Open Letter - how can we make Calguns.net better?

[Vacaville]

How about deleting threads with misspelled words in the thread title?

Some of these titles hurt when I see them over and over again; and you know it's gonna be a mess if you open the thread.

[olhunter]

Like the poster below said - "FIX THE SEARCH FUNCTION!!"

Completely useless if you can't search for 3-character model numbers or calibers.

Ebay has the best search function ever. Copy theirs.

Oh, and extend the automatic logout time by another 10-15 minutes.

[jlh95811]

Originally Posted by BB63Squid

Reminds me of a say..."There is no such thing as a free puppy".

I KNEW IT!!!
Watch your six artherd.

[mcsoupman]

Originally Posted by avidone

I know this has probably been beat to death, but I really liked how the old buy and sell forum was set up regionally. It was a great time saver to be able to selectively look at items for sale in ones own local area.

+1. This would be very helpful.

[twocoloreyes]

Originally Posted by olhunter

Like the poster below said - "FIX THE SEARCH FUNCTION!!"

Completely useless if you can't search for 3-character model numbers or calibers.

Ebay has the best search function ever. Copy theirs.

Oh, and extend the automatic logout time by another 10-15 minutes.

yes, please do this!!!!

[fairfaxjim]

Just a heads up, but the site still seems to go down at approx 19 or 20 after the hour on the four hour intervals - I see it most often at 0019 (I should be in bed anyway) It comes back up in one minute. This seemed to be more prevalent with the previous servers, but still seems to be lurking in there. Any idea what causes this??

Other sites work fine when this one goes down for it's 1 minute.

[Futurecollector]

Originally Posted by fairfaxjim

Just a heads up, but the site still seems to go down at approx 19 or 20 after the hour on the four hour intervals - I see it most often at 0019 (I should be in bed anyway) It comes back up in one minute. This seemed to be more prevalent with the previous servers, but still seems to be lurking in there. Any idea what causes this??

Other sites work fine when this one goes down for it's 1 minute.

+1 I thought i was the only one that noticed that lol,

Oh and please have a minimum post count to post in the WTS forum!!! please!!!!!

[jmlivingston]

Originally Posted by futurecollector

Oh and please have a minimum post count to post in the WTS forum!!! please!!!!!

We've "been there, done that" and it was an absolute nightmare to enforce, as it essentially caused spam all over the forums while people tried to rack up their post count so they could put their ad's in the Marketplace.

This gets suggested here all the time. While it sounds good good in theory, the logistics of making it work effectively on a forum as large and active as Calguns is impractical.

John

[N6ATF]

Even requiring a test on the rules before posting access is granted? Might cut down on the 1 thread per item viral behavior. Some forums require premium memberships for marketplace access.

[jmlivingston]

Originally Posted by N6ATF

Even requiring a test on the rules before posting access is granted? Might cut down on the 1 thread per item viral behavior. Some forums require premium memberships for marketplace access.

We don't have premium memberships, and Kestryll has consistently stated he's not interested in going there.

As for the test idea, it's interesting but I have no clue what it would take to implement. It would almost have to be a plug-in module of some sort into vBulletin to make it work effectively.

John

[N6ATF]

Yeah I put up the premium membership to show the extreme that makes testing look good by comparison.

[Chachie]

Originally Posted by avidone

I know this has probably been beat to death, but I really liked how the old buy and sell forum was set up regionally. It was a great time saver to be able to selectively look at items for sale in ones own local area.

+1

Would love this feature.

[zenophon]

1. Require sale/trade listings to list city for location, what's all the paranoia??? Cities are big!
2. Allow deletion/archiving of SOLD/withdrawn/cancelled listings
3. BETTER email/PM management, for example, load all/selected emails for easier viewing/deleting (you can see all contents of multiple PMs and THEN selecte them to delete. OR you can view all PM's from multiple or single sources/senders

[proudamerican831]

deleted

[petrole]

Please either remove the iPhone version or make it a preference. Don't auto-detect and enable by default. The "Normal" mode link doesn't to anything.
I like sites to displayed as intended, not big blocky fonts and boxes.
Thank you.

[Coffee]

Originally Posted by Kestryll

The Reputation system has been turned off as it too easily leads to misuse.

Any chance on being able to leave only positive rep and show the name of the person that left it? It is an option with the vB software.

