a fantastic forum, modern and usable membership technologies coming on stream, and a "club goods" online shop coming soon. I firmly believe that this club can be one of the leading lights as our cars become recognised as classic cars.
We have a vibrant club moving on with new memberships every year and the tools to share with the world what we can do.

[listerjp2]

Re: Members Only

Here here. Brilliant job Cameron.

Adrian

[h_m_cumming]

Re: Members Only

Thankyou Cameron for all the hard work.

Hugh.

[hasse]

Re: Members Only

Cameron , I for one would like to thank Cameron for all the work he has done for the club , it does not sound an easy task at all ,considering the amount of members we have,

when i have had a problem with the site a quick call to Cameron solved the problem.

i wish you all the best in your " Retirement " and many thanks for everything

Regards Hasse

[B_Williams]

Re: Members Only

I would endorse the above comments;
Many thanks for the work you put in.
My original comment was just to alert the admin that I was another one in the same situation.
From what I remember, I paid by Bank Transfer, so it's no surprise that the membership list on the forum needs manually updating as folks pay their subs.

[HairyDave]

Re: Members Only

Cameron, many thanks for an almost thankless task. As one who has the greatest admiration for people who choose to work with computers, I have had more problems with large organisation computers. Enjoy your retirement. BTW the sooner the shop is Paypal the better.

[Gareth]

Re: Members Only

Thanks Cameron for all your hard work.
I enjoy using this website. Enjoy the peace!
Gareth.

[lizbillings]

Re: Members Only

Many thanks Cameron. You have sorted my computer skills out several times over the last few years. Looking forward to the Welshpool weekend.
Kind regards
Liz

[old_n_notpastityet]

Re: Members Only

Ditto,but thought it was because I paid my dues late ( Sorry ) but I can still log in and use the forums ?? contacted support about not being able to access Members only, cheers.

[stevejgreen]

Re: Members Only

I will be giving a statement to the members at the AGM tomorrow but essentially the issues arise from converting a paper based system to an electronic one. For those who think that's simple let me assure you it isn't. One of the reasons I am stepping down is that I simply don't have the time to devote to the task and feel it's unfair on members to get anything less than perfection. However, I will continue to work with the committee to complete the implementation of the new systems.
A manual system is a very rich system but with so much data it is often impossible to make it machine friendly without intensive data cleansing. Our membership data is held in a spreadsheet but the data has been amassed over several years and is far from easy to migrate by a simple csv type export. There are in excess of 50,000 entities in the spreadsheet and just one non-data-correct entity will cause a machine based upload to fail. There have been lots of these and the two gentlemen above are part of that problem, I hope they will trust that it will be resolved soon, both require completely new database entries creating.

Currently the new system is working beautifully for those who pay electronically but everyone else is still being managed manually by me: Poor old Tony also has the unenviable task of inputting subs info updates manually for now (however, once done it should become easy for subsequent years)- and there were over half the members' data-sets which required some alteration. With over 600 members that means at least 300 can't import as easily as we hoped - it takes around 10 minutes to create a correct entry from scratch. Now that's about 50 hours of work just to get it working. To rectify this I have tasked someone (at my own expense) to begin data entry and get the new system correctly populated. The web site company who host our sites have been really accommodating and have worked -as a favour to me most of the time - at no charge, But there's only so much we can expect them to do for their maintenance fee.

I am hoping someone with a good degree of enthusiasm will take over from me and the club site will continue to thrive. I still believe we have one of the best, and most knowledgeable forums on the interweb; we have a flexible website which looks good on all devices and browsers, a fantastic forum, modern and usable membership technologies coming on stream, and a "club goods" online shop coming soon. I firmly believe that this club can be one of the leading lights as our cars become recognised as classic cars.
We have a vibrant club moving on with new memberships every year and the tools to share with the world what we can do.

Why is Cameron tasking someone at his own expense to rectify this problem?

Surely this is a problem that is wide enough for the MOC to directly fund the process?
Isnt that the very reason the club had a pretty healthy balance sheet, once described as being 'in case of a rainy day' Isn't it raining now?

[andyf]

Re: Members Only

I agree, we pay membership to keep this kind of thing going it shouldn't be for one member to fund...