Compared to other motorcycle brands/sites, we contribute more forum posts than most. We also contribute well in uploading photos.

However, as a group we don't contribute much in other areas of Rat.Net. Specifically, the Blogs and Product Reviews.

Web Links does receive contributions, but it hasn't grown beyond the 400-440 total links range in the last five years. Primarily because websites disappear as quickly as they are added, which is something we can't control.

Product Reviews has always been something that has been slow to adopt. The former product review system was extremely simplistic, and folks enjoyed browsing the items. When I converted Rat.Net, most of the product reviews were extremely old. I ended up dumping the old information this morning, again because of the age of the reviews. If it doesn't pick up, I may remove the product reviews feature due to lack of interest.

The Blogs system won't go away, because it has valuable information within it. However for a group of folks who customize as much as Harley Owners do, we tend to share very little of it or anything else we do. The ease of the current system beats anything done before, but overall we aren't major contributors in this area either.

Classifieds don't concern me, they represent a form of "short-term" information.

Let me know your thoughts,

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I might do some Product Reviews. Gosh knows I've been buying stuff recently. I just took a look at the function though and it's not really clear to me how I'd create a review. Upload a file? Huh. Perhaps there is a FAQ or help file or instruction tutorial that I need to read? This might be one reason folks haven't been using the feature very much?

Blogs I just don't get. What is really the purpose of a Blog? When should you use it instead of posting in a forum. How would folks know that you put something in a Blog unless you mention it in forum. I think I need a Blog 101 tutorial to help me understand this.

I'm not being critical or facetious. I'd probably use these functions if I understood them better. I obviously can't use them until I gain that understanding. Might be other members in that situation as well?

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Paul

2007 Triumph Bonneville T100
2006 Kymco People 250

I have posted a few items to the Blog, and mentioned them in the forum, but I have stopped since it is a waste of my time due to attitudes such as expressed by the previous poster. There are several more items I could write, but I fail to see the sense of it if nobody bothers with looking at the blog.

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Oldndumb
Caveat lector

Oldnumb, you can look at the number of times any document is viewed in the Blog. People are looking at it. Although I get all kinds of backlash when something isn't available but agree that it isn't looked at enough.

When TriumphRat.Net was a young site, there was concerns by some visitors that it was either traffic or involvement wasn't enough to justify the effort. It did take a while for significant contributions to take place.

There are many times when posting something in a forum is best, but if it is information that people ask to "make sticky" then that may be something best put into the blog.

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This is an example of what I was trying to say.
I would guess that most people have no knowledge that the Blog even exists. One of those "Read Before Posting" stickys at the top of each forum, explaining the basics of the site, might be helpful.

www.triumphrat.net/sprint-forum/78358-trident-pipes.html#post953315

The poster that stated they could not find the Trident Installation Instructions replied back that he had done a search, and that the search function must not look at the Blog section. Is it feasible to consider including the Blog during searches?

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Oldndumb
Caveat lector

In the Sprint Forum, we suffer from a degree of "comfort" in that users can't see beyond the forum section. We should take most of the stickies and put them in the blogs; then add a sticky to the Blogs. That is what was done in the Twins Forums. Either you or myself can talk to Don or Dave about it.

We have the same issue in the RAT Forums, too many stickies that can be managed just as easily through the Blogs.

There is a integrated function in the works that will link Blog and Forum search activity together, but it isn't ready yet.

Maybe I need to convert the text links on the left side to big buttons ...

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I didn't even know that these other features existed. Now that I look, I see there is more to this site than just the forums. But the site does suffer a bit from "link overload".

Blogs? I have a blog, and I do blog about motorcycles among many other things, but I don't really see myself wanting to split my motorcycle blogging out from the main blog site. Nor do I really see myself wanting to maintain duplicates of all of my motorcycle blogs here. I just leave a link to my blog in my signature, and if people choose to click it, great. I don't know that a blog and a forum really go together that well on one site but that's just my humble opinion.

Product reviews... well, like I said, I didn't know it was there. Sounds like a great feature for a site like this, theoretically. But it sounds like it's just not getting used. People do talk about products here, but just in the context of regular forum posts. I don't think they even know to post in the special product review section. Maybe it just needs more promotion or something, I don't know.

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http://youtube.com/user/ncyonder

Originally Posted by Shawn

In the Sprint Forum, we suffer from a degree of "comfort" in that users............you or myself can talk to Don or Dave about it

Thanks for the response. I have passed it on to them.

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Oldndumb
Caveat lector

I keep thinking that people will warm up to the idea of the chat room and other features. The threads sometimes turn into conversations between two members, and the chat room would be a great place for people to voluntarily move to (by PM'ing an invitation to chat or something).

It seems that if a feature doesn't cost money to keep it alive, then couldn't it just sit there waiting to be appreciated? (For example, if the chat feature isn't taking up expensive server space or reserved bandwidth.)

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Guy

I have been one of the users with blinders on. I just checked out the blogs and found some very useful info there. And as for product reviews - I have just been lazy as I could have contributed plenty to this part of the site.

I think you are right on Shawn about the comfort zone thing

You have convinced me to branch out