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www.thefibersmith.com Technical Support (903) 825-7744
"Smoooooth GTS"
Euro Rear taillight's, Shaved door handles, sidetrim, Custom-Double-side scoop's, sail scoop's, Custom 'VENTED' hood, Decklid scoop, Z~3 vent's, Custom RE-designed Fender's, Custom Made-Front and Rear Fascia's...

I have a few ideas and thoughts to share. Hope some of them are useful and not too controversial.

First of all, banner ads are ok with me. I do second the concerns of others with respect to how much real revenue you may generate from them. Survey says that banner ads (and their kin, popups etc) are generally unsuccessful yet are still used because they are the best thing the marketers got. But regardless of that, we have a different type of community here and it may actually work for us. The marketing is very targeted, unlike most of the advertising I see on the 'Net.

Second, I like Ben's idea. It's been percolating in the back of my mind for a while - why not have multiple servers that serve the content? That is to say, if people were willing, we could host the forum off different servers around North America and Europe. I imagine that a peer-to-peer network of volunteer servers is doable. I'm not just dreaming; I freely offer my services to try and figure it out. There are a number of us here who have the educational and or experience to come up with something that could work. What I envision is a P2P network not unlike some of the others that have been created whereby each server hosts a small portion of the forum on their machine. You retain control over that information. This sort of thing could be setup on machines with any decent amount of bandwidth available - i.e. a DSL modem such as mine has a half megabit or so upload available, and I imagine that this would be enough to host a few topics anyhow.

Complicated, yes, but doable I think. Of couse, it's at the wild fantasy land level only.

Third, Totally O/T. I remember when you created Totally O/T because silly chats were filling up GFC. Perhaps it's time to reevaluate whether O/T is needed or not. No offense to people, but I wouldn't miss it for a second. I do read there from time to time, and there are people in there that I don't see posting anywhere else on the forum. 'nuff said before I get myself in trouble. I do recognize that dropping O/T would probably cause those conversations to blossum elsewhere - serious thought would be needed to figure out how to qwell that. Know you hate it, but perhaps a heavier moderators hand for a shortish time period would help.

I know that you didn't want the membership option to come up, but it has, and I have this to offer. Anyone remember www.thefieroclub.com? Mark (Pendragon) tried to setup a small Fiero club. The dues were reasonable - about $2 a month as I recall.

He had lots of members sign up when it was free. When he switched over to the for pay service, membership dropped so much that he decided to close the service down. I was one of the few paying members, even if I didn't join until a week before he took it down (I didn't know that he was going to, and in fairness, he did refund my money). Think there were less than 20 paid members, out of a total before-pay membership of ten times that. If anyone recalls better than I, please let me know.

I agree with limiting uploads. In fact, I think you could disallow uploads altogether in some areas of the Forum. See earlier comments about O/T.

Cliff, thanks again for this place. Hope I haven't ruffled any feathers with my comments about O/T, k guys?

If anyone - Cliff especially - wants to look at the distributed forum idea, please e-mail me. My address is in my profile. I'd really like to try it out. Maybe I'm just a geek

My Fiero is in storage right now and not expected to come out of her sleep until about the middle of May (pending weather changes), maybe sooner.

In the meantime, I keep active with the other members by just "shooting the breeze" and staying in touch by being in O/T or on Chat. If I need information, then I jump over to the other sections, find what I need and move on. Occassionally, I do post when I have something to offer...such as cleaning a very darkened dipstick with Easy-Off in 30 seconds.

There are a few rotten apples that do come about from time to time in O/T. But just because of the occasional bad apple or two, you don't throw out the barrel now do you.

Okay! Okay! So some bad apples had to be scraped finally from the bottom of the barrel, but the other apples are okay in my opinion.

Please...oh please...don't get rid of O/T or even suggest such a move.

Just because I don't post in GFC or the Tech section, doesn't mean I don't visit it. I'm not an automotive genius, guru nor do I have the automotive mechanical background that many of you do. My forte is computers...not cars. I, as well as my step-daughters, just enjoy the Fiero. Due to my automotive ineptness, I would rather take it to an automotive shop, pay the bucks and have it fixed quickly (cause with me, it would stay in a dismanteled state which is Fiero Abuse) and properly. However, there has been some small things I can tinker on and fix which I do find in GFC, like that confounded "Blue Dingy Thingy" that was driving me and my step-daughter nuts on her 86GT that I had bought her.