I really want to thank Hoffmag, bwiese, etc for their outstanding contributions but don't want to clutter up their PM box, and threads get so long I'm not sure they would ever see a quote of their post with a thank you attached.

?

[crin63]

Put a simple, "donate" button right under the logo at the top of the page and one at the bottom of the page. It seems to work well on another forum I'm on.

[Coffee]

Any chance on getting rid of the AJAX errors that show up a few times a month?

[nicki]

Calguns is growing, and I notice that we have almost as many vistors as members at any time when I check out who is online.

Recently we broke the online record for most viewers on at any one time.

The problem I see is many members don't post, they just read, as such, we know we have members, but that is all.

California is a diverse state and we have multiple regions. What I would like to see is a sticky polls that all of us could voluntarily participate in.

Some of the things that I think we should try to find out about ourselves are the following.

1. Regional location.
2. Sex, I know that our board is 90 percent plus male, but still.
3. Race.
4. Age bracket.
5. Income range.
6. Are we employees, self employed, business owners, retired, homemaker
7. Marital status.
8. Political values
9. Registered voter
10. Gender/sexual orientation.

We may get some surprises from our polls. This type poll would help us determine our strenghts and our weaknesses.

One other poll we need to consider is asking people why they come to calguns.

As much as I would hope people are here for gun rights, many people probably just don't care. Let's find out.

Knowing what are human resources are only makes sense.

How many of you would go into battle without checking how much ammo you had ahead of time.

A polite message requesting people to participate probably would be all we would need.

Yes, we will always have a few people who won't participate because they don't want to be on any lists. That's life.

Nicki

[N6ATF]

I created a survey on one of the sites I usually take paid surveys on based on Nicki's questions. (Used to be a telephone surveyor)

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?s...LPtBebcQ_3d_3d

The survey is purely demographic and totally anonymous - not even IP addresses are stored in the results.

[jmlivingston]

Originally Posted by nicki

The problem I see is many members don't post, they just read, as such, we know we have members, but that is all.

So? We're a huge forum with a lot of very useful information. Some people are going to come looking for something, find it, and leave. Others are going to be "lurkers", that's just their nature.

Originally Posted by nicki

We may get some surprises from our polls. This type poll would help us determine our strenghts and our weaknesses.

Knowing what are human resources are only makes sense.

How many of you would go into battle without checking how much ammo you had ahead of time.

Well it sounds to me like you're approaching this as if our focus is based on battling for gun rights and legal issues) While a significant portion of our members are involved in this activity, and organizationally we of course highly support this, it is not the primary focus of what Calguns is all about even though we have been highly succesful at it. We're a discussion area, open to all who want to come and pull up a chair and chat about anything gun related. While I think this poll is intriguing and I'm interested in the results I don't really see what you expect to do with it once you have collected the data. You should expound on this.

That said, I did go take the poll...

John

[N6ATF]

Thread reporting has gone haywire again. Click "Send Report" and 5 minutes later the status indicator is still spinning (even as I post this), and haven't been returned back to thread.

Also, the daily thread reply notifications early this morning came in staggered bursts. 2 here, 5 there, etc... the last one was the 2A forum-as-a-whole e-mail.

Both of these seem related to high server load.

[bearld]

Hi,
I am the hot dog guy that will be at the up coming event in June at Lytle Creek Shooting Range and I wanted to let every one know to PLEASE BRING CASH!
I was told that The amount of people coming should be around 250?
Well,
I hope all you Red Blooded Americans Will ALL Come Out and Show them that there are a whole lot more of us than that and we ALL want to help out this GREAT CAUSE!

We Will be asking for DONATIONS for the Hot Dog's So please Remember, This is a FUND RAISER for: CAL GUN'S (Who Defends Our Rights and The Second Amendment and a lot more.)and Wounded Warriors (United States MARINES! That were Wounded in Action!)
See you all there!

P.S.
IF ANY ONE HAS ANY PICTURES OR VIDEO FROM THE LAST EVENT AT LYTLE CREEK SHOOTING RANGE, PLEASE SEND THEM TO: papabearld18422@yahoo.com
We are trying to put a video together!
Thank You

See you ALL there!

GOD BLESS you ALL!

THE HOT DOG GUY!

