Funny really

Just been talking to a friend who mentionef yhat people have been saying "we dont use the cave forum because all the posts are negative etc"
But do those same people contribute with a positve post? No.

Funny that....... sort of expecting something for nothing.

What a shame. If only people spent as much effort trying to be positive instead of negative...Life's too short.

they arnt reading it much then, i have found it very helpful. yes there are some negative stuff but it is often deserved.

Looking at the stats, everyday loads of people have a nose, not so many contribute. Always been the same to be fair.

Like I say, something for nothing, and lets have a winge too.

My suggestion, look around you, realise how lucky you are and cheer up!
Happy Wednesday everybody!

When a new person arrives at the forum from a search engine link, this is what they see:

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What are you saying Pete, thatnot all forums are displayed?

Dave in my suggestion!!!!
well said.

Dave wrote:What are you saying Pete, thatnot all forums are displayed?

Well, if we, as a community, want to present a more positive image of the forum I'm sure that lots of people would make some suggestions.

Off the top of my head here are a few things we could try.
First of all, we have some great information that lots of people have contributed. A lot of these are the stickies - but you have to be registered to see these. Unless first-time visitors have made that "leap of faith" they wouldn't know they are there. I don't know if it would be possible to make them visible to unregistered visitors on the front page - but it would help with the first impression: that there is lots of useful stuff and that joining is worthwhile.
( On a technical note: google's crawlers like dynamic, freuqntly updated websites and give them a better search ranking. So if some frequently updated content was available to them, it would boost the forum's search results.)

On a similar note, the What's On page is a positive message to newcomers and seems quite active with information of event in the local area. Promoting that to be freely readable would be a nice service to the people who organise those events as it would give a wider audience to their announcements.

One other thing that comes to mind is to make it clear to first-time visitors that although most of the site is (and most of the posts are) English, that all nationalities are welcome. Maybe we could incorporate all the EU national flags onto the front page, somehow?

Nice to have some constructive advice Pete! Ill have a fiddle with a few things (but it wont be for a couple of weeks).
My main point was referring to the existing membership though, it annoys me how many people moan but never attempt to improve things themselves.
It reminds me of days gone by, in 'management' meetings, and im sure many people will recognise this: Before the meeting several people would strongly voice their opinions. Start the meeting and 99% would sit there like frightened mice. Guess what they did in their cars on the way home...?
If youre not a player, then you shouldn't gripe.

Ive been a bit guilty myself lately. Its the pressure of work as they say long shifts blah blah blah. The forums great though and is invaluable for finding information. right the must get postin

Dave wrote:My main point was referring to the existing membership though, it annoys me how many people moan but never attempt to improve things themselves.

Ha ha, yes I agree. However people tend to see what they are predisposed to see. So optimists and glasses half-full etc.

Just let 'em go and get on with things. One thing we all know about brits: we love a good moan

Hows about a Xmas 'drink' so we can put the names (handles) to the people????? Nothing fancy, just a 'meet' perhaps. I know all the established folk on here are probably mates anyway, but only a suggestion for any 'newbies' or infrequent visitors to the area who keep in touch via the Forum, which by the way is and has always been great as far as I am concerned. Probably because I don't take any notice of 'mumpers', you get out what you put in and theres a vast amount of help, friendliness and info on here as a positive.

There was one a few years back, can't remember the handle the man who organised it went by. He lived other side of hills to us.

I have to say we love this Forum and honestly we love having a read and whenever we ask a question we get great advice and help. We used to live in Cyprus and tried many forums and they really got some nasty, negative posts, we gave up in the end it just was not pleasant. We really hope to meet some of the lovey people to are helping and guiding us on our first steps into owning a cave and hopefully living in Spain in the future, great site, well done to all and especially Dave of course, not sure we would have had the courage to buy if it were not for reading all the informative happy posts.
Keep up the positive posting

Thanks for the kind words, but as ive said loads of times, its not me.The content is solely down to those who make the effort to post on here. So thanks are due to yourselves, and to those who love to moan, just think who it is you're moaning about.

I think the forum is mostly positive and can be really useful. But occasionally a post seems to get out of hand - like the recent one about estate agents - and sometimes people are really rude or accusatory to each other. It doesn't happen very often but maybe it is off-putting to people?
From time to time I've had a look at other ex-pat forums and some of them are shocking - so rude, negative and, at the end of the day, pointless!
Our Cave Forum is looking good by comparison!
I prefer it too for posting info cos FB feels too public to me for a lot of stuff (probably showing my age cos living a very public life seems to be becoming more the norm these days!)

If it's time for a moan, can I please moan about the numpties who make a post in the 'wanted' forum entitled just 'wanted'.  

I used to read them, but if the posters can't be bothered to give it a fuller title I can be bothered to look.

I do find the forum difficult to navigate (and I am on a lot of forums, and even moderator on some).  One of my bugbears is not being able to see threads that have been active since my last visit.  My bookmark for the forum is set as

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which at least means I get to see threads posted to today, but if it's one minute past midnight my coach turns into a pumpkin and there's nowt to be seen.

.

Just reading Ken's 'Wanted' post and the subsequent posts - if I was looking on the forum for the first time it's the sort of thing that might put me off!
Maybe some suggestions are better made as a PM??

...

Tim, you can click on 'veiw posts since last visit' or look at which buttons have turned red.

I always click on "View posts since last visit" - simples!! x

Sally wrote:I always click on "View posts since last visit" - simples!! x

Hi Sally do not know were you are saying click on

Scroll to the bottom of this page, click on 'home' at bottom left, then on following page you should see it.

Alternatively, edit your bookmark for the site to read
caveliving.forummotion.com/search?search_id=newposts