RichM
Administrator
-
Posts
1,379 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
1
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Gallery
Blogs
Store
Posts posted by RichM
-
-
Points are currently recalculating to exclude VP and Political & Current Affairs forum with idea to award points for engaging in areas more relevant to what CWDF is about, i.e. content relevant to our waterways & boats. This should make it fairer.
While we continue to trial this, is it possible to have some suggestions on what we could name each achievement? We need a maximum of 12 and ideally it would be ideal if they could be related to canals/boats but preferably not titles that imply too much in the way of status or merit. This is designed to be a bit of fun as to reward users for engaging in the community.
I thought perhaps:
- Observer
- Explorer
- Engager
- Contributor
- Collaborator
- Community Regular
- Rising Star
- Proficient
-
Experienced - Influencer
- Veteran
- Veteran II
But maybe these are a bit boring and if we could make it canal / boat themed, it may be better.
On 12/02/2023 at 17:20, cuthound said:Can't we have something useful like post numbers rather than this badge gimmick?
Post counts should be displayed beneath your avatar.On 10/02/2023 at 19:41, DandV said:Is there something we can do to earn us a place higher up on the list, towards the top?, rather then apparently one way descent to the bottom?
Would acquiring a few warning points, or even a ban for a period be enough?
Nice idea but there is no way for it to detract points automatically -
Please click "Report post" where you see trolling taking place and our Moderators will review.
-
53 minutes ago, M_JG said:
I certainly wouldnt pay £90k for it.
Seems pretty ordinary to me.
Glad not just me. Problem is I have become so out of touch with boat prices I've now no idea what a mediocre boat like this is worth. Often such a statement provokes a response like "it's worth what people are willing to pay" but that's never helpful.
-
4 minutes ago, M_JG said:
Ouch, not a bad boat on paper but surely not worth £89k?! It looks almost identical to the one I mentioned that sold for £32k, albeit a few years newer.
-
5 hours ago, johnmck said:
But buying now!
Walked past ABNB today. 2011 Aqualine 60ft cruiser stern. Last out of water 2017 and exterior looked uncared for.
£89000. Wow!
This is interesting. Do you have a link? When I sold my boat in mid 2020 (2001 55ft Liverpool) there was a boat berthed next to her which sold for £32,000. 2005 60ft Aqualine, recent paint job. Wish I had bought her myself now but was in different mindset at the time.
On 11/02/2023 at 17:15, Naughty Cal said:I personally wouldn't get off the housing ladder if you can help it.
Even a year out is likely to make it more difficult to get back on again.
Is there a way you can keep the property and buy a boat?
That would be ideal but £50k isn't going to get me much of a boat. If I sold the house I could spend much more on the boat and still get back on the housing ladder somewhere "up north".
-
3 hours ago, TheBiscuits said:
That's a very good point. Inherited status from earlier posts means nearly all the noisier posters are "Grand Master Debaters" ...
Reset all the badges to zero, exclude the Virtual Pub - especially the Politics snakepit - from the reckoning and let's see how they work out.
The reset badges to zero idea may not go down too well. Reluctant to mess about with it too much but based on feedback I have excluded Virtual Pub & Politics from the rule set. As such, points won't be awarded going forward for activity in those forums.
If we decide to keep this (up to Dan) we will probably need to get the forum to recalculate the points awarded based on the current "rule set" which excludes VP and Political & Current affairs forums as mentioned. The "rule set" defines where & when points are given. This will ensure they're awarded consistently and thus fairly. However, I suspect doing this may take the achievements offline for a few days while the forum recalculates. Will hold fire on this for the moment.
-
5 hours ago, tree monkey said:
Thank you, just a small question, what does the crescent moon icon that's appeared on the top of the screen, nothing seems to happen when I press it
This should be gone now, sorry.
It's not really necessary as members can make it dark by choosing darker colours by clicking on the colour palette.
-
1
-
-
The gallery should be fixed now.
-
So as some may recall, I sold my beloved boat just before the pandemic to buy a house. (somewhere down south) Some say the best part of buying a boat is the day you buy and the day you sell. Definitely not for me, selling up was a very sad day.
Since I bought my house, it has increased quite a lot in value and I now have a lot of equity. I am thinking of doing something drastic, i.e. sell the house and buy a ~60ft boat to cruise around the country for a year or so before buying a flat / small house up north. (Manchester, Leeds area) with the idea of keeping the boat and either using the flat/house as a base or perhaps even rent it out while I am not using it.
