forum organisation feedback?

[Red Dog]

Gents,

I know this is not the right place to post this but unfortunately there is actually no specific room for forum feedback, so here it is and please move this to wherever you guys see fit

I feel the Viperpit needs a little bit of a structural overhaul. here are some suggestion for improvement, feel free to do whatever you want with it

- I see many inactive forum. Maybe these could be archived. We have forum with no post for the last 5 or 10 or even 15 years
    In the commercial section, many products are not available anymore...

- I think we could use at least a forum for every sim supporting a F-16. We have A Falcon BMS forum but I'd suggest a DCS forum and maybe an X-plane forum
    In these rooms, ppl might maybe ask specific questions about interfacing their cockpit with these software.
    I do have a question about how to interface the real throttle guide rail with DCS and nowhere to post it

- Adding a forum feedback is always IMHO a good idea

- Maybe the homepage could be updated a bit more often?

- Many listed moderators haven't been seen on this forum for decade

- In specific forums, we have sticky topic which are outdated. Some are apparently sticky for no apparent reason.

- The VP forum gravitates (according to my feeling) around two main thing: the WIP topic and the part exchange/sales/auctions.
   That's great but I feel the rest could use a bit more organisation to make life easier on VP users.
   It is IMHO much easier to interact in a forum (and keep it correctly organised) with a up to date forum and well structured.

- As a BMS forum admin, I get many request on BMS with guys who are left with no answer to their fresh account here. I suggest making the new member and anti bot procedure a bit easier for the new users
  Yes many of them don't read the announcement and the fact that they should send an email I agree, but let's face it that procedure is a bit archaic if you ask me

- I'm sure there is much more, maybe you guys can add your suggestion in this topic for the admin/mod consideration?

Of course I never suggest work on my pairs without volunteering, so if you feel I can be of any help feel free to ask.
If I was out of line suggesting the above, feel free to send me back in my cave
(But i'd really like to get these other sim forum at least )

[Marvin]

In addition we need to work on our registrations whoever is in charge of that.  I’m part of several DCS cockpit forums on Facebook and plenty of complaints from guys all stating they have tried to register but can’t.

To all the new generations from what I am reading VP has a very bad reputation as well.  I know we can take that with a grain of salt but maybe something we can do to change that?  I don’t know.

[Marvin]

Red Dog,

Maybe send Mike a message.  I know he asked me about a year ago to take over VP but I’m not interested.  You have a lot of experience with forums.  Perhaps you taking over for Mike could be a real positive change.

[Fhyndoh]

i agree, i think there is so much good info here we can share, particularly around the f4 to pokeys developments and some of the open 3d modelling stuff that Willy was starting before we lost him. opening up and improving access will push all our projects forward. i would be in favour of including any sim in which i can fly an F-16. (and am not sure we should limit ourselves to F-16...my first sim was "A-10 silent thunder" and the hog is also dear to my heart.

i think there is a perception that VP is a bit of a closed club because of the difficulty in registration, and the fairly chaotic organisational structure - i wonder if that and the occasional massive fallings out (Hempstead and Viper 44 spring to mind) are responsible for an (in my opinion) unjustified poor reputation. i have always been well supported and treated here, and that goes back to when i joined as a 15 year old. i suspect if this was widely known with a bit of work we would be able to improve this perception.

M

[Kukki]

Great post RD and I agree total.

For the intake to VP, I will now talk with Romanski to hear what is going on, if its to hard the way we do it now.

Basic all are welcome as lomg they can behave, just my 2 cents.

For the maintaince of the forum, I agree we run on an ols system, but it works, but I would love to see more modern system here.

Mike is the head admin, then me and sandman, Romanski, and some old moderator, but they rarely chk in, so yes I could use some help here.

Lets see what Mike have time for, or else we might think of the next step here in 2021.

What I really like is the head/owner/builder of the forun is active.  As it is now I think basic im the only one who is online almost every day, but time is limited to chk. all.

So Gents im open for everything.

[Red Dog]

Thanks K

I can offer my help in managing the forum if you want.

I think moderators should be active at all times. An inactive mod should not be a mod
I think the priority is to make access to VP easier for everyone. It is not a question of ppl behaving or not as the registration process is way too archaic and not followed by admin resulting in new guys unable to post here.
That said, the more ppl we get, the more problems we will have as well, hence the need for an active moderator team.

Kukki, question, can you add or archive forums?

[Kukki]

Super RD.

Yes I can do everything, and add you as moderator, or Admin if you want to have more free hands, just let me know.

Kukki

[Cupra]

That is a point I hear also very often... access to VP is ways too complicate. And if someone notices to send an email they do not get any response again....

[Kukki]

That is a point I hear also very often... access to VP is ways too complicate. And if someone notices to send an email they do not get any response again....

Agree, and we will make it different, and automate the process.

Kukki

[Red Dog]

Super RD.

Yes I can do everything, and add you as moderator, or Admin if you want to have more free hands, just let me know.

Kukki

Admin would be better Kukki, if that's OK with the team already in place

[Romanski]

Happy new Year guys!

I am doing the user registrations for about 9 years now. After the forum was hacked form the inside by a user. Just to let you know i am deleting daily about 10 Spam users, most of them coming from Russia. I would change the way of registering , make it mot re difficult if possible. I also have users from Pakistan and Whatever countries which provided also fake email address, fake names and totally have nothing to do with building an F16 cockpit.

@ Marvin.  As Nigel mentioned : Words deleted , better for everyone.

There is information on the first page about the registration. A few months ago someone took that out and It was quite difficult getting that back where it was. But of course you have to read that and you will only send an simple email asking to be approved. This is how we keep it clean guys.

@RD : If you want to take steps and modify please first discuss them and let us know what you want to do before so we can all agree to it.

We need in the future to get VP moved to another provider because how it looks now is that all the traffic points to China and Russia. I know this because my colleagues did some scan and I saw the results.

Good ideas are welcome , but let's discuss it first guys.

Cheers,
Romanski

[Snoopy]

There is nobody which has an F16 cockpit and fly DCS. All those DCS guys have desktop pits. Correct me if I am wrong.

Sounds quite condescending! As if you are not good enough for this forum unless you epnd multi K euro on a simpit. Not everybody has the time, space and money to do built an entire cockpit. Some people also would rather spend it on their family then on a hobby just for their won.

There is a very limited number of people building an entire F16 cockpit and they are probably already a member here. BMs might be nicer to interface, but DCS look SO much better.  I wyould really welcome it if both sides (BMS and DCS) were on this forum, helping each other with their experience.

[tiger-31]

I agree that we can welcome users regardless of whether they use BMS, DCS, or even Flightsim if you like. Or whether they build a high fidelity or desktop setup.

However I do agree with @Romanski that the safety and integrity of the forum needs to be protected. Just letting everybody in is asking for trouble. I also know this from other forums.

Just my 2

[tiger-31]

Another something I want to add. I must be getting too old for this, but these days newbies come on board, and their first post is, 'I need this' , or 'I'm looking for that' without making a minimum of effort to try introduce their project. Only what they want. Then some are surprised no-one answers. Sometimes people do give an answer and there is not even any sign of appreciation. Sorry for ranting, but the more people we get, the more of this we will also get. People just want things the easy way.

[Red Dog]

I am doing the user registrations for about 9 years now. After the forum was hacked form the inside by a user. Just to let you know i am deleting daily about 10 Spam users, most of them coming from Russia. I would change the way of registering , make it mot re difficult if possible. I also have users from Pakistan and Whatever countries which provided also fake email address, fake names and totally have nothing to do with building an F16 cockpit.

Hello Romanski,
I know these are really an annoyance and I know they must be avoided at all costs. But IMHO this is a consequence of a too old forum engine. Modern forum don't suffer from that because these are directly and automatically deleted. I run two other forum as admin and they don't face these problems => but that's because the forum engine and security are well maintained.

The best antivirus is shutting down your computer, that way there is no virus that can be installed. 100% efficiency. Sure but you can't use your computer either
Doing the registration by hand put pressure on you and the medication we are taking is far worse than the symptoms we have IMHO.
Ppl can't get into our forum and that's a real shame. Ppl complain all over the web because of the way one has to register on VP
We HAVE to address this one way or another - by letting legit users register and filtering spammers, bots and all know what. But ina  more efficient way than relying on email coms, which is very archaic IMHO

@RD : If you want to take steps and modify please first discuss them and let us know what you want to do before so we can all agree to it.

How come this doesn't even exits?
I'll get acquainted first with the forum software but I think the first urgent need is to create a moderator forum where admin and mods can discuss these issues and help one another.
So i'll definitely discuss before doing anything. On the other hand a moderator/admin should be active daily and questions should not be left open during a week waiting for someone to show up.
Running a forum requires teamwork and efficiency IMHO.

I'll recommend that we start looking for better forum software, because these one here is old unsafe and clearly unpratcical.

Another something I want to add. I must be getting too old for this, but these days newbies come on board, and their first post is, 'I need this' , or 'I'm looking for that' without making a minimum of effort to try introduce their project. Only what they want. Then some are surprised no-one answers. Sometimes people do give an answer and there is not even any sign of appreciation. Sorry for ranting, but the more people we get, the more of this we will also get. People just want things the easy way.

Again, running a forum means managing users and educating users. There are always good and bad users. but we can't cut the forum from good users because we can't manage the bad ones.
A good moderation team, working alongside common guidelines and view, dedication and activity is what it requires.

Nobody ever said it was easy
I feel there is a great community here. And like Tiger I feel it was much better 15 years ago when I joined
Let's try to work all together to make this place even better than it is/was