Bringing back FMB

[MonteCristo]

Is this what it's like to have a tribute band created in your honour? It's fecking awesome!

[mon]

1. All people that still visit FMB simply post a little bit more. If you’re online for 5 minutes, reply to a topic, if only saying “Yep! I agree.” Or “No, you’re a moron.” Guess The Pole had 31 entries in three and a half days between Spain and Monaco. All those people visit, but right now there are only about a dozen people who consistently post.

2. GridBids. 226 people made picks for Monaco. Grid Bids can be used as a free advertising area and put a banner on the main Grid Bids page. Nothing huge. Just “Grid Bids is sponsored by FMB – please drop by” at the top or something like that. At the very least they might post in the Grid Bids forum. I’d do it, but I have non-existent graphics skills.

3. A banner. A pretty banner used at the top of the forum saying “FMB” or “Farzad’s F1 Gallery”. There used to be one (actually, a couple have existed), but it disappeared between forum version changes. A lack of banner makes the forum look sterile, and simply default. The banner could also be made clickable and used as the advert in point 2 for Grid Bids.

4. Any of you on MSN, or Facebook, or whatever, with old FMB guys: if you see them online, ask them to stop back by.

5. Getting friends involved. If you’ve got real-life friends that are interested in racing, ask them to sign up. If no one you know is interested, if you’re involved in other forums and have friends there, ask if they would like to be involved. If you’re on some non-racing forum, make a topic asking “Any racing fans?” If someone replies, PM them with a link to FMB.

6. Updating old threads. There’s a few threads that have been going for ages (Eg: the football thread and cricket thread) that say stuff like “Season 2007”. Remove the dates from the title. Also update forum descriptions (eg: mentioning CCWS). It ages the forum.

7. Main site update. At least an update to the main page. Currently it says “(Dec. 2nd, 2008) The forum is currently down.” Why would any people check the forum if the main site says it is down?

8. Extra main site content. Need ideas for some simple new content (bring back the quizzes?). Direction to the guessing games within?

9. FMB Legends return? Some of us could race, and then we advertise to get some more people in (on the basis of them racing if they're FMB members).

10. People uploading various racing photos to the main site (dependent on bandwidth and size restrictions) - runs from point 8.

11. Allowing more forum options? Eg: being able to directly upload your own avatars again. Low priority - need to get new people first. This would be more something to then keep them. More ideas?

12. Cats.

[the_full_monty]

I am so confused.

[mon]

Greetings all on this fine Monday .

Any of you who have been here a while will know that FMB has dropped away in the last two years. I think the core reason was when new registrations were closed for about a year because of fake bot accounts. New blood just stopped coming because they couldn’t. It’s only natural that people will drop off after a while. Some lose interest. Others just lose the time to be around. Others simply don’t get the chance for whatever reasons. In any case, the number of posts has dropped significantly. We need to get things back.

The way I see it there are now two interrelated problems:
1. We need new members. But new members won’t come if there aren’t people posting.
2. I see a few of the old timers occasionally pop-up online on FMB, but then disappear again without posting. They have enough interest to come online, but don’t see enough new stuff to post themselves (see point 1).

For the past two or three months I’ve been spamming away posting as much as I can, trying to restart things. I think it’s helped a little actually. For a while you’d visit, and there would only be two new posts overnight (or none at all sadly). Now as many as ten can be going, but usually half a dozen. It is proof that posting more gets more people interested and replying more.

So with that in mind I’d like people to think of ideas to boost the number of posts, and get new people to sign up.

I’ve got a handful of ideas to start things off.

[mon]

FMB urges the Chancellor to bring back business rate relief on empty commercial properties


The Federation of Master Builders (FMB) is calling on the Chancellor of the Exchequer to reintroduce business rate relief on empty commercial property. The removal of the relief from 1 April 2008 is having a detrimental effect on property development and regeneration effectively acting as a break on the re-use, re-development and re-letting of vacant property.



