Hi everyone, Roger told me about this thread, as he mentioned earlier, when we bumped into each other at Allambie Heights, so it sounded like I might get some useful ideas if I tuned in. The first thing I said to Roger was something along the lines of 'Why are they telling the forum, why don't they just contact me?'. If your mate needed a new muffler on his bike or had really useless footpegs on his bike, wouldn't you just tell your mate that, or would you go on the forum and say 'My mate really needs a new muffler and a new set of pegs'. Maybe I'm missing something?
I'll come back to all the suggestions in a moment but yes, as Roger mentioned, I don't inhabit the forum. I do inhabit tons of other forums and actually speak to people every day so I have plenty of 'barometers' on what is going on in the vintage community. I used to come here all the time, but the place just became so toxic and was dragging down the vintage community. I'd talk to people at events and they expressed hate for someone else at the event that they'd never even met, because of posts that had been made on the forum. How is that doing any good for the vintage community? You could tell things were just getting worse when it was proudly proclaimed that there was to be a Dumbgeon or whatever it's called. Rather than being a success, that was the most pointed sign of the forum's failure, that it needed such a facility at all.
No other vintage forum on the planet requires such a facility, why is that, does anyone ever wonder? The concepts of free speech and robust discussion were often thrown about but it was more like free rein, not free speech - free rein to put down others on the forum, free rein to tell bald-faced lies about others on the forum, free rein to endlessly bag the most trivial of matters, free rein to let the most supercilious personalities have a gold pass to stroke their own egos incessantly, free rein to.......ah, you get the picture.
So I tune in again on a thread that hopefully will be super helpful for the magazine and some of it is, no question. Then there's someone calling me foolish, someone who has told me over the phone years ago that they would never buy the magazine again because it wasn't full of what they wanted (so I'm sorry but that sort of means that I just ignored everything you said, as you've vowed never to buy another copy so your suggestions are moot), and, some who seem to almost boast that they don't buy the magazine.
To all the other suggestions, thanks, I will really try to act on them, even though everyone wants something different. That's hardly a new problem though, it's existed since day one. At best, any reader is only ever going to like most of the content, most of the time. It is a tough gig putting together a magazine and even the best try their heart out and still can't make it work financially (as in Trail zone for example, sadly). If I could, I'd like to offer my own suggestion and I'll start with the first post and maybe that will set the scene for most of the other posts. Slakewell, my friend, good idea, and I'd like to include more late '70s KTM and early '80s bikes as well. My phone number is 02 9452 1444 and my email is
[email protected] and if you could point me in the direction of where to find some great examples of those bikes then I'd be only too happy to follow up those leads and hopefully get those bikes in the magazine. If you're an expert on those bikes I'd also really like your advice and help with putting together an article as well, so we can get it right.
With any luck, I'll get a bunch of people contacting me with the offer of bikes, advice and help as after all, it's a magazine that's meant to be full of your "stuff", I just put it together. Lastly, my thanks to those in this thread who have provided some positive feedback, it is much appreciated.
