Go Back  PPRuNe Forums > Flight Deck Forums > Rumours & News
Reload this Page >

Closure on 'UK Chief Pilot' Thread

Rumours & News Reporting Points that may affect our jobs or lives as professional pilots. Also, items that may be of interest to professional pilots.

Closure on 'UK Chief Pilot' Thread

Old 5th Sep 2001, 14:19
  #1 (permalink)  
Thread Starter
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: UK
Posts: 34
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Post Closure on 'UK Chief Pilot' Thread

Captain Prune has now closed the 'UK Chief Pilots & the Old Boy Network' thread because it has exceeded 100 posts. No doubt there are technical reasons for this, but it does seem to me rather bizarre that a popular and worthwhile thread should be closed to make room for the less popular.

Captain, I am a new Pruner. I looked at the suggested Aircrew Notices forum and found that there was at that time an audience of just 4 compared with 115 on the Rumours forum.

Posting on legal issues takes a good deal of consideration, thought, and time, which I, for one, am not prepared to do for a mere handful of Pruners, especially where they are merely looking for Notices to Aircrew.

May we continue, then, on the Rumours forum? Alternatively, if you feel there is a need for pilots to take up legal issues on this site, you might consider creating a specialist forum on which members of the legal profession may, where willing, offer opinion for the benefit of the aviation community as a whole.

I leave it to you as the creator of this very interesting site.

Regards from Holt CJ
Holt CJ is offline  
Old 5th Sep 2001, 15:24
  #2 (permalink)  
 
Join Date: Jan 1997
Location: UK
Posts: 7,737
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Post

Holt CJ,

A fascinating thread which we hope will continue to be graced with your thoughts on the subject.

I can categorically assure you that closure of threads at the hundred mark is a purely technical issue here at the Towers.

However, the closure is also the most opportune moment for us to exercise an editorial decision we had been putting off. The thread has not sat comfortably with the either the Rumours and News remit or the international nature of this forum in particular.

While the headline figure of numbers on the forum may initially appear seductive it is a false indication. That number is hugely diluted by the number of active threads here which are being viewed. Obviously we have much more accurate indications on the number of individual threads being viewed and the time each thread is on the screen.

Without wishing to belittle the debate in any way it has garnered a dedicated band of viewers and contributors and it is time for it to move over to Aircrew Notices. I genuinely hope that this will not prevent you from making further contributions to this or other threads.

Regarding the creation of a Legal Issues forum I'm afraid we are having to write two or three times a week turning down requests for new forums. To you and all those we have written to privately it is simply a case of restricted resources both technical and financial. Beneath the soft pastel colours of these pages the present 68 forums are stretching us to the absolute limit. We are using what little time we have left over from running the site to address the financial problems of commisioning yet another server and paying for our present 180 gigabytes of bandwith usage let alone our future requirements.

There is no shortage of IT professionals visiting this site who can easily get a quote for the bandwidth we are using along with daily tape backup of a basic raid array. Although hugely assisted by a band of wonderful moderators the site is essentially on your screen due to the efforts of just 3 people working in their spare time at home while holding down fairly demanding jobs.

Bearing that in mind I suspect the costs involved will make the aforesaid IT pro's blanche at the prospect of running something like this site after hours!

Rob

[ 05 September 2001: Message edited by: PPRuNe Towers ]
PPRuNe Towers is offline  
Old 5th Sep 2001, 15:32
  #3 (permalink)  

Chief PPRuNe Pilot
 
Join Date: May 1996
Location: UK
Age: 68
Posts: 16,607
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Post

Holt CJ, the reason threads are closed at around 100 posts is indeed for technical reasons, specifically, the loads on the server increase exponentially as a thread grows in size. It is perfectly acceptable to restart a thread on the same topic but it too will be closed when it reaches the predetermined limits. Until enough funding can be put in place to upgrade to a much more powerful server this limitation will remain.

As for your point about the number of people on a particular forum at any one time you have to note that although this forum is by far the most populated it also has the largest number of active threads and so there is no guarantee that any one thread in particular is going to be read by more people. There may be less visitors to the Aircrew Notices forum than this one but you only took a snapshot at that one moment and it is not indicative of the constant number of readers.

There are too many forums as it is at the moment and to create one for legal advice, whilst tempting, would in my opinion be overrun by the countless 'barrack room' lawyer types who have an opinion on anything and everything. We have always had many legal types on the forums and they have been more than willing over the years to offer their advice when it becomes necessary and your contributions are more than welcome too but preferably in threads that require it rather than in a dedicated forum.

Back to the issue of the thread in question continuing in the Aircrew Notices forum, that is by far the most appropriate one and anyone who is seriously interested in the topic will continue to take part in it over there. It is only a click away to that forum and there are many topics under discussion at any one time.

This forum is for current topical issues of news and rumour and I have to apply editorial control to prevent this one forum becoming overrun with hundreds of topics every day. PPRuNe started with one forum and has grown into 68 at the moment. I have to try and keep it under control otherwise it becomes impossible to moderate and will degenerate into endless flame wars which I am determined will not happen here.

So, this thread too will be closed as it is not appropriate for this forum. Sorry but that is the way it has to be for the time being. I hope that explains my reasons a bit more clearly.
Capt PPRuNe is offline  

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are Off
Pingbacks are Off
Refbacks are Off


Thread Tools
Search this Thread

Contact Us - Archive - Advertising - Cookie Policy - Privacy Statement - Terms of Service

Copyright © 2024 MH Sub I, LLC dba Internet Brands. All rights reserved. Use of this site indicates your consent to the Terms of Use.