Obviously having lived on a boat for 5 years I have some idea of life aboard and the pros and cons. Know it's not always how it's often portrayed in the media/youtube etc, but equally life aboard was probably the best & happiest time of my life. But no doubt a lot has changed since 2020, diesel is no longer 75p a litre etc. I used to run my Eberspacher for several hours at a time during the winter. Presumably that would be very costly now and other options would likely be more viable from a cost perspective?
Would be good to get thoughts and opinions and suggestions. This is partially driven by the prospect of possibly losing my job in months to come and a change in direction is long overdue.
Cheers
-
4 minutes ago, MtB said:
Oh yeah!!
Thanks, I totally missed that.
So given all that, its hard to work out (given the rubbish I post) why I've been labelled a grand master.
I've been trying to work this out too. Haven't got to the bottom of it yet.
-
6 minutes ago, BilgePump said:
Don't tell 'em, Pike. They'll be gaming the system!
Some of those may or may not reward any points.
I just wanted to make clear that it's not all about giving people a badge for posting in the VP forum etc.
-
1
-
-
13 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:
The point about a wiki is surely that anyone can edit it, even idiots. That makes it about as reliable as, I dunno, Wikipedia. The first time someone blows their engine up following the forum's wiki there might be some complaints. If you put a disclaimer on it, "Follow any advice on here at your own risk" what's the point?
I can see that causing a bit of discussion. There's enough moaning about who gets to be a mod. Arguing who is a valid expert on what would be quite a spectator sport...
The requirements for joining the "Contributor" group have not been defined. It could be something simple, e.g. with the only requirement being that they have been a member for X days with good record. (i.e. not a history of submitting spam/job ads etc)
That said with the way the poll is going, it may not come to fruition. It's a lot of work and an expensive one too if only a small minority are interested.
-
11 minutes ago, enigmatic said:
I think a FAQ and basic technical advice on boats would be useful to point people towards frequently asked questions and definitions, to save certain people typing the same advice again and again, and newbies from the "didn't you do any research" complaints, "are you from London snark" and randomness that inevitably breaks out in their threads.
Happy to contribute, as I did start jotting some notes on things I'd learned from the forums down, both as part of my own learning process and because I thought a FAQ would be useful.
If it gets popular, I can see mods having to lock the pages talking about sensitive subjects like toilets though
This could be controlled by some extent by requiring members to join a "Contributor" group before being able to post content in the Wiki. I know this may be somewhat contentious given the idea of a Wiki is having a platform whereby anyone can contribute to it. But equally it would make sense to have some level of protection in place to prevent against anything malicious. -
It doesn't just look at post counts. It also looks at reactions (greenies) received & given. It looks at users who create topics and users who gain x amount of followers to their respective topic etc. Essentially if you create a topic that turns out to be popular, you will be rewarded in points for that. It looks at members who login for x number of days consecutively and rewards points for that too. These are just a few examples but essentially it rewards users for engaging in the community. If it promotes that then perhaps not a bad thing??
I'm conscious that we seem to be disabling or turning off most the new features Invision release, for better or for worse. I'm leaning towards the latter but that's just my opinion. I don't do that for any other site I'm involved in yet here there seems to be much more backlash/resistance to change.
Edit: I have attached some of the "rules" that it uses to define when points are rewarded.
Again this is not to say this will remain. I have asked @DHutch to give his verdict so it may be something we drop following the latest update.
-
2
-
-
1 hour ago, Ken X said:
Quite disappointed there isn't a Hire-Boater's badge. 🙂
I know my place.😁
Tongue in cheek I know, but In theory the names could also be changed to make them more boating orientated. Reading up on the feature a little more, I gather it's just designed to be a bit of fun while to encourage user activity. (Whether or not it does that, I do not know) It's probably worth noting that this isn't entirely a new feature though. We did have "ranks" in the past but these were more subtle and appeared as dots below a user avatar and you could hover over them to see the associated rank etc. The below screenshot is from 2015.
That said, not sure if the new Invision "ranks" will stay at this point, will be one for @DHutch to decide.
Cheers
Rich
-
I think this relates to the new update as the forum started calculating "achievement points" since that update and has only just finished at which point these badges appear.
We will need to review this further. I will speak to Dan and the team later today and more info will be available soon.
-
2
-
-
I think this relates to the new update as the forum started calculating "achievement points" since that update and has only just finished at which point these badges appear.
We will need to review this further. I will speak to Dan and the team later today and more info will be available soon.
-
Before my time here, Paul C did a great job leading a project to develop a Wiki for CWDF. It was comprehensive and contained a lot of information but regrettably I was unable to help finish what he & the team had started. At the time, one technical hurdle (if memory serves me correctly) was that it didn't have direct integration with the forum software due to software limitations. This meant that users would need to create separate user accounts to access the Wiki etc. It was essentially contained separate to the forum. Unfortunately, as it stands, it would be very difficult to reinstate the Wiki project as it was. Though it may be possible for me to extract some of the content and add to a separate section within CWDF, powered by the same software we currently use for the forums. This means it would provide a more integrated / joined up user experience.
