I personally feel I feel that I have whipped this horse too many times, every time to run into the same obstacles.

However, receiving a mail like I did, makes it necessary to address it yet again.

So one of two things will happen. The factions will form, between the egos, the annoying, and the rest - civil unrest will befall our forum, just causing the spiral to gain momentum, and on the other end the bitter enders will pick up the pieces, or this will carry on ad invenitum.

We are supposed to be an informative forum for the South African Tarantula keeper, right?

Then why is it, that we can't keep threads informative? Why is it that people deliberately post threads in the wrong sections? Post threads on BS?

And before some of you go and cry because it's easier to just post it, let me tell you this - BS! if you can operate a pc you're qualified to read. If that, then you know and should have some common sense to see where you're posting, what you're posting, don't tell me that you do not have access to a spell checker? Mxitisms is not acceptable.

Getting your knickers in a twist over a bruised ego doesn't expand the hobby.

I received an email from a former member. Former for this very reason.

Ceratogyrus wrote:

Hey there. Just thought i would mention it to you seen as you are one of the only mods left on the site i assume. Maybe you could mention it on that thread about 'definition of a breeder'.

Had an email from a top breeder from usa asking if i was on the sa
tarantula site. Apparently he was going to join, but decided to first
read through some threads, especially the one about the definition of
a breeder. He asked if there are any users over the age of 10 on the
site. Just thought i would mention that overseas users (not only him)
are looking at the site and think its a bit of a joke. Not a great
image that the local guys are giving us. Just seems that everyone is
in the hobby for the wrong reasons (which i agree with fully) and the
ego's are just so big that their heads cant all fit on one site.

We are frequented by international members. Is this the image we portray?


We should ask ourselves the question - what do we want to achieve with our forum? I can name a few very reputable keepers, that has helped build the hobby in South Africa that refuse to associate with the public side of the hobby for this very reason. And we have only ourselves to blame.

This is where we draw the line.
Either we build this to be an informative community, or a kindergarten.

A community frequented by international breeders, people with credit, and experience, willing to invest in the South African hobby, or we could go on as now, squabbling about scrap, and having to trial and error?

For those who consider to turn this into a flame war, let this serves as a warning. It will be met with extreme force.

TH

Hey all been a long time

TH the problem is that (And this is not directed or meant as a insult to any of the people that tried there best to get this site to it's former glory) is that there is NO admin on the site whatsoever. There is noone to address general issues, no one to grant most mods the ability to ban troublemakers, which in turn made many of our most knowledgeable keepers leave or become specters...HECK we are still waiting for a logo... Crux of the story is that if you don't fix the foundation then the entire building will fall. Big ups to you TH for still caring.

peace out.

Well first off I agree with Spoq But I will get to that..

But here is my offer to the members and the site !
I now my spelling and grammer is up to BS (since this word is used so Often)
I’ll give my service as a Mod to help out with moving wrongly posted threads and flamballing
Of cause the big BS topics .
I can’t say how much time I can give and how often I will be around but Im more than glad enough to give some of my time ..
So if Scarab or animal would like to use my service you are welcome to do so.
I won’t be able to check for spelling as mine still needs some work.(I’m getting there)


Ok then next thing
As Spoq said lets try build our foundation Ill say to a reinforced 3 storey unit before we get all up in arms about the Bsing and stuff ,we have to focus on what we got and what needs to be fixed first. I don’t know if there is any hope for our site to grow but one can only hope!
I’m kind of getting tired of this every other month there is new problems and new fights
All due to the fact that people don’t know how to behave and talk to each other.

So then we get a big long sob and say I’m leaving. Well then good bye and enjoy. That where this statement fits 100%

He asked if there are any users over the age of 10 on the site

So please just act your age and try not to throw your toys all over the floor. Just stand back let your childish feelings run their course and come back to the site!
How in hells name are you guys able to handle life if you guys act like kids on the forums
When you are of a mature age.

Then please to all the international members that do come on and look at this funny site
How about you guys give us some tips and some help and not just send emails and say they
Think we are a bunch of jokes and silly and anything else you think of us.

We all had to learn somewhere along the line and I’m sure you guys that are so High and mighty now wore a bunch of 10 year old kids on a stage!

So please don’t take offence to this just give us advise and help to grow and help our site and help our 10 year old kids to grow up to your guys standard?

Just like to say thank you to Mr Stanley and The Duke for being on our site and giving advice to us.
I don’t know if there are any other members from faraway lands, if there are thank you.

A community frequented by international breeders, people with credit, and experience, willing to invest in the South African hobby, or we could go on as now, squabbling about scrap, and having to trial and error?

I think we doing pretty well where we are. Even with all the unrest and fighting our breeders are breeding.
We don’t have a big selection of tarantulas in SA; I think if this was to change we would not be far behind the other EU countries.
AS we are already getting info from them any way.

But any way the above makes sense to me?

+1 Cascade.

I think if we want to call ourselves a community, we best pull our finger out our arses, and start acting like it.

There's a few members that really try to build the hobby in SA,

That said, we need to establish a goal for the forum.
i.e. Are we going to be more social or more informative?

I prefer the informative ones. If I have a issue pertaining my spider, in our South African context, was there other keepers that experienced the same? How did they resolve it? Breeding, what was done, what was the outcome? Free from the BS, don't want to read through 15 pages of congratulations, to find three posts relating to the successful breeding of a particular species.

The floor is open to discussion. Why are we here? Where do we want to go with the hobby in SA, and more directly what is our vision for the forum?

TH

I don't think we have to necessarily devide it into 2 groups (social/informative) I think all we really need to do is put everything were it needs to be... social off topic, pm's and shoutbox. Everything else ... well each forum has a title and description which speaks for it self.

Also there is one thing that concerns me in regards to the ammount of sarcasm flying around on here... we must remember that there are actually kids ... yes kids... that do visit this site and do post questions that might sound absurd to you but sounds perfectly reasonable to them. We need to to point them in the right direction and help them out because at the end of the day they are the next generation of T keepers. Sarcasm, being a asshole or having a ego the size of the moon is the quickest way of loosing members and breeders from this site.

oh one more thing ... this karma thing... just think about this for a second. If you give a person bad karma for a stupid mistake he made like posting in the wrong topic which you could of rather helped them out with it could of actually premoted site growth where as now any new person or international enthusiast wanting to join will see half the bloody site has bad karma and think we are all incompetent.
Please think before you use that silly button.

Something that bothers me is double posting... Surely if you are going to start a thread, the logical thing to do is using the search tool to see whether the topic has already been discussed?

Can everyone please check whether a thread on the topic exists, before posting your own.