[militiades007]

It would save buyers and sellers tons of time if you had an option boxes for sellers to select counties or cities for PPT/Cash and Carry locations for FTF sales. This will take care of MANY problems:

1. too many sellers only want FTF in their county or very nearby counties

2. too many listers forget to put their city or county on the Sell line or even in the entire listing! This could be a requirement that will not allow seller posts unless locations are selected

3. This will save everyone tons of time since finding compatible and doable sales will be faster rather than blindly roaming and needle-in-haystacking posts that don't list location (this happens SO often) then reminding/PM-ing or asking seller to state acceptable locations for viewing/PPT etc.

The option boxes could also include categories such as "rifle", "shotgun", "semi-auto pistol", "blackpowder", "Revolver", "Misc" etc

So here's how it works as me being a seller for example:

I'm selling a mossberg pump shotgun in Santa Clara County. I select the boxes for

Item Description:
[ ] large bore rifle .300 to 50 BMG (for example)
[ ] small bore rifle
[ ] AR build
[ ] AK build
[ ] large bore semi-auto pistol
[ ] small bore semi-auto pistol
[ ] 1911 Semi-Auto pistol
[ ] large bore revolver
[ ] large bore revolver
[X] shotgun pump-action
[ ] shotgun hunting
[ ] shotgun semi-auto
etc.

[x] Bay Area: (this option box opens up the following county option) . . . .
[ ] Santa Cruz Cty
[ ] San Mateo Cty
[x] santa clara cty
etc.

Selling Options:
[X] FTF DROS at specific location(s)
[ ] FTF DROS at FFL of your choice in listed counties
[ ] Shipping to FFL
[ ] FTF C&R

Additional options:
[ ] Willing to trade (details in listing)
[ ] willing to trade (open to suggestions)

How it would work for the buyer:
So here's the part where it all comes together. Since the buyer usually knows where he is traveling or willing to travel AND what they are looking for, then they can for example select the search options [x] shotgun and [x] 1911 semi-auto in [x] santa clara county. So all the search hits come up and the buyer gets just what he is looking for IN THE FTF LOCATIONS or shippable if someone is selling that item in that location.

Hopefully no one has some "copyright" or "proprietary" baloney on a system like this.

[militiades007]

FURTHER MORE, a buyer/browser can select options to have calguns EMAIL or PM them when certain sale parameters are posted! WOW, the potential of computer technology. It can't be that hard to do cant it???

[N6ATF]

In the context of a vBulletin forum, it probably is that hard.

[John W]

SSL would be great!

[Tronite]

A category for links to gun forums of other states. More communication throughout the states and links for those moving to or from California.

[jdcooper]

Originally Posted by militiades007

It would save buyers and sellers tons of time if you had an option boxes for sellers to select counties or cities for PPT/Cash and Carry locations for FTF sales. This will take care of MANY problems:

I agree that the Private Firearms Sales forum is less usable than it could be. But I think it is solvable within the framework of vBulletin, simply by convention.

The approach:

Mandate conforming subject lines, initially subject to modification by moderator, then once the changes have stuck, to deletion.

Encode as much as possible in the subject line.

Due to space constraints, if you are posting multiple firearms, do so in multiple messages.

For example:

FS/FT: Mossberg 590A1, $350, Bay Area, F2F, NoShip

If the format is standardized you can provide a link to a Google Search that will let people run canned searches.

Thoughts?

[tbhracing]

How about when someone like me makes a real suggestion, you get back to them either way instead of ignoring them and making them wonder if you got the message or not.

Bad business on your part.

[tbhracing]

Originally Posted by tbhracing

How about when someone like me makes a real suggestion, you get back to them either way instead of ignoring them and making them wonder if you got the message or not.

Bad business on your part.

See what I mean?

[rkt88edmo]

Originally Posted by tbhracing

See what I mean?

Presumably you are talking about your post in this thread:

Originally Posted by artherd

Now that GeoVario is involved in Calguns.net, we have the unique opportunity to leverage both our own technical pool, and the vast resources available in the Calguns community as well.

To that end, I would like to hear, from a technical perspective, new features, ideas and even dreams and goals, for Calguns immediately, in the next year, and beyond.

I can't promise all or any of your ideas will see production, (it's not my call this is Kestryll's site) but I can promise you your ideas will receive audience; Kestryll and the rest of the Calguns staff will review this thread and consider your ideas!

Best!
-Ben.

so you made a post and no one replied so now you are going to run around whining about it? Was is a technical suggestions?

Its a busy forum, and the owner is a busy guy, you may not get an acknowledgment, sometimes things take time.