Geoff Lister, President of the FMB, who has written to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said:



"The negative impact on property development and regeneration includes the recent examples of the demolition of 450,000 square feet of buildings by Segro, the biggest industrial property company in Britain; the demolition of "The Lightning" public house in Ealing and the destruction of sizable sections of the Alexandra Business Park in Sunderland. This unnecessary destruction of property, whilst understandable on the part of the owners, is a disgraceful waste of time, money and resources that is distorting the market by removing rentable properties from it."



Lister continued:



"More alarming is the impact on pensions which are already suffering as a result of the decision to end the 20% dividend tax credit. Many pension funds rely wholly or in part on property portfolios to supply the income required to meet their liabilities. The FMB has received communications from a pension fund that may not be able to meet its obligations due to the new tax liabilities on its property portfolio and is desperately seeking advice. The effect of this tax increase on pension funds is to exacerbate the already considerable loss of income resulting from unoccupied properties."



Lister concluded:



"The Chancellor needs to reverse this policy which is actively damaging the economy at a time when it needs all the support it can get from the Government."



29 August 2008

[NooDle]

[Waldorf]

Badly-programmed bot is now banned, but not before all our heads exploded.

[Travis Daye]

That might have been the most awesome thing to happen to the board since the thorque debacle.

[MonteCristo]

Bring back the bot!

I think I'll call my band MonteCristo and the MonteCrisette.

[LOUD HOWARD]

Didn't notice that it wasn't Monte, read the posts all the way, thought he was just re-spamming because, why not?

I ONLY LOOK AT THE AVATARS DAMNIT!

[Farzad]

Crap I think that was my fault. I approved that last user which turned out to be a bot.

I also read the post though. That's some good stuff there Monte. I wish I was paying attention when you actually posted it.

[MonteCristo]

My MonteCrisette has abandoned me and gone Canadian .

So this is what it sounds like when doves cry .

[Lio]

Hi everybody,

It's been quite a long looong time since I've been here. Well , it's been 4 years and a half since I've posted something here in fact!
Life has been busy since a few years, more responsabities at my work, a real change in my private life (I think I stopped posting on the FMB when I started to realize I couldn't hide my true feelings all my life, some of you will understand what it means...) and at one moment, you simply move on... But lots of great moments here on the FMB, and I still remember meeting Farz at Spa, NooDle of course, Tom, Jukkis, Marcel, Maw, Edu, John, Monte, Minardi, Varun, UkF1 my dear FMBL teammate in the Lotarri Ferratus team

At one moment I also think that the "old" members start to disappear and new members do not automatically take their place - this is what happens on F1Onboard too - well anyway I'm just happy to see the FMB still exists

See you later!

[MonteCristo]

G'day Lio .

Go to the FMBL thread .

Come back soon!

[Mawerick]

Hi Lio!

[NooDle]

Hi Lio!

now all we need is John and Marcel to come out of hibernation and we can get this ball rolling....

[MiÑardi]

Welcome back, Lio! Hope you post a little more frequently than every 4 years

[LOUD HOWARD]

Lionel! Long time no see!

Az is definitely still around the internets, see random things of his every now and then.

[Richard]

Lionel! Long time no see!

Az is definitely still around the internets, see random things of his every now and then.

Az is a regular snapper at Brands Hatch - I sign him on in the media centre most major weekends! Will tell him to stop by next time I see him!

[NooDle]

I've re invited a bunch of people to the Facebook page since everyone got kicked out apparently for some reason I can't quite fathom....

If I forgot you, lemme know and I'll send you a new invite.There's a special surprise (a golden oldie) on the Wall which will make sense only to oldtimers

[The Ghost Who Walks]

There's a special surprise (a golden oldie) on the Wall which will make sense only to oldtimers

*like*

[MONTOYA RULES]

Is "mon" really a bot? How did it know so much? Imagine if these people used their brains to create useful things.. Crazy

[Mawerick]

Could someone please get rid of the bot that's been posting crap lately? I don't mean Monte.

Or give me admin status so I can do it myself.

[NooDle]

it's not one bot, it's several,and they keep coming back...we do our best...

[Mawerick]

Several bots using the same name?