Read the latest Newsletter posted January 26th 2014

No doubt he watching and waiting to jump in !

Admin wrote:

ROCHDALE TALK NEWSLETTER No 2
September 16th 2012

Am still playing around with layout.
and also added sections on classified ads, FreeStuff, tributes, hobbies etc. If you think it’s missing something, let me know.

We will be playing around with a few ideas in the next few weeks. Some will work, some won’t.

Idi, Ida, Monique Admins and company: Did you decide to go ahead with the separate sections on like Lost,Found,Wanted, Jokes, Recipes, Photographs, Storyline, Problem Page-Ask Unc ! or similar? I realize you're all very busy doing a great job.

They're all there Mojo, scroll to bottom see "jump to; Select a forum"

Charly wrote:They're all there Mojo, scroll to bottom see "jump to; Select a forum"

It's a conspiracy then, because they are not on my Jump To. This only returns me to this one. Thanks for the distance tutorial though. A lie down in a darkened room may be my next option

I don't appear to have a 'bottom of a page' and certainly no 'jump to' or 'select a forum'? Are you short changing me? I thought we was friends.

Wow. That was quick!!!! It has suddenly appeared. Charly it is on the main page below all the present topics - on the right at the bottom. See it do yer? How's that? Magic in'it?

Sorry - that should have been Mo Jo not Charly. Silly me. However - I do not have a bottom of page - only on the main page does this happen and these amazing attributes appear like - magic. Hinch is so clever to short change me. Just getting his own back for far-flung-days.

Still a trickle of new joiners. Some from the old RO forums and some complete newbies. Welcome all.

Will start a thread later today regarding a pre-Christmas social night out. Hope to see as many of you there as possible.

Sorry, we still have not got a Facebook page up and running yet but will do that this week.

Some of you still seem to have problems navigating the site. What can I say? Just plug away at it and if you have ideas to improve it then please send in your suggestions.

Moderators Report

No posters banned or suspended.

Two threads pulled as they were mind-numbingly trivial.

A couple of posts tweaked to make them comprehensible.

You don’t need to start a whole new thread to welcome a poster and you can always use the PM facility to do this.

One post pulled as it contained a very long and uninteresting ‘cut and paste’. If you want to cut and paste, try to keep it relevant and identify your sources if possible.

Some threads re-titled to give the casual browser some idea what they were actually about and to make the general list of thread content look a bit less woolly.

We did receive a PM from one poster who said that two would-be new posters decided not to register as they found some of the threads boring. Not too sure what we can do about that. We are a community forum and I suppose we have everything but the kitchen sink on here. We don’t want to start being over-censorious or prescriptive and of course, if you find it boring then you are always free to start a thread on a subject that really interests you.

No other moderation issues.

Idi Admin

Admin wrote:Sorry, we still have not got a Facebook page up and running yet but will do that this week.

Why?
What would be the purpose?

A shameless attempt to use the power of t'internet to signpost as many people with an interest in all-things Borough of Rochdale to the forum I'm afraid.

We are still stumbling around in the dark to a large extent so we are anxious to try anything that might work at this stage.

Then I suggest you carry on attempting to be shameless Admin. I have three pages (of one form or another) all of which are a complete mystery to me. How things pop up on them I have no idea. Not that I go to have a gander very often but it is a way of keeping in touch with family and others not seen for yonks and yonks. I go there when 'facebook' tells me to. I'm a good boy I am.

ROCHDALE TALK NEWSLETTER No 6
4th November 2012

Hello again.

Well, our forum will be 2 months old on Monday.

At the time of writing, some of the stats are as follows:-

Charly and Cyfrifia are this week’s top posters and thread-starters. (Most of Charly’s being on subject of race!)

Top thread is the newsletter sticky and the top ‘real’ thread is the one on the Serious Case Review.

We are notching up an amazing number of page hits and have various advertisers chasing us but I don’t want to get into that at the moment.

We have clocked up over 3,200 posts covering 217 topics. There are 66 users and last week, we had no less than 69 people visiting the site at one time. Someone out there is definitely watching us. I have added a facility for guests to participate in the polls as well as members. Maybe it might encourage more to join.

When we’ve been up and running for a good while longer, I might set up a poll for Forum Member of the Year and Most Interesting Post. If I am feeling really mischievious I might award a wooden spoon for ‘Most Pointless and Meaningless Thread’. We all have our ideas who might be a contender for that one eh?

The Xmas meal is booked. 7pm at the Baum on Thursday 6th of December. Should be a good night but I will NEVER organise another! Far too time-consuming with people dropping in and out like flies and the usual “Well I’m not going if he/she is etc.” It’s like being a member of the Diplomatic Corps trying to organise a peace conference.

If anyone still wants to come, you will have to contact The Baum directly and see if you can get a place.

Moderators Report

Very quiet. One post pulled (by me.) but I can’t honestly remember why. I might have just been feeling a bit tetchy. It does happen.

No posters banned or suspended.

No other moderation issues.

Idi Admin

When you censor, moderate, pull, edit etc a post or thread, do you inform the user?

Wherever possible UTD unless it's blatantly obvious.

What we will not do is enter into dialogue. Luckily we do not publish our phone number. Rochdale Online often had to deal with calls from forum members unhappy with a Mod's decision and could be quite abusive.

Rochdale Online had to be far more careful about what they allowed than we do.

The posters who give us the worst headaches are some of the 'late night posters' whose erratic spelling and grammar give clues as to their likely sobriety but to be honest, we have had very few problems.

Mind you, we've not had Home Thoughts, Hennigan and Irish going into rant-mode yet!

I really don't like censorship and I hate having to use the blue pencil key.

That's fair enough, thanks.

How very dare you! I never drink after one-o-clock (that's am. not pm.). Antidisestablishmentaryanism - and my spelling is taken care of by that American bloke in't top right hand corner, although he will keep putting 'z's instead of 's's.

Admin wrote:

ROCHDALE TALK NEWSLETTER No 6
4th November 2012

We are notching up an amazing number of page hits...

Hits is a completely meaningless measure and the vast majority will be from search engines, they were the bane of the RO forum using precious server resources.

Maybe but we find our stats very encouraging all the same.

No Charly, very pleased with the number of page views and with the number of unique visitors, never hits, they as I say are a meaningless measure. In latter days I also came to realise that page views, though better than hits, was also not a reliable measure of traffic because they are skewed by search engine spiders constantly crawling the forum. RO now only talks in terms of unique visitors.

That's why I always found it very strange that I was accused of helping the Lib Dems win the General Election in Rochdale because of my posts on ROL by some misguided people. The number of voters deciding who to vote for, based on posts on this site or ROL would be very small, I would have thought.

Obviously for business, it's different, as I bet with the relatively cheap costs of advertising they more than get their revenue back, especially if they are often mentioned like ROL by us posters. I won't mention the name of the so called local paper.

Councillor Duxbury wrote:Maybe but we find our stats very encouraging all the same.

Quite right too. The Admin and their team are doing a fine job.