Posted by Peter Hyland on October 13, 2008 at 20:00:35 user Peter_H.
The other comments about the TARS forum seem to confirm our fears
Please remember that the TARS Forum is in its absolute infancy and is taking its first unsteady steps. There are still all sorts of technical decisions to be taken, after careful assessment of how the Society is best served by its Website and Forum. It is unfair to criticise the TARS Forum until it is properly up and running.
Decisions by the Society about the Website (and anything else) have to be made by committee, because that is how TARS operates. We had a debate recently on this board about committees (camel, horse, committee, designed by). Decisions therefore cannot be instant. And in any case, “soonest” = hurried decision, probably wrong.
‘Members only’. The TARS website is professionally constructed and maintained, ie it costs money to run. This money comes from membership subscriptions, and the TARS Forum is regarded as a benefit to be enjoyed, and paid for, by members. Yes, it would be an advantage from the point of view of wider participation to open the Forum to the general public, but you can understand that the members might wonder why they had to subsidise this. You could argue either way, and I admit this is a dilemma, but TARS, understandably, wants to try out its Forum with just the members for the time being.
Obviously it is unfortunate that at this early stage the TARS Forum seems not to be operating smoothly. However, this has only come into focus as a result of the sudden closure of TarBoard, an event of which TARS obviously had no advance knowledge. TARS is going to carry on carefully developing its website. If you are a TARS member you can register an opinion about all this in the normal way, ie by contacting me.
Thanking TarBoard for hosting this message,
Peter Hyland
TARS Secretary