Had no idea Cedia had a forum, i usually find everything i need here!

The problem is that many of us still do need a private forum to talk amoungst ourselves in. Unfortunatly IP wasn't really set up with a good way to generate income as well, which makes it tough to maintain. Kudos to Brain and company for doing it, and I hope they can make a come back of some sort. I understand Brian is just a little busy now.

I think that's the crux of it, and was pondering this very question when I rolled up to Starbucks this morning. Maybe RC should buy or assume IP, put the $$ generating advertising in place or charge a fee, and administrate it on a professional level.

I was reminded just the other day that this is a public forum, and my public comments are being read by others. More and more I have seen the discussion threads turn to busiess topics that should be on a confidential forum. I like the IP concept for the trade-only aspect, but the execution is rocky at best.

Same here. No clue.

CEDIA Forum is free to members. There is about one posting per day. Nothing that isn't covered here.

If I got a private section openned on a well established HT forum site, would you guys be interested? I wouldn't want to take away from what is happening here, but I think a "qualified" section like IP was attempting is a good idea....

We could certainly do something at CE Pro--again without disrupting Daniel's great following here. How would you propose that dealers are "qualified?" We're gearing up to have a better discussion area.

Good idea Julie.... What I'm talking about though is a private section on a very busy HT board. We could designate a section for CIs and one part of that could be open to all members/visitors. What that would do is generate leads to match up installers with customers on a regional basis. (We're talking 1,000s of members active monthly) It works with another category (calibrators) now.

I'll say it again though - if it eroded what Daniel has going here one bit, I wouldn't want my name attached!

Someone from Brazil hacked the site. That was why it went down and why IP had a falling out with the hosting company.

I'd like to just see this forum go private. Most of the posts from non pros on this forum just annoy us anyway. And I'd be willing to pay a yearly fee as well. Most of what I post doesn't need to be private but some of it definately does, or I need to change my user name on occastion

About this private forum section thing, come on! In order got a forum to flourish there must be lots of people posting. In order for lots of people to be posting there needs to be lots of people - meaning it can't be restricted to only people in the biz. Furthermore, it needs to be easily acceessable and not require password entry and registration needs to be absolutely painless. This thing where we are going to have our own little private community is a pipe dream. And furthermore, I don't want it. Having end usersbe able to partuicpate is critical. I would like to see a really good forum with good categories but it must be open to all and easy to register to, just like here.

Ted wins today's trivia prize. Whatever that is, it will be trivial, be assured.


QQQ's response to that is spot on. Let's face it: we need the non-pro members here to keep the site alive, and I, frankly, am not interested in trying to keep track of more than one site at a time! This one is the best I have found (stopped looking at avsforum due to overwhelmth and somehow things are easier to find here; it's better arranged).

I understand the desire for a different user name. I tried that once, but would have to go through the hassle of making another email address. I don't have so much to say privately to be worth the hassle of another damned password and account!

still not sure what that has to do with what I said :-)



agree


well it does not need to be painful, you are registered here and at AVS, but cookies help you painlessly log in. I think the only big problem is how do you define who you want to let in as members, and how do you test it.


not to take anything away from Daniel, but part of it is simply scope and size. This is a remote forum, yes it does touch on some other stuff, but it does not compare on, for example, projectors when compared to AVS

Not a bad idea.



There it is in a nutshell. At IP there is a private area where the certified pros could post those items that aren't meant for the general public. Posting pricing, manufacturer complaints, etc, on an open forum is NOT a prudent thing.

BOTH Brian's are a little busy right now! That is definitely an understatement.

We (Jaws and I) are working as hard as we can to fix issues with IP, while doing full time jobs as well.

We have repeatedly asked for volunteers to assist us in things such as forum management, verification, site content, etc...

As for IP being set up to make $$$, that was never the intention. We had several advertisers before the big crash, who paid about $.01 per hit to their site from ours (so basically, they were advertising for free, because they never got hits from us!). Then we asked for donations for the monthly hosting fees.

I promise, as soon as things calm down a little, I'll get back on top of it. I have been in our new location for almost three months now, and that rollout has been a HUGE undertaking.

Ohhh....and I haven't had an internet connection in 12 days, so e-mails since then have gone unread until now.

Please re-send to insure I get them!

ALSO...it is entirely possible that my spam filter could have munched a large number of e-mails, which I can't recover cause I set it up wrong!

This message was edited by avdude on 01/15/05 06:28 ET.

I think a dealer only forum would be great. Make it a sub forum of this one perhaps? For instance, right now I am doing a proposal and my Ethereal price sheet doesn't have the new 15 meter HDMI cables on it, so I have no idea how much they cost. I would love to ask that here since the distributor is closed on a Saturday, but its not prudent to show margins in a public place like this - even on cables.

IMO, I dont think it would detract from this great forum too much - each would have its purpose.