Keeping Bond And Beyond alive

Damn...

How many active members does that leave us with?

Control wrote:

Damn...

How many active members does that leave us with?

Three.

Fifteen if you count Brian.

Oh, Hilly!

Now playing: Sir Hillary's Night Out (Who Will Buy My Yesterdays?)

One tries, one tries.

Wouldn't worry too much about Ambler, he always comes back. And in answer to his query, one of the main reasons we don't delete memberships is that once a member is deactivated, all of their past posts are billed as being posted by "Guest", which makes topics really difficult to read through and follow if there are high contributions from one or more deleted users, plus the added confusion once that deleted member decides to return. For example, the forum has posts by Erica Ambler and posts by Guest but, because of others having deleted accounts in the past, there are other posts by Guest which aren't actually Ambler's posts. So, if we allowed Ambler to delete his account every time he's unhappy, he'd end up with even more personas here than Brian.

That's what I figured. Ultimately, it's unnecessary. If you don't intend to return, just leave your account alone.

You're preaching to the choir, M, though I tried my best to explain the same thing to Ambler. His argument was that just leaving your account isn't enough - it could mean someone is busy with work or has died. He wanted to protest.

You'd have to have been on Mars for the last two years to not know that Ambler protests this forum.

What good is protesting?  Did he think that was going to simply make this, or any, forum snap into shape and instantly become a thriving red light district of the internet, as if no one noticed or cared about the health of the forum until he protested?

I've enjoyed his participation here and on other forums and think he's a pretty smart guy.  But for the life of me I can't figure out what he thought he would be accomplishing by "protesting" by deactivating his account.

On one hand he cares or cared for this place enough that he's pissed it's not now hit its potential, but on the other hand he wants to leave a mark on it visible enough to scar it instead of helping it see its potential. Will he return as soon as it's thriving again?

I've seen those guest account conversations and their are silly.  Maybe, if he wants to protest but the forum needs a name up as the poster, we can change the little words "banned" under his name to "stomped his feet" and "couldn't be arsed".    



Don't misunderstand... I'd love to see him back. He adds a lot to the forum to which others will be attracted, I think... I'm just a bit surprised that he can leave when he sees people working hard to make this place grow.

He asked me to not be a cunt about it, so I just left it as 'banned.'

Maybe Laz will return now that Ambler's gone, as things really went askew between the pair of them last year and Laz has hardly been here since. But, last I heard, Laz was considering setting up CULTURECIDE, CULTUREVOX or whatever on a mobile platform somewhere else because he felt this place was moving backwards with no progressive or modernised interventions. Not good, because he's still at least 50% owner here.

I for one would love Laz back. I didn't want to whinge about it too much publicly when I realized after my return that he doesn't post here, but it's left a massive hole for me. He was one of the many reasons (members) I was first drawn to this forum.

I don't want the forum moving backwards either... a mobile platform for this site might actually make it easier to get new members as a lot of people use their phones exclusively for their internet time. I don't know how hard that would be and certainly don't want the format to change drastically when using it on the computer (my main tool for internet) but it certainly would be welcome.

I'd love Laz to return. He was one of my father figures on MI6 when I was a 17 year old upstart, and helped me through some tough times. Has anyone PM'd or emailed him?

Hilly KCMG wrote:

Control wrote:

Damn...

How many active members does that leave us with?

Three.

Fifteen if you count Brian.

 

Largo's Shark wrote:

Has anyone PM'd or emailed him?

I sent a PM to him about the social media - the same one you got - on September 18 and it's still in my outbox. So he's not been here since then. I'd happily send him an email if someone felt ok about giving me his email address via PM.

That said, he might just want to give it a rest for a bit and come back fresh. Totally understandable.

The forums will need to change or move forward proactively to get the likes of Ambler and Laz to stay on board and post regularly, I fear.

Well, we have a base here for great discussion. I'm not sure what all the issues are for both Ambler and Laz. If someone wants to inform me, do so by PM.... Clearly they don't like it here. I do, but it needs to be busier.

The reason we don't have more members isn't that people don't like the place, it's that they don't know about it. So, hopefully, we will be successful in our efforts to reach the bigger Bond and film and music community and we will get new members.

There are a ton of blogs out there on Bond and classic film. The only discussions that take place for those bloggers happen under each post. It might be an idea to connect (not in a spam way but in a genuine way once a relationship is established and we know the tone of the blogger) with the authors and invite them to use this space as a discussion area.... They promote this forum on their blog as the discussion place and we give them the area to do it. Inevitably the bloggers and their followers will get curious about the other topics.

Is it possible to have another section called Discussion of Blogs and then have a section for each Blogger who meets the criteria and then their threads in there?

I'm becoming familiar with a few bloggers through Twitter. Haven't done any heavy selling of the forums yet as I wanted our followers to be a substantial number (at least 50 maybe even 100) before spouting off. But I have linked back to here a few times.

The members who do post here, if they want this forum to last and improve, just have to keep posting regularly to keep is flowing. So happy Vesper's back. Good debate is important.

Anyway.... let me know what you think of that blogger idea. It might be way off but it would attract members.

Ambler left mostly because most of the people he found interesting have left, such as Khan and Gravity. He wants to see more members like that instead of the ones that Brian recruited (who are all fine, but not atypical Bond fans like this place used to have). I do understand what he's saying, and I'd like to see more of those folks around here to really make this place unique from a typical Bond forum. As for Lazenby., I suspect it's that he's just burned out on Bond and he has his own things going on in life that posting here takes time away from that.

There will never be a forum of all Khans and Amblers. And I'd be surprised if either would really want that. A mix is important. Otherwise there is no debate. Definitely there needs to be more members with leanings like Khan and Ambler (and others but those are easy names to use here) as well as an independence from towing the EON line.

But I suspect that the only way to get that la crème de la crème is to gather more members and let the cream rise to the top. That's sort of how it worked out at KTBEU and had the censors hadn't come down hard on the members I suspect we'd all still be there battling with the fanboys.

Just let me know if you guys give up. I'm not fatigued as you all are because I've been gone for a while. But if this place is going to crash soon, I don't want to be left with a twitter following and no place for them to go. We're at 53 followers now in just two weeks.

I don't say there should be all Khans and Amblers, just enough to stir some interesting conversation for everyone. I do agree with him though, they were very unique and helped a great deal. It's just too bad they lost interest here. Hopefully we can draw in new interesting folks in time.

I agree with him too.  I get what you are saying though.  All of it grew organically and now we are at a point where we are trying to specifically grow that kind of community, like GMO scientists. It's just a bit harder without his DNA hanging about.

Has Laz been contacted by email?