Help Improve 306oc

[Piggy]

Be nicer to people?

Genuinely put off by the forum recently...and I know others have been too, by general stupid/rude comments.

[Poodle]

So basically, we need some new, nicer forum members to advertise the forum for us.

Ime there are always going to be comments that some people don't like, the best the forum staff can do is restrict those that are intentionally harmful - and lets be honest, they tend to out fairly quickly. It's a bunch of lads who are into cars talking on the internet, it was never going to be a miss Daisy's tea party lol. Tbh if there hadn't been the same level of banter on here a lot of members would have gotten bored a long time ago, i know i would!

Edit: That said, perhaps making it a bit more family friendly wouldn't be a bad idea, since a lot of people who even remember 306s are getting to that kind of an age... Scary thought lol. But yeah, while the banter is fun i can see how it might put off those who are a bit more delicate.

[Piggy]

Don't get me wrong, I love the banter and give it out too.

Just I honestly think it has escalated to unfriendly levels recently.

Not just banter sometimes though, just outright rude, negative and harsh, unwarranted, comments.

That should never be part of a car loving forum imho.

[procta]

Be nicer to people?

Genuinely put off by the forum recently...and I know others have been too, by general stupid/rude comments.

Don't get me wrong, I love the banter and give it out too.

Just I honestly think it has escalated to unfriendly levels recently.

Not just banter sometimes though, just outright rude, negative and harsh, unwarranted, comments.

That should never be part of a car loving forum imho.

I have to agree,

[1616six]

We have no marketing, no advertising - flyers, affiliations with Peugeot websites etc to aftract new members.

Mods that don't use the site (Liam for example I've not seen more than the odd post in months, hope he's ok)

We need:

To lose the clickiness
Fresh mods to a certain extent
To be more welcoming
Flyers to put under wipers etc
Club reps for shows who will be in club shirts, not pissed & chatting to people
Advertising

[Piggy]

Think you'ved nailed that JJ.

Amen bro.

[procta]

We have no marketing, no advertising - flyers, affiliations with Peugeot websites etc to aftract new members.

Mods that don't use the site (Liam for example I've not seen more than the odd post in months, hope he's ok)

We need:

To lose the clickiness
Fresh mods to a certain extent
To be more welcoming
Flyers to put under wipers etc
Club reps for shows who will be in club shirts, not pissed & chatting to people
Advertising

 we do need this, and a refresh of the mods, also I have found this place be come more " group focused" it was never like that on .net. That's one thing that's really bugged me with the new forum.

[zx_volcane]

Content is king as they say. If the forum has good content, people will come here for it.

We should continue to help, advise and share our knowledge by responding to posts, even if it has been covered a thousand times. Don't flame the n00bs bro.

Encourage and promote people that are starting project threads or taking their project in a different direction or even if it something trivial like new hubcaps. Friends don't let friends double post - not duplicate content, but consecutive updates without and other replies :'(







Facebook isn't all that, sure you can ask a question and get a thousand replies m9 - but quality of info can be dire, and you try looking up that question a few hours later, impossibru!


Scenes thrive on a sense of excitement and inspiration, so lets inspire and be excited about what we're doing.

[lolsteve]

Not seeing many 306s about any more though, apart from the obvious FCS but then they're already a member of another club.

Winning club stand at FCS would no doubt be a good thing for the reputation and would mean being mentioned more in the PFC magazine, as last year despite having a pretty busy location it was a little bit of a flop. Nice ideas but think the wind etc didnt help

Ladysteve works in advertising sales and got prices for alot of the car magazines recently in case people are wanting to take it that far?

I know we have a "non 306" section but perhaps make some more model specific stuff. Do see the occasional member come through that doesn't have a 306 but has something similar Xsara/206/ZX.

[Dum-Dum]

Not seeing many 306s about any more though, apart from the obvious FCS but then they're already a member of another club.

Winning club stand at FCS would no doubt be a good thing for the reputation and would mean being mentioned more in the PFC magazine, as last year despite having a pretty busy location it was a little bit of a flop. Nice ideas but think the wind etc didnt help

Ladysteve works in advertising sales and got prices for alot of the car magazines recently in case people are wanting to take it that far?

I know we have a "non 306" section but perhaps make some more model specific stuff. Do see the occasional member come through that doesn't have a 306 but has something similar Xsara/206/ZX.

