Gregg,

I don't know if you have any specific plans for all the former ride reports that have passed through the General board over the years. Here are my thoughts:

It's important that these reports stay permanently intact and accessible. Photo reports contributed by the community are possibly the most valuable asset to the site, IMO. We're lucky to have a camera-bearing army of riders. For any reports created "inline" but which link to off-site photos, consider copying the photos and re-linking to the RBR servers in case the off-site files disappear. But I think by far most people upload their photos to the RBR servers when making "inline" reports.

It'd be nice to have an index of all ride reports so one doesn't have to try and hunt them with the archive search tool. From this index, one should ideally have the option of opening the threads in linear ("view-all") mode or in threaded mode. As far as I'm aware, the search results on the current boards only allow opening in threaded mode, which I find irritating, especially for ride reports. High-quality, fully-off-site reports, such as Pierre's should definitely be linked from this index.

Alternatively, for future reports, one could argue in favor of a ride-report-specific forum. That might be OK in itself, but I don't think it is a good substitute for a dedicated admin-controlled index. The index, unlike a forum, would list all reports in a concise format, by order of original post date (or maybe sorted by the poster?), and would link to reports from both old and new forums.

I realize all of this would mean a fair amount of work for the site managers on top of all the switch-over load you're facing. Anyway, FWIW, I am liking the new forum system. Thanks for your good work!

I agree with your idea on the value of the Ride Reports, and that's always been a problem of how to archive them. I have been making my own back-up copies of Ride Reports that I lock at the top of the old General Board, in a flat file for my own reference. I think given the new system, it is still manual work to archive them, but I think it is worth the effort.

That said, I'm not guaranteeing that I can, but I will make an effort at getting some kind of report archive going.

Stay tuned. Thanks for the positive comments!

-gregg



Gregg,

I don't know if you have any specific plans for all the former ride reports that have passed through the General board over the years. Here are my thoughts:

It's important that these reports stay permanently intact and accessible. Photo reports contributed by the community are possibly the most valuable asset to the site, IMO. We're lucky to have a camera-bearing army of riders. For any reports created "inline" but which link to off-site photos, consider copying the photos and re-linking to the RBR servers in case the off-site files disappear. But I think by far most people upload their photos to the RBR servers when making "inline" reports.

It'd be nice to have an index of all ride reports so one doesn't have to try and hunt them with the archive search tool. From this index, one should ideally have the option of opening the threads in linear ("view-all") mode or in threaded mode. As far as I'm aware, the search results on the current boards only allow opening in threaded mode, which I find irritating, especially for ride reports. High-quality, fully-off-site reports, such as Pierre's should definitely be linked from this index.

Alternatively, for future reports, one could argue in favor of a ride-report-specific forum. That might be OK in itself, but I don't think it is a good substitute for a dedicated admin-controlled index. The index, unlike a forum, would list all reports in a concise format, by order of original post date (or maybe sorted by the poster?), and would link to reports from both old and new forums.

I realize all of this would mean a fair amount of work for the site managers on top of all the switch-over load you're facing. Anyway, FWIW, I am liking the new forum system. Thanks for your good work!

when I put a post a few weeks ago suggesting a ride report specific forum, everybody told me this was a bad idea, and I would be the last one entitled to ask for something like this as I post links to webpages...
:cool:

Anyway, something that would be nice is to have a feature that allows to upload (upload, not just link) several pictures at a time. I see posts with ride reports where the person spent two hours, this is just ridiculous. Posting a ride report shouldn't take more than 10 minutes.

Pierre

I have to withdraw my previous comment, I made a post w/ 2 pics very fast. Now, is it possible to easily interleave text and pictures ?

Pierre

Pierre,

Currently not possible to interweave text and pictures, but I'll look into this. At first glance, it seems that there is not a quick solution to this.

I am toying with the idea of having the Ride Report Forum as like, a read only forum, and I would cross-post to this forum from the General Board, or Cyclocross Board, or where ever the Ride Reports "live". That way, people can get the exposure on the main board, answer questions, but then the Ride/Race/Shop/Photo Report would be "archived"/featured in it's own area as well.

BTW, I've never considered your reports any less valuable than the others, just because you create it on your own site. Yeah, it doesn't read as quickly or easily as an inline report, but between you not posting it at all, or posting it the way you do, I'll take the latter.

-g


I have to withdraw my previous comment, I made a post w/ 2 pics very fast. Now, is it possible to easily interleave text and pictures ?

Pierre

I was kicking myself the other day for not backing up my favorite ride reports by MB1, Kai-Ming, Divve and the other contributors (the only one I have is my sole (so far) contribution...) If I had to single out any one aspect of the forums that I value most, it would be the ride reports--after all, what better way to begin a work week than following the latest adventures of MB1 and Miss M, or marveling at one of GeoCyclist's temple-hopping trips?

Consider this one more vote for an archive!