Chris, Many thanks for your thoughtful update. Here's the more thorough and detailed answer that Lee suggested I might write.
I
celebrate the wide variety of people who have signed up here - allowing them to post, and send personal messages
in addition to reading what everyone is saying; we're a public forum and as such anyone who's on line can read the board. The forum wouldn't be the same without all of these people, in both groups. I also celebrate our wide range of backgrounds and travel patterns; perhaps it could be said that the only two things that join us are an interest in travelling somewhere in the wedge westward from London, and an online presence.
I attended a big get-together of people who see a future in rail towards the end of last year, and couldn't help but notice that I was, at just over 50, one of the youngsters. And that Lisa, who was with me, was one of just a handful of women in a group of over 100. Some quiet enquiries, a poll that I didn't bias by stating my reasons ahead of time, and I confirmed that our membership here is much more balanced - it has a profile that's much more representative of the age / gender profile of the typical train traveller. That's great news, but it's not something with which we should rest on our laurels - it's something to keep in active review.
When people visit a board such as ours, they often do so casually - because they've been brought here be a search of they're looking to read something specific, and so they don't even register. We will always have a large population of
guests, I suspect. Many passengers will remain in that group - contented to read but not feeling that they have anyting to say; some people are life's talkers and others simply are not. Some of the staff will remain in that group too, but a lower proportion; they have the knowledge and opinions about their work which is far more central to their lives than the half hour twice a day from Reading to London. The guest group is very welcome - we shouldn't be concerned at the pool being large as it's our potential new members, but we should be concerned if people there are fearful of signing up in any way, and I don't know how to measure if that's the case.
Someone takes the great "leap" and signs up. A
new member. Good; but why do they do it? Not always because they want to become a regular poster. Sometimes, it's to make a specific point on a thread that they've a particular interest in, and at other times it's so that they can get in touch via the "personal message" system with other posters. And with some it will be based on their knowledge that on many forums such as ours, signed up members can see other boards that aren't available to guests. Alas, we don't have such a "clubroom" here. There are some other less positive reasons too, which I as administrator need to keep an eye on - but we have very few problems here.
I too try to welcome new members whenever I spot their first posts. Only a proportion will stand on stage in the "intro" section and introduce themselves; other will just come into existing threads.
And I do encourage everyone to say "hi" to newcomers and to remember that they are likely to be a little nervous and to not know all of our histories - or the history of old threads; I have just emphasised that as it's so easy for us to all forget. "I was new here once".
Could we be more welcoming? Yes - and I encourage everyone who reads this thread to say "hi" to a new member whenever they come across them. I'm also minded - something to be discussed with fellow moderators - to update the greeting email we send out to people; to be honest (I always try to be honest!!) I've not reviewed it in a while and am very woolly about what it actually says!
Looking forward at other aspects, as people move from being new members to being
established posters, it's worth noting that everyone is different again. We have members who post once in every 20 minutes that they're signed in (one xtreme) and others who have been signed in and reading for a total of over 24 hours, but have never, ever posted. How do we keep providing the service that these people all want / keep interest up? Fortunately, at this stage the forum becomes something of a daily / weekly habit for many people, and we have such a wide range of topics and discussions that it's self-supporting. However there could be scope for adding other things / activities. One of the problems there is that we have limited admin time and we would be diluting available effort, save for the fact that the increasing pool of members can help.
As we stand at the moment, I could do with one or two volunteers to help edit the
background pages on the site - copying useful stuff off the posts which decay in their access with time onto the permanent information section that most people probably don't realise we have.
I have resisted the idea of any form or regular email letter / mailing out to members - but further developement (and an enouragement to people to sign up to get on the letter) is something that could be done. Ah - but it all comes down to time; personally, I'm the sort of person who has 10 ideas but has to rule out 9 of them because of lack of reources.
There could be whole new post / thread concerning options away from the web site ... best not go there too much in what's already a long and rambling post, but do note that there's a lot else that goes on.
P.S. The board states a specific gender bias in its stats. Don't trust the figure; it's the proportion of people who have declared their gender to be male v female, and there is strong evidence that men declare their gender far more than do women.