I'm keen to gather opinions/feedback on whether or not you'd like to see something similar to a Wiki whereby members can contribute content (e.g. guides & tutorials and information of historical interest etc) to help further improve our online resource in relation to waterways & inland boating.
Please vote in the poll but feedback/suggestions welcome.
-
We have updated the forum software to the latest version of Invision to apply various software bug & security fixes. This is not a major release although some minor differences may be noticed. However, the overall look, feel and functionality of the site remains unchanged with exception to the gallery. I'm aware of some design glitches with this and will provide a further update once resolved. Should you encounter any oddities beyond this, please first clear your browser cache and if the issue remains, do let us know.
Many thanks -
13 minutes ago, ChrisL said:
When I go to messages it says I have to do 10 posts to allow me to use the message link, so according to my post count I've done 12 but I still cant message, am I doing something wrong or is there a time after completing the 10 posts you have to wait?
thanks Chris
Hi Chris,
It's 10+ posts plus membership of 7+ days or more to use the PM system. It's the latter requirement you don't yet meet. We are fairly hot on this to prevent spam but I have reviewed your account manually and there's no reason to suspect this. I have waived the 7+ membership requirement in this case and it should let you PM now.
P.S.
All donations are gratefully received and ensure the continued running of our long established non-profit online community & resource. Of course this is optional. Link here if of interest
All the best
-
2
-
-
I got by using a much smaller MiFI device which I attached to a porthole using velcrow. Very primitive and inexpensive but worked well. In summer months, it would get hot which would prove problematic but this was resolved by simply tinting the porthole. I think it was called "heat reflective" tint or something like that. I doubt the standard blackout tint would help.
The major benefit of a MiFI device vs the type mentioned by the OP, is that it has its own built in battery. Thus, any blips in boat power would not cause loss of internet connectivity. The ones with the capability to support external antennas are even better especially in lower signal areas though personally I never had to use them, though this was probably due to location more than anything else.
If I still had a boat, I'd do the same unless I depended on it for work in which case I'd probably invest in Elon Musk's Starlink technology (low latency satellite) but this is not cheap, as mentioned already in this topic.
-
20 hours ago, bluelapsing said:
I'm pretty much settled on the wisdom of biding my time and buying the best boat possible first-time round.
Forgot to comment on this bit. While it's commendable that you're doing your research (many people don't!) it's worth saying that your first boat probably won't be your most ideal boat. Unfortunately it's likely you won't know what your ideal boat is until you've lived on one and even then your requirements could change over time and the goal-posts could move.
I'd recommend finding the best boat you can that ticks most of your boxes within your budget.
-
1
-
-
You could ask 10 people "What's the smallest narrowboat I can realistically live aboard?" and you will likely get 10 different answers. In part, because everyone has their own requirements and we're not all geared to make the same sacrifices/compromises. As a rule of thumb, the smaller the narrowboat, the more compromises you will need to make. People do live aboard boats this size but your quality of life arguably isn't going to be the same as lets say a 45ft boat.
The winter can take its toll on narrowboaters living aboard regardless of how big their boat is, but it is certainly helped by having more amenities aboard. Problem is that these amenities take up space.It really depends what you want to do with it; If you're staying put in a marina most of the time, it can offset many of the disadvantages of living aboard a smaller boat because you can make use of their amenities, such as toilet/shower block, launderette + shoreline power etc etc. (though facilities will vary at each marina) Conversely, if you are a continual cruiser or have a mooring without facilities, you will likely need additional space to compensate. Things like having space for a washing machine etc may become more important. (though many make do without - I must add)
Personally, having a 40ft+ boat would likely be much more practical for living aboard (for a single person) and if you are working from the boat (presumably with a laptop?) a dinette would be a huge advantage. There are many other things to consider as well if you're doing this. (e.g. electricity requirements!)
After living aboard nearly 5 years, I found my 55ft boat to be too small and regrettably I let her go. My next boat will likely be ~60ft with room for a dedicated office space. No doubt I will find that too small too but I think it's fair to say that boats bigger than this on our canal network will have their own disadvantages.
Again this is just my opinion based on my own experience. Everyone will have their own requirements. The sacrifices you're willing (or not willing?) to make will influence this to a great extent.
-
1
-
-
This should be fixed now for anyone who could not access it before.
I feel I have achieved something today
in Technical & Account Support
Posted
Ah nice, very imaginative. Keep them coming