Great Western Coffee Shop

We have not heard from a number of members who used to post regularly from a while - not even been logged in recently.  For some, it's a change in circumstances which change their interests and priorities some of those have let us know.  For others, we (frankly) worry about what has happened to them - not so much as forum contributors but as a friends.

Two requests

1. Please add the Coffee Shop into your personal address book. This sounds morbid and dramatic, but it will let your family get in touch with us if you're incapacitated or worse. Use whatever format you like (of course) - "admin@railcustomer.info" is an email address which reaches our admin team and is intended to be robust over time (as permanent as things can be) and can be reached by none-members. Or you can use my personal details but they may be less robust should something happen to me.  Email - graham @ sn12 . net or call / text 0797 4 925 928 or just call 01225 708225 (these are all well know public contact points). When you have added the Coffee Shop to your address book, please vote in the poll to say you have done so.

2. If you visit the forum as a guest these days, but have an account here and were formerly a posting member, please send me an email to let me know how you're going - as short or long as you like.  It will be private to the core team - just a re-assurance - unless you let me know otherwise. (And I can help if you have lost you login).  For these purposes, graham @ sn12 . net

Not seen any further posts from member broadgage.
Really hope things are going on OK(ish?).

All the best

A concern I share, and we (admins / moderators) reaching out as best we can.  There are a couple of other regular posting member who haven't even visited the forum 'of late' we'll be reaching out to; each individually and quietly - for some the concern is to their health, but for others it can be a change in lifestyle which means they move on.

Good idea.  I know of a number of people on various fora who have not posted since mid 2020 and I have to fear the worst.

I have been doing some arithmetic ...

The forum has been running for 17 years. I have been here (for sure) for longest of any - I set it up and join at the age of 52, and here I am 68. I am an extreme case but we have 93 posting members who joined over a decade ago and have, still, visited in the last year.  93 x 9 years = 837 elapsed years ...

I will throw you a corollary here too.  A handful of youthful members in the "nought"ies (200x years) let their enthusiasm overtake the forum's agreement and guidelines and got themselves, with huge regret on the part of the moderator team, suspended.   No longer in their teens, now in their late 20s or early 30s, different people (and, yes, I know that from other web presence).  And different times;  I'll need to talk to the rest I the team, but we all know this  ;)

Well I joined at the age of 49 and am now 61.  Some would suggest I probably need therapy but I’ve valued the conversations and the friends I’ve met - both on line and face to face.

As of today, to the nearest whole day I've been here 439,948,800 seconds, or 7,332,480 minutes, or 122,208 hours, or 5092 days, or 727 weeks and 3 days, or 167 months and 10 days, or 13 years 11 months and 10 days.

Or 29.74% of my life.

Obviously I've not been online all that time. I have slept a bit.

My elapsed time here has been 5,825 days from a lifetime of around 25,000 days (between a fifth and a quarter of a lifetime) and my forum reported time 730 days, or 2 years of my time.

Forum stats need to be read carefully; let me explain the forum reported time with myself as an example (it includes personal data visible only to each member which I am choosing to share in public). Members typically visit the Coffee Shop, reading / writing / interacting with a series of pages in a session before going away to walk the dog / take a train ride / watch a film on TV / do a days's work / sleep / interact with a partner / prepare food and eat it / go shopping.   Arrival times can be accurately measured by our server, but departure times only guessed.  Most of us simply navigate away from the site when we are done with a session without logging off each time, and the server makes a guess at us being around to read the final page of a session for 15 minutes. There is no count of the number of sessions and no way ok knowing the actual final page read time.   So I may have checked in through the life of the forum perhaps half a dozen times every day, registered as half an hour each time but in reality just over 15 minutes, before turning my attention to another site, an email, a dash to the station to catch the train to a meeting, a shower, or a discussion on politics with Lisa. There isn't really ever a true measure of being "here" or not ... I'm composing this message in a text window and not referring back to the server - however, there's another browser window behind but partly visible with a forum page showing; Lisa is scrolling through content beside me ... last night, that was live coverage from the USA as The House elected its speaker, tonight I'm not so sure what it is / it's muted.  So do I count as being "active" - dunno! - I will when I have spell checked this and am posting and for another 15 minutes, though by that time I will be asleep.  So read your personal (forum) reported time with a pinch of salt.

Just to let members know - yes, this thread was trigged by one particular concern.  I'm relieved to report I have a smile on my face this evening - definite but very sketchy news.  I am hopeful that we will  learn more in coming days.    The thread is also making us / members think and to help ensure contact details are up to date, and indeed I getting other feedback which is really re-assuring too.