The numbers have utterly dropped off. If you look at howmanyleft.co.uk most models have more than halved in numbers on the roads in the last 2-3 years and over the last 10 years we are talking about 10% of the number of 306s. Same if you look at autotrader, used to be hundreds for sale and now just a few dozen.


As for winning the best club at FCS it will be impossible if we don't know how they are judging that, we put loads of effort into our stand last year and didn't even get placed whereas the people who won it just looked like a car park without so much as a club banner.

[rocker8742]

I don't think much if anything needs to change really, It's always going to have quiet periods like you say epically through winter when most don't have the motivation to work on their car. 306s are aging and slowing dying out, it goes to show that a few don't even have 306s anymore but are still keen to stick around which is a good thing IMO. Compare this forum to .net as i don't think a lot seems to go on over there and club306 packed it all in.

Its great to still have this forum going as there is so much useful info etc and a lot of great people on here. Im sure the forum will pick up in the next few coming weeks.

Would be good to sort out more local meets like i have tried but they just don't seem to have overly much interest and i consider the area round me to have quite a few members.

It's alright I'm back now, plenty more simple questions to ask lol

In all serious though I agree with you frosty, when compared with other 306 forums were doing well and I know that I'm definitely one to not do anything over the winter lol

I think the problem with local meets these days is that no one generally arranged stuff on the forum we just tend to send a couple texts around and get together

I think a tagging function would be handy tbh but can't see it giving a massive jump in users, things will just be smoother.

The biggest thing that I think this place is missing these days is the banter and pisstakes between everyone, it's what used to make it such a different forum.

Not enough man love or home brew these days [emoji106]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Mattcheese31]

You don't need to be a mod to do your bit, the responsibility lies with every member to contribute, be helpful and welcoming, as mods all we do most of the time is clean and tidy shit up, I as others do make a concerted effort to welcome new members, answer questions and encourage projects, even if they're not the most exciting, everyone can do that, whatever your status in the club x

[Mattcheese31]

Ok I've posted on the Facebook page as I suggested, I will do this on a regular basis with useful threads and interesting projects, if you could all make sure you click like on them it will keep it in the public eye, cheers

[MY95]

Few ideas on top of those of others:

Tagging feature would be really handy
More people sharing their advice
No shooting down newbies
More club meets/track days
Club reps and flyers on stand and our cars at shows
More club tours - nurburgring, euro tour, scotland weekend, lakes etc
Reduced post count to 50 for selling etc (puts people off posting and staying, or if they do they are random pointless posts)
Projects will pick up shortly
Trip to Peugeot museum in France with all the maxi's and other rare Peugeots (pscuk have done this in the past and it was a hit)
Commenting more on new projects and newbies first posts as much as poss
Less harshness/rudeness between members... Will put newbies off
All members contributing where they can
Trying to get into the magazines more/try and get our cars featured

[Piggy]

French car magazine is an issue...

Coz we don't have many Renault 306s

[Ruan]

You don't need to be a mod to do your bit, the responsibility lies with every member to contribute, be helpful and welcoming, as mods all we do most of the time is clean and tidy shit up, I as others do make a concerted effort to welcome new members, answer questions and encourage projects, even if they're not the most exciting, everyone can do that, whatever your status in the club x

Correct - it's easy to blame moderators for it not going the way people want, but the reality is that the forum is only as good as it's members.

The best forums are the ones that have no requirement to be moderated

Moderators should simply be there to clear up spambots etc - it should near enough run itself.

I'm a mega culprit for not organising, but I do think that the BEST times this forum have had are during meets, not just shows, but doing things as a club. My best memory of this club is the Lake District meet (probably 4 years ago now!) - bunch of 306 owners went to the Lakes, had drinks, went driving - it was awesome. We should do more of this!

I'm not even a massive fan of organised shows anymore, we've all seen the same stuff, there's not much different going on and you'll see 80-90% the same stuff every show you go to, you've gotta work hard to find that 10% new stuff! Doing things as a forum is much more interesting - when it's more about the people and the experience that happens to be based around cars.

[Magenta Sunset]

do we have such a thing as a 'Google map' so members can see who is close to them?
I've only met Piggy (kinda) and dum-dum through collecting bits, and seeing their location from their posts.
also, could be tenuous, some form of who holds what 'workshop equipment' and would be willing to lend locally to them?
Or operate for members?
I've got a gas/gasless mig*, a 2800kva genny, soon to have a sand/soda blasting kit* (*no masks yet), a 25l compressor & 'pot'-guns in my garage.

