Pictures

[mike.d.]

8 euroes, for all the friends i have made, priceless.

[suffrun]

I have been following this thread for sometime now. I am one of does that never have uploaded a pic and that's because I don't catch decent fish and practice catch and release! On the other hand, whenever I had queries, the response was always overwhelming to say the least!!!..........and all this for a miserable annual fee of 8 euros.

May I take this opportunity to thank Skip and Co for all the work they dedicate for the forum, which I'm sure is time consuming!!!

[OKUMA-1976]

i like mike.d.'s comment === Priceless

to nick can you add a like button

[skip]

I've been away for a week abroad but just came back and read through this topic and 122 emails I had in my inbox. I think it's fair to say that the gallery restrictions came about as a general consensus from our most active members, these are the guys posting the majority of their catches they want to share in the gallery and also the ones who turn up at the various events that are requested by you the members and organised by us and recently certain individuals wanting to help out. I can vouch that this is a very time consuming ordeal and we certainly aren't doing it for the money....I'm not about to quit my daytime job! If I had to put this level of effort into a business I would be doing very well, but now that I started it, thanks to all you guys it has become a success and therefore the show goes on. Yes I've thought about throwing in the towel a couple of times as some may know but from the member support things have continued.

When a large percentage of people ask for something I give it due consideration and discuss it with the senior moderators before implementing, I don't like playing God and whilst yes the final decision is mine, I like to go where possible with the majority vote. So we could have left the gallery open to all but the number of pictures being uploaded was decreasing, in fact we ran competitions where prizes were kindly donated (and sorry I still have to find the time distribute ooops!), but if those uploading were getting upset by the leechers and then stopped uploading you would all be viewing a very 'dead' gallery.

To Freeman who I'm sure spends alot of time moderating the forum he is involved with, the nature of a warez site in my opinion is very very different to what we are giving here on the MFF, you can all look up what Warez means so by it's very nature you're likely to have a very large number of people interesting in obtaining the content provided. But I think with our growing list of sponsors we are giving far more back than a Warez or other type of forum legitimately offers, and you are not being restricted in hosting your pictures offsite and placing a link in fact some members do that. So you can upload your catches to Photobucket or a similar site and then paste the linking code in your post.

I can confirm that the gallery was and is very popular, but again there was a period of time when new posts were virtually non existent because all people were doing was coming in to the forum, viewing the gallery, and then either leaving or sending various PMs for more information and that's it! It would then just be a photo gallery site and nothing more.

The guys who have been involved with helping to organise social events or even competitions can tell you that it took alot of their time, effort and co-ordination to make it all happen, so the cost of running a forum is not just the tangible server hosting costs they are a fraction of it all, but if you look at the intangible costs, if those involved had to 'bill' for their time however low that fee might be then you would need several hundred paid up members to cover it. Yet they do it for the love of their hobby, myself included - where I spend hardly any time fishing and the majority of my free time ensuring that the forum is running and we're putting together good competitions, increasing our member offers and and the general admin work.

So no, we are never going to please everyone, and yes our member base may not increase at the rate it was before, but I would rather have a couple of hundred happy people contributing and helping each other out, than a couple of thousand people who just want to see what's being caught by whom and from where. As I'm not regularily out fishing for the reasons mentioned above, I will allow the members themselves to reply back with the sheer number of PM's and emails they get from 'strangers' asking for more info, help and advice offline - and most of them were getting that advice because people like to help. But if you look at some of the older gallery pictures, comments like where did you catch that from and how were the only 'posts' ever made by some members.

This forum would be nothing without the content provided by it's key members hence as the forum administrator I feel it's my obligation to place more focus on their requests and use that as guidance as to how the forum should be run, at the end of the day I am no expert.

A big thanks to the guys who do appreciate what we're trying to do here, like I said I'm sorry we can't please everyone but that's the life

[baghira]

Agreed nick.
And hope you've enjoyed your holiday....If it was!!!!!!

[caldaland]

your work is duly appreciated skip!

[Gan]

Welcome back Nick..

[suffrun]

@ skip, I think your argument closes this chapter! 

[skip]

I try to post pictures with some of my posts but for some reason I cant find the correct format to post them in, I can get them into the Gallery so thats what I do now & tell people where they are.
How do you post a picture in a "txt" format, or "doc" format? when I download from my camera to my PC I get the option to download in jpeg or bitmap format, I cant download a photo in "txt" format, that's for text only surely?

Once you've uploaded the image, select it in the gallery and you will see a section that says Image Linking Codes (Found underneath the rating box). Copy that code which relates to the image you uploaded and then paste it in your post to have it displayed.