I was shocked to see that my membership has stretched beyond 14 years and 3 months, only averaging 0.184 posts per day, with no? infringements.

Happy New Year!

OTC

I am "pinging" this poll to bring it up in recent posts - it's open for two weeks rather than the usual one to encourage as many intermittent visitor at practical to take part.   

I am delighted to see that a number of members are updating / have updated / already include Coffee Shop details in their address books - thank you.  I also understand that some members use the forum as a "second life" and do not want the two worlds linked - respect that decision on the vote, as it indicates it's something you have considered.

Many thanks to everyone who has completed this poll, whether you have added our details to your address book. If you have, thank you. If not - I appreciate you considering it.    The poll is closed, but the request to add your details to your address book, and to keep your registered email address up to date.

We have eight members who have posted over 500 times, and have visited within the last year but NOT within the last month.  Some are well known to me and I am in touch.  Some have a history of coming in spurts over the years the disappearing for a while, or who are members from l-o-n-g ago who only once or twice a year now. But just a couple I worry about and will be emailing "are you OK". A third in that category at the start of this exercise has got his email access back (phew!) having, franlky, scared his friends.   If you are a regular and going away for a while or indefinite, please let us know.

And so ... on to "where shall I go on Saturday" ... my answer is Berryfield Village Hall - for those of you going further afield, enjoy and tell us about the public transport elements!

Grahame,
one of the things I would like to see if possible on this forum,
is that once you have look/view a posting,
if you come back and read the posting again or reply to the posting it does not count as another look/view.

I know e-bay did this a few years back as sellers were continually hitting the view button on items they were sellling to bump up the looks.

Therefore making the item look more popular than it actually was. 

The "number of views" statistic provided on this forum is a very rough measure indeed.  It counts the number of times a thread has been called for by thread number.  Where a thread has a reply added, no count is provided that tells you (or me) how many times that reply has been viewed.  And where a thread has so many replies that it moves on to a second page, the count will go on increasing even if the lead post is not viewed. On the other hand, views of recent posts with the recent button are not counted.   Where a post is in a public thread, spider and other robot visitors get counted. Where a post is in a restricted thread, I am unsure whether a denied attempt to access it is counted - I rather doubt it.

I appreciate that a count could be inflated by someone "sitting" on their reload button.  And I also note that a page could be called up by a guest and NOT counted because of caching by an intermediate application such as squid or varnish, though there are so many cache-limiting headers on the HTML content that it's probably quite rare for that to happen (in will / does happen on images we serve).

But unlike EBay, I don't think there's anything to gain here from manipulating the count by re-visiting multiple times.  The only place that threads are sorted by count is on the stats pages, and that is not monetarised or a tool that can be used to help placement.  I have no evidence that much manipulation if any goes on; I am aware that turning a page into a landing page from a Facebook post or from elsewhere does pump up the count (but then it is being viewed by a human or automaton, so the increased count is valid).

So -  don't think we have a problem that needs fixing here.    And if we tried, I suspect anything new would have similar concerns and complexities.  It would probably need extra logging and database tables or columns, and it would destroy the context of history because we don't have the source logs to generate the newly defined statistics. 

In summary - poor stat (and you'll not see me making use of it when promoting the forum or a thread) but not one that's really a problem any way. No easy or even practical alternative. So - explanation provided, suggestion looked at, but it will be staying "as is".

Thanks Grahame for the reply,I don't think any one on here would refresh their posting/s to make the posting look good,unlike e-bay users use to do.

I just made a post about BBC breakfast news live from Leeds (under Media about railways, and other means of transport)

I notice my previous posting(BBC breakfast news LIVE from London Waterloo)  on that section it showed no replys  and 334 views.

I would like to have had 334 exclusive views,but I find it difficult to believe that the posting had 334 exclusive views.

It's complex.   And the limited logging and counting of forum software does not give me an ability - even with scripts and database calls - to give any absolute numbers.   I would guess that the individual number of different human viewers exclusive to that thread is a small fraction of that 334.  But then you can add (should you wish) the number of people who call up a "recent" page and it appears on that.   Server logs for yesterday tell me that in just the 24 hours, there were 253 calls for "recent" from 43 different users.     

It is really hard to quantify visits and reads, and indeed whether the visitors read in detail or skim.  "Reach evaluation" is difficult; so often a post (of mine) seems to be like a stone thrown into a pond and sink without even any ripples.  And yet, later (sometimes much later) feedback / side evidence tells that it has had significant readership, comprehension and has been remembered.