Info On Raising Chickens, Ducks, Geese, & Other Poultry.
Helping the world raise chickens successfully since 1995!

If someone wants to test the IP.Board.
This test version is available for the next 120 hours.
http://c111133.try.invisionpower.com/
User name: admin
Password on request via PM.

For now all information on this board is still open and free. Guests will just have to register to view topics in the Genetics forum. Once registered they may be more inclined to participate.

This board has always tried to be welcoming to members at all levels of experience while trying to keep true to fact and topic without the senseless comments that Redcap has pointed out exist on other boards. This is why we get some of the best poultry people here. It is a tricky balance. For now we will try a few things and see if any work.

If some members wish to start a new board, more modern with photo hosting and more, I understand and I would back allowing information from this board to be copied to that board. However I do not think our owner and sole sponsor will be updating this board.

This board has its limitations but has always been here for us at no cost and we have Loren Hadley to thank for that!

It's not as easy, as You think.
I could convince Loren Hadley to change to IP.Board in May 2015 (I'll send You a screen shot of an Email from Loren Hadley by PM).
But I couldn't convince Henk to make the migration from UBB to IP.Board (and only under the condition that Henk or another Forum member of his trust would do this migration and that I would collect the money for these 400 - 600 Dollars cost by Donations, Lauren had had ordered the Board license). But Henk considered this Forum already there as dead, if I may be so indiscrete. So the project Board migration was actually dead, for the first, but maybe I could convince Loren once again to let make the migration by a professional, if I can collect/provide the costs for it.

An alternative to Donations would be an annual Coop Support membership for 10,15 or 20 Dollars ... similar to PoultryChat.

The more members we could recruit, the cheaper we could make the annual fee.
http://www.poultrychat.com/showthread.php?tid=16752

It would be good to hear from more members.

I always thought some banner ads would generate income for the board. Even with the low participation rate the board still generates a high number of views. Views and clicks are what bring in the money.

Thanks M2. It works much better now, can see genetics forum & index topic links.

I agree completely dingsda. After all it is "The Classroom" @ The Coop, why this forum is so special. Like sitting in a lecture theatre or tutorial group, with access to a wonderful library of scientific knowledge. I would hate for this educational resource to become only accessible to those who can pay.

To be honest RedCap, if there was a membership fee, I probably would never have joined.

Remember, there is competition, plenty of forums that are free (including ones with free image hosting). Yes, a major pain with Photobucket's change of policy, now charging fees. What was the result? The majority of people leaving Photobucket for other image hosting websites. And the same would happen with The Coop if fees were charged.

As for ads, please not to the extent of BYC, as I would be gone again. Not as bad as Photobucket, but BYC getting there - often freezes my laptop (as does Facebook).

I was happy the way things were with The Coop. Yes, more participation would be great.

I was thinking of asking permission to share genetics info of members from Facebook groups here, if they didn't want to join & post themselves. As a way to store more securely genetics information in permanent threads. But there is a lot sifting to get to the gems I would leave many Facebook groups altogether if someone was summarising all scientific poultry genetics information & posting here at The Coop - that would be heaven

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P.s. - I deleted, then moved this post to this genetics thread, as I don't usually go to other The Coop forums, so wanted it to show up here too.

For me the Coop is totally different to other Forums.
It is a concentrated collection of knowledge, a wealth of knowledge.
I compare it with Wikipedia and Archive.org - These services only survives through Donations. Donations were my original idea for the Coop. But - these platforms have a huge audience and consequently, The sum of 2 or 5 Dollar donations are enough to reach the target.
But do You believe that this voluntary donation solution would work with Coop, too?
I pay for my mail.com (GMX) Email address since February annually $19.99, as only the Premium service offers POP3 forwarding to the Email client since a few months. Stupid, but it is less than $2 a month for a useful service. I can get easier in contact internationally - without ending in the Spam Folder like with my german Email addresses - and I hate it also, that I need to log in at the web client to read and send Emails - It can happen that I don't log in for up to two weeks, so if e.g. Kazjaps would ask me for a Paper, I would hate to let wait her (or others)so long for a response. At some Sites even only .com Email addresses are/were accepted.
So I need the useful this Service, and therefore I am ready to pay for it. Similar I wouldn't pay for other Forums $10 annually , but for the Coop it would be worth for it ... to keep alive the access, even if the Forum will be dead, some day. And it seems to be inevitable, if we can't change the attitude of appreciation of the thousands visitors of the Genetics sub-forum.

