No - not this forum but some advice please.  Whitstable YC is considering establishin a members dicussion forum (similar to this) on their existing website.  Do other clubs have such a forum and is it difficult to moderate (police)?  We have heard all sorts of scare stories about spam, abuse etc and are concerned about the workload for the moderator.

We would be grateful to hear the experience of others.

Mags - could you email me privately with your views.

Thanks very much

John

Tried one on our club site some years ago and found that it was used by only a handful of people so gave it up.  The only workload for the moderator was trying to generate activity!

Think that wider forums such as this one are better unless you are a very, very big club.

One issue to sort out is whether you want an open forum like this one (which is the best I've ever found) or a members' only forum which your e-mail suggests is your aim.  If the latter, then access via a password can cut the junk but will eliminate access by the casual visitor.

I have been on the Firefly website a number of times recently while I sort out a boat.  Interestingly, it is set up to make referral to the moderator much easier, and offers an immediate link to private e-mail boxes for exchange of views.  The result seems to be much less traffic on the forum, making one less likely to revisit regularly.

We use snitz forum for the cvrda site which works beautifully and I've seen it used by lots of sites. It only takes a moment to create your user login and password and it's done for always. See the link below for snitz or http://www.cvrda.org for forum in action.

What you really need is a MAGS!
The MR site is unique and compulsive which adds to the comeraderie of the class and persons of all ages, backgrounds etc., etc., etc.

My pennyworth:

Having had some experience from the admin point of view, and from what I can gather you want something simple, cheap and easy to use to encourage visitors, I would say this open style of forum would be excellent.

Speaking as an end user, I much prefer this format.

Once you start getting into user ids and passwords it becomes more complicated which can very easily translate into a pain for you to manage and a turn off for users.

Cheers, John

Thanks for the comments so far.  Really useful - please keep them coming!

Hi John

We have an excellent website at our local yacht club (I think you know which one) on which club members can post articles (moderated) and users can post comments on.  It used to be used very regularly (someone would write a straightforward resume of the weekends racing along with the results or events and the rest of us would pile in with some informed comments).  Unfortunately a certain element in the club found that they could not laugh at themselves when they were the subject of lively banter (yes it was the section that meets in the corner of the bar in a disapproving manner and whose boats are rather larger than ours, but seldom move from their moorings).  Anyhow cue formal complaint to Commodore - letters of apology, much bad feeling and guess what - no one uses that forum any more! All the scullduggery still goes on now, but but out of the control of the club.  All very sad really.
So what did we learn - well its a thankless task being moderator, loads of people have computers but depressingly few use them, and having decent content is key to getting people to log on. (Having hilarious comments really worked well bringing the punters in - but in the end pandering to the sensitivies of the few screwed it all up - mind you it was a about a fortnight before someone told the cruiser class and the complaint came in) 
All the best 
Ian

I don't have a lot to do technically with our web forum at Starcross but as Vice Comm we have many discussions about it.... We use a phpBB solution which is open for some info but needs requires a log on for much more. It's very active and has become the central source for crew requests, duty swaps and the like. That's besides the usual banter!!! I don't think the log on has deterred many members (400+ users in a club with 900 individual members) and once you've got your PC to remember the password etc you don't even have to think about logging in...
Spam does get input but with a combination of the web site admin person, the software (not accepting posts from certain IP addresses) and about 6 more moderators it usually gets deleted pretty quickly.
We've also had a couple of instances of posts getting personal or ill informed comments but these are very rare and can be dealt with easily...
The real key thing about whether it's succesful or not is if there are a group of people who drive it's initial use. All our commodores use it as well as the fleet capts who are constantly "selling" their fleets with second hand boats for sail etc.

With the Snitz forums, anyone can read posts, but only registered users can make posts. This automatically stops the spammers, bots and junk that spoils so many open forums. It also allows e-mail addresses to be hidden and the forum software then does the sending if you wish to contact a registered user (only available if you are registered yourself so no anonymous mail). 
If you want to use a forum for such as crew recruiting this emailing would be useful.