OK, I'm sorry to have delayed this so long but this is how I have decided things will work best for everybody's benefit:
- Important announcements (which can include open days, meetings, obituaries or other relevant happenings will appear in this forum's Announcements and Important Information section.
- Submissions for it must be submitted by the PM system to me, and it will be my judgement whether such items are appropriate for inclusion there.
- Each announcement will consist of one entry, there will be no follow-up discussion.
- Those who submit items for this section must accept responsibility for providing further information by PM or other off-forum method.
- Each announcement will include reference of the need to contact that specific person for more information.
With specific reference to obituaries, I do not believe any part of this forum is the right place for ongoing threads of things like "he was a great bloke" for, as I said, these would be far better appreciated by the bereaved. Out of respect, I have not stopped the flow of these but must say I am surprised the comments continued despite my discouraging words. Love for people should be a very private thing and I do feel it is totally inappropriate to publish it to the world here. Apart from that, a large proportion of the participants in this forum will have never known the person so it is meaningless to them.
It was implied that certain founder members of the Signalling Record Society were behind the setting up of this web site and its associated forum. This is not the case, I alone created the web site initially as a way of a) putting much of which I kept in my head in writing, and b) to share records and knowledge which are of no use to anyone stuffed in a cupboard - young boys for some reason hoard all sorts of things in the name of a hobby but as you grow older you start to wonder why. Whilst the web site has grown massively since those first plans, the basic idea persists. The site is not directly associated with the SRS but we do work together and support each other's sites. I have been a member of the SRS for many years but I was not there in the founding days (my membership number is an out-of-gauge load bell signal!) and I do hold a couple of official-sounding positions which fortunately do not require much effort on my part.
With reference to creation of new sections of the forum, I will provide dedicated sections to facilitate any angle of signalling-related discussion as appropriate - at my discretion. That is not to say I will provide them to order, nor at short notice.
As to model railway matters, I have always had it in mind that if traffic justified it, we could provide a dedicated section. In practice, enquiries have been fairly limited and we have been able to cater for them adequately with the existing sections.
The true need for any section of the forum is whether there would be enough postings to justify its presence, because the divisions are there to help people not interested in certain subjects to ignore the other material. This is the basis on which I consider each suggestion.
Best wishes,
John
by JRB » Wed Aug 4, 2010 7:29 pm 
