ClubCJ's Future and Potential

[valkyria]

Not to sound like a downer, problem with Club CJ is it is a single model club, not a generic Lancer or Mitsubishi club.

Since the CJ (Aus model naming) has been out for around ten years now and has more or less finished its run interest will naturally subside. Early owners have probably done all their mods and sold on or just stopped as enough has been done.

There has been a slight bump in activity as second owners come into the fold and owners feel like doing more once the warranty is done, but it is still always going to be in a forever reducing number.

And being a forum it is easy enough to find required info and move on without necroing old posts or asking new and getting a barrage of 'use search' replies.

So enjoy what you can while you can but don't stress if the club doesn't grow or improve.

I'm glad to see someone else has identified this too, I just didn't want to touch on it in my main post because I feel as if people will think it's too drastic a change for us to pivot into a more open car forum as I feel that even suggesting that the name ClubCJ is too niche will upset some.