[Kestryll]

Originally Posted by tbhracing

How about when someone like me makes a real suggestion, you get back to them either way instead of ignoring them and making them wonder if you got the message or not.

Bad business on your part.

Originally Posted by tbhracing

See what I mean?

I did see your post and your PM, unfortunately June has been a very busy month for me on a personal level, if you chexk my profile you'll likely see that I've not been posting much beyond the op in warning after a reported thread.

Frankly I'm still trying to get back to people who want to pay me to advertise!

Among the things I am working on is a means to include either a drop down menu in the navbar for links, such as other forums, or a revised front page with a CMS (kept simple and including all the links already there) and links section.

When I can clear the 250+ PMs and 100+ emails I will and your's are in that stack of 'To be done' stuff.

[tbhracing]

Originally Posted by rkt88edmo

Presumably you are talking about your post in this thread:



so you made a post and no one replied so now you are going to run around whining about it? Was is a technical suggestions?

Its a busy forum, and the owner is a busy guy, you may not get an acknowledgment, sometimes things take time.

No Sir- I have made numerous attempts over the last couple of months to reach the sites's Owner/Operator. I too am a busy person in public safety and operate a somewht busy public website as well.

After several monthes, I just wanted an answer back vs. just seeing my postings being deleted. I do see I got an answer above, so its a good start.

Originally Posted by Kestryll

When I can clear the 250+ PMs and 100+ emails I will and your's are in that stack of 'To be done' stuff.

Ok, thank you.

[militiades007]

Originally Posted by N6ATF

In the context of a vBulletin forum, it probably is that hard.

This could quite easily be integrated. A 5-10 minute conversation with some of these techie people and it could be worked out I beleieve and if it cannot, then scrap it and build a better one. So many problems arise from lack of forethought in simple design that could be worked in. Otherwise, the users have to be wasting half their time looking at irrelevant listings if they are looking to save time and find a sale fast and efficiently enough. Here's a possible way to do it: tie it into the key word search function that will make a better search because the listing would have a one to one correlation for (a.) search key words and (b.) listing key words that are required to put in to post the listing, such as type of firearm and FTF, shipping etc requirements. It really cannot be that hard. Most of the so called barriers or perceived difficulties are simply conceptual limitations that can be worked into existing structures after some modifications. Remember, some people describe the internet as a series of PIPES.

[militiades007]

If by vBulletin, you mean virtual bulletin, then the original key search terms should not be allowed to be DELETED, but always ADDED to with dated updates so the key terms could be added for updated listings

[militiades007]

How about this, why don't you at least require (MEANING you can't POST a sale listing unless you state location by city or county for FTF/shipping FFL). I hate selecting a listing then spend a couple of minutes reading through the replies since they guy did not list location in the tag line. Big waste of time, all excited for nothing and repeated disappointments. I don't like to lolly-gag admire gun-porn from hundreds of miles across the CA counties. Not for me, not now. Too much going on. I wanna get my buys on, not my drool on the keyboard.

[Smitdogg]

I was wondering Why we are unabe to delete our own ads, & have to wait for a Mod to do it? This seems very inefficent, what's the reasoning behind it? I personally posted an ad on 6-26, it got locked for a BTT violation on 6-27, & I asked the Mod who locked it to delete it that same day, informed him that I'd decided to keep the gun. I PMed another Mod about this yesterday. & the ad's still up 5 days later. Can someone please explain what's going on, & again, why can't we simply delete our own ads? What would be the harm in that? Seems to me like it would only help to keep the board leaner, cleaner, & more current? Any thoughts or input would be much appreciated.

[rkt88edmo]

We generally do not delete ads as a rule.

Originally Posted by Smitdogg

I was wondering Why we are unabe to delete our own ads, & have to wait for a Mod to do it? This seems very inefficent, what's the reasoning behind it? I personally posted an ad on 6-26, it got locked for a BTT violation on 6-27, & I asked the Mod who locked it to delete it that same day, informed him that I'd decided to keep the gun. I PMed another Mod about this yesterday. & the ad's still up 5 days later. Can someone please explain what's going on, & again, why can't we simply delete our own ads? What would be the harm in that? Seems to me like it would only help to keep the board leaner, cleaner, & more current? Any thoughts or input would be much appreciated.

[Smitdogg]

Well then how do u delete an ad that's been locked? Or one that hasn't for that matter? You just leave old, sold, tradded, or changed mind, or how-ever no long relivent ads up for an undeterminded lengh of time?