In case of the Coop:
It would be possible to combine the membership fee with a reward in form of Amazon Coupons or free membership for very engaged members (e.g. with 50 or 100 positive rated postings - for this case we would need a rating option for postings).

Redcap, I don't understand. Have I missed something, is there a new imminent threat that The Coop is about to close, old threads about to be lost, if funds are not raised?

What shall we expect, what happens with a dead forum ... an outdated forum software? Why shall Loren Hadley keep a dead forum alive? It only generate costs for him. He isn't engaged in Poultry keeping since many Years. Furthermore ... what happens, when he die some day? He is no more the youngest.
As far as I know, he started the Classroom in 1995.
I think it would be to late to think about the rescue of the forum, when it is offline.
The problem of the deadly silence here in the Forum is just an early omen. In the last Years many other good poultry forums disappeared without warning. I can remember at least three british forums.

One Forum with interesting discussions about genetics and domestication with David Scrivener and friends on the homepage of Richard Dawkins diseappeared aswell. There is no chance to save these information anymore ... Away ... Gone. And no chance to get in contact with these guys and ladies again.

Hello all!
I have been with the Classroom longer than any current active member with the exception of our beloved CJR I have seen this conversation several times before and assure you that no big changes will happen quickly or without the consideration of all our members.

On the topic of more active membership. I will continue with the Genetics forum being closed to Guests for a few weeks. During this time I will monitor new membership and if that new membership posts. If there is no increase in active members I will open the topics to public view again. Next I am working on an email to our membership list. I will make it clear that it is a one time email and we will not continue contacting them. I will offer to help any member who needs help logging back in to their old account. I am sure many have forgotten their log in info.

On the topic of upgrading the board. Even if we keep our current platform, UBB Threads, it needs updated. It is years behind on updates. My concern is not with new features but venerability and obsolete operations. I doubt many of you know that every new registration is approved or declined manually. To the best of my knowledge 99% of those are done by Foehn. We owe her a huge THANK YOU. This is because our automated screening (CAPTCHA) is so out dated that the BOTs and spammers come right through. If not for doing this manually the board would be swamped with spam postings.

How to pay for updates. I really don't know how much we could get for some banner ads. Kaz, I do agree that we would want to keep them simple static ads (no flashy animated things) to not cause problems for those of us with poor internet connections or older computers. Most everything on the internet is paid for through advertisement and not member fees. I would not pay to be here.

On that comment maybe I should explain why I am here . To some of you I am that guy who comes out from under a rock every now and then I was asked to be a moderator by Loren and Dr. Bruce Smith (moderator1) many years ago. At that time the board was growing. In time Bruce drifted away but the board was thriving so moderating took much of my time. I slowly posted less and less in the forums as Bill Ludwig. I lost contact with Loren and was left holding the keys to the Coop . I have brought in several moderators over the years but eventually they move on and it is just me again. Our current moderators have been with us for some time and I thank them for that.

The Classroom is truly unique. Because of who we are I don't know if we can expect many more active members. When members started leaving for other boards I lost many friends. The other boards are full of fluff and nonsense . Most people do not like being challenged. In the classroom when you post you are expected to back up your claims not pass around myth and rumor. This keeps many people away.

Could the Coop vanish? It could. Many things could happen or not. The software could crash and not be rebuilt, something could happen to Loren and with no directive the Coop could just be turned off. A virus could destroy the data.

If you read all this, Thanks for your time..LOL This is my view point and my opinion. As I have said in the past, I have no authority or ability to make big changes.