Rides List - Forum Supporter ONLY

[Bill Edwards 624]

Dear All

 

We announced late last year that to enable the Forum to be financially self supporting we were restricting access to the Rides List to Forum Supporters - those that contribute financially to our considerable hosting and storage bills. The policy was announced at 

 

 

This policy was voted in by your forum panel, who also felt that it could be seen as unfair if a member who had contributed to the Rides List couldn't access it and a number of exceptions were put in - those who contributed to the Rides List and those who had posted funfair reports. The idea behind this was that the majority of members would make a donation and the number who genuinely felt it unfair and asked for access would be small.

 

Unfortunately this hasn't worked as intended - perhaps we were naive, perhaps it wasn't worded properly, but the "free access" was not intended to be "free access", but a way to placate those who genuinely felt the policy was unfair. Consequently the panel feel that the free access clause has brought the current system into disrepute. We have extensively discussed the free access and voted on it.

 

As of 21st April 2018 free access to the Rides List will be removed. If you wish to access the Rides List you will need to make a donation towards our considerable hosting and storage costs. Members who don't wish to pay will still have free access to the rest of the forum - many, many gigabytes of photos, fair reports, discussions etc - a unique online resource. Those who wish to access the Rides List will have to make a minimum donation of £5 a year. This is far, far lower than a magazine subscription or membership of a club and, in my view and the view of the majority of the Forum Panel represents excellent value for money. It works out at just over 9 PENCE per week and will ensure the forum is available for the foreseeable future.

 

We fully appreciate that the situation isn't ideal - we would love to keep the forum totally free, but I cannot finance the forum myself and voluntary donations were at a level that losing the entire forum was a real and imminent possibility.

 

I personally wish to thank all those members who have donated - you are keeping the forum available - THANK YOU!

 

All the best

 

Bill