[Toms306]

You've met me as well Magenta, but I'm easily forgettable!

There is a map though, it's stickied somewhere, top of the couch I think.

[Mattcheese31]

i'll be announcing details of a rolling road meet near Doncaster soon, details to be ironed out but should be £30 for 3 runs if we get a few involved . . . .

[Magenta Sunset]

You've met me as well Magenta, but I'm easily forgettable!

There is a map though, it's stickied somewhere, top of the couch I think.

nnot completely tom
will have another peek in the couch

[1616six]

I'll try and put some more effort into the site to help regenerate it a bit.

[Eeyore]

do we have such a thing as a 'Google map' so members can see who is close to them?
I've only met Piggy (kinda) and dum-dum through collecting bits, and seeing their location from their posts.
also, could be tenuous, some form of who holds what 'workshop equipment' and would be willing to lend locally to them?
Or operate for members?
I've got a gas/gasless mig*, a 2800kva genny, soon to have a sand/soda blasting kit* (*no masks yet), a 25l compressor & 'pot'-guns in my garage.

yep we have a map of where members are and a threadof useful members and what they can help with.

http://306oc.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?tid=1320
http://306oc.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?tid=3022

Not sure where the members map is right now :/

[toseland]

Performance French Renault magazine..


Renault 306... AHAHAHAHAH

---

The thing that sets this forum apart is the layout imo,.. Yes it's a 306 forum predominantly, but its more a general car forum for Peugeots from the 106 to the 309 and everything in between.. we have general engine sections for each of the engine types (XUD, DW10, TU etc) and those were fitted to thousands of things in addition to Peugeots so the information is relevant to other cars..

the couch is generic, the performance and handling section applies to loads of cars and I am pretty confident I could ask (without any prejudice) any question about the handling and electrics of most cars up to the most modern even non Peugeots and someone who browses the forums would be helpful.

potentially we could move the engine information on to encompass other engines (newer DW10s, DV6's newer petrol lumps in more modern cars) and possibly have one club forum for several iterations of the club PeugeotOC.co.uk or something feeding into this club to cover more wide variety of the forums and have that as sort of an umbrella for the different models within it..



Interestingly if you google "Peugeot owners club uk" we are 4th on the search engine behind clubpeugeotuk.org, clubpeugeotu.org's classifieds section and Peugeot forums.

a suggestion might be to remove the "for sale section" and replace it with a dedicated classifieds site, such as http://forum.difflock.com/ has, whereby it would show basic info, price, parts and contact details directly without having to click on the page.. also allows you to catagorise the parts for sale such as cars, parts, misc and wanted,

[Eeyore]

We have no marketing, no advertising - flyers, affiliations with Peugeot websites etc to aftract new members.

Mods that don't use the site (Liam for example I've not seen more than the odd post in months, hope he's ok)

We need:

To lose the clickiness
Fresh mods to a certain extent
To be more welcoming
Flyers to put under wipers etc
Club reps for shows who will be in club shirts, not pissed & chatting to people
Advertising

Have to agree with this. I wouldnt say it is clickiness as local members are always going to know each other better than those further afield. I think we probably do just need to check whether current mods wish to continue. I think we are welcoming. It would be good to have some flyers but distributing them at shows is fairly pointless as enthusiasts there will already know of all the clubs etc and are likely to be a member of their own club if they arent part of ours. Perhaps a return of the sticking flyers on cars you see out and about might be good. 

Advertising would be good but im not sure we need to pay for it. Its a genuine loss leader as this is a free forum. I think if we got some articles in car magasines starting with PFC that would be a good start. Having more events with writeups and images would be the way forwards.

Club reps for shows? Mmmm its a big ask for people to be on stand for an hour. I have been stand rep for the dinghy show for 2 years now and its difficult to bring people in there who are simply browsing or not interested. At car shows people have their cars and its a small percentage who turn up who arent on the scene.

I think we need to find a model to follow. I think the clio sport guys do really well not just because of their large following but because of what they actually do. They have clio sport saturday which is an annual meet. I think they have some track time as well. I think just having more meets which are properly organised and having some dedicated 306oc track time would be a fantastic start.

[1616six]

I agree with you Sam, I've always got the impression that this club has grown to the size it is unintentionally.. I may be wrong of course but at the time it seemed to spring out of nowhere due to the nature that .net went down so it was a good way of the members that disagreed with things to get out but still be a community.

It's now turned in to something fantastic, really really good. I still come on here every single day without fail.. it's a tab open on my iphone/ipad permanently, first thing I do when I wake up is hit 'new posts' on here to see what has been going on.

It just feels like at the moment it's got no direction, wasted potential maybe.

I've offered countless times to be a moderator on here and never had any reply, not that it matters, I'm always willing to help out where I can (Regardless of being an owner or not) and have been on here from day 1. I'm still willing to do what ever is required.

The other option which I know has been talked about before was whether or not to offer a paid membership option - £10 a year to give you access to the classifieds, how to's, a membership pack ETC (Blocking the classifieds/how to's etc to unpaid)

It would give the club revenue to pay for advertising/running costs ETC too - it's a big decision and not one to be taken lightly but it is tried and tested on many forums but whether it's the way to go or not is not my decision.

Another little thing but to me it sticks in my mind is our stickers seem expensive, £5.70 posted for a pair - other forums are £2.50 a pair. The more we get out there the more advertising we get - run an offer of buy one get one free on decals for a while, get more out there and get more advertising.


I personally want to push this forum, it's just floating around at the moment with the same X amount of members posting every day, new members come and go, we have no new 'big' faces to the club anymore.. in my mind people like Tose, Piggy etc are still the newest members I automatically think of when I think of well known members. They've been here quite a while now!

It just takes some people to want change, a lot of the old members are just happy with the way the forum is but surely we all want it to grow into something better?

[Magenta Sunset]

a pound a month isn't much, my MAG membership costs more than that, but they do include a bi-monthly magazine for all members in that.
forgo the magazine and it has to be value for money. Esp as there's tons of support here.

[tigerstyle]

It's clique...

I don't feel the forum is all that slow?
They are old cars now, interest will be waning, I don't use facebook for car related stuff, but the instant response people feel they get there will never be replicated by a forum.
Come here for serious answers!

[Redordead89]

Talking about the top 20-40 posters who mainly own and worship only the GTI6 and Rallye, maybe a bit more friendly focus to all other 306's like the ultra rare ph1 xss i just sold 6 weeks ago, i appreciate most may not have owned a 1.6 or 1.4 tu so n3gative comments like sh*t chocolate gearbox and lack of bhp arent really warranted or welcome! this is meant to be the 306oc not the gti6 and rallye/ tuned hdi forum!

[silverzx]

Talking about the top 20-40 posters who mainly own and worship only the GTI6 and Rallye, maybe a bit more friendly focus to all other 306's like the ultra rare ph1 xss i just sold 6 weeks ago, i appreciate most may not have owned a 1.6 or 1.4 tu so n3gative comments like sh*t chocolate gearbox and lack of bhp arent really warranted or welcome! this is meant to be the 306oc not the gti6 and rallye/ tuned hdi forum!

Hear ye.

[Ruan]

Talking about the top 20-40 posters who mainly own and worship only the GTI6 and Rallye, maybe a bit more friendly focus to all other 306's like the ultra rare ph1 xss i just sold 6 weeks ago, i appreciate most may not have owned a 1.6 or 1.4 tu so n3gative comments like sh*t chocolate gearbox and lack of bhp arent really warranted or welcome! this is meant to be the 306oc not the gti6 and rallye/ tuned hdi forum!

I refer you to my comment of:

That's just the joys of the subject of the forum becoming cheaper and less desirable as time goes on and it's very much now a cheap hack about - there's only a handful of cars on here people genuinely give a crap about... The rest are just the cheapy daily and will be run into the floor and scrapped.

It's not that people dislike the other 306 specs, it's just that they're treated like absolute crap! Nobody will ever do performance mods to a 1.6 because "just put a gti6 in"... But then at the same time, I've never seen anybody actually follow through with any mods to a 1.4/1.6...

The ratio of "I've turbo'd my 1.6" to "It's scrapped" is roughly around the ratio of 0:500 at the moment - I'm all for people modifying 1.6s etc, just usually they're modified badly and poorly maintained/treated.