is anybody home?

wankers, malcontents and trolls,so why bother? If something of substance came up, there would be a discussion.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZ 2

Hey, quit waking me up.
Signed,
Rip Van Winkle

What can I say? It's slow. The half dozen people who keep the site going all have lives and don't get paid to keep you entertained.

Fancy helping?

simon,

a forum is a community based exchange of ideas. it's great you set this one up, but the people involved have set a tone that has turned off most of the active community in fernie.

the tone of constant negativity without positive solutions made it a forum of self-serving wankers.

until the tone changes to one of positive change it will remain slow.

it's not the job of the people associated with Our Fernie to set the tone. It's the community.

First off Zippy, I don't think that ourfernie is full of constant negativity, there is always some, but there are alot more positive interactions that I see on this site. Second of all, you are more than welcome to become part of the community and contribute something that is positive (unlike your post above)

I do miss the Council Connections and the Chamber Newsletters. They haven't been posted in quite some time.....

sanook

see thread "ruin biking" as reference

and as far as being part of the community, i am part of the community. most of my posts attempt to bring in a solution.

the post above is an attempt to bring in a solution. if people just quit wanking and started working on a solution (Heaven's Gate as a self-supporting community ski area like Bridger or Bogus Basin) the forum would be a place that an interesting exchange would occur.

if the wanker that started "ruin biking" decided to spend less time dis'ing RCR and work on his own to help develop more bike trails with the Fernie Mountain Bike Club or another group. instead, he seems to feel he has (and is entitled) everything he "needs" at FAR. when FAR stops meeting his needs, he is put out. There are all sort of trails around here besides the ones on the mountain, as you know. from the radio towers off the ridge to what ever, there's so much more to do beyond FAR. and a lot more fun with a gang.

he knows little of what would happen if Interwest bought FAR. that would be a backward step for sure. since Interwest went private, their internal management practices have changed dramatically. they are losing key staff, cutting service and expecting more profit from each department. Not an appropriate model to seek.

better to work with FAR, show the potential profitability with suggestions and then work to accomplish forward movement. they are not unreasonable if approached properly, through channels and with a concrete plan that shows a benefit for FAR and the community.

i have seen so many people try to work with FAR to show them ways to make more profit.. but in the end they get shut down and FAR just keeps cutting back and cutting back and cutting back to try to make money. Ever heard of the saying "you cant make money if you don't spend money"

As for positive threads.. there are lots. Tired of the negative ones? why not start a new thread that will encourage some positive discussion?

zippy, ostracizing the community is the complete opposite of what we're trying to achieve with OurFernie. I'm aware that this seems to have happened and quite frankly I don't know how to reverse this, presuming it's even possible.

Negative posts seem much fewer these days and thanks to more people getting involved I think it's improving. It really helps when someone replies to a baiting post by pointing out the positives. Thankfully many people do, but anyone else with a little local knowledge can help out too.

I've never thought the answer was heavy-handed moderation but perhaps I'm wrong? Or maybe we should move community issues into a "locals only" forum, viewable only by those who have registered using a Fernie address?

What worries me most is that some posts may be being made thinking that OurFernie only has a local audience, when in fact only 20% of our visitors come from Fernie. Since we're consistently ranked as Fernie's busiest website, is this the image we want to share?

I'd be really interested to hear from anyone with suggestions. I can be contacted privately at http://www.ourfernie.com/user/2/contact

Simon,

A bunch of websites around use comment ratings to move crappy comments down and good comments up. Slashdot, reddit, etc. I'm sure you're familiar with these. What they do is give readers the power to rate a comments and sort the comments by 'goodness'. Because most people are lazy they read only the first few comments, the most positive one usually, before making their (now hopefully positive) comment.

Might be worth a shot.

This is a good suggestion and might be worth a try, although the sites that use it like /. are very high traffic sites - not sure how it would work on a smaller board such as this one.

Still, it's one form of moderation that isn't too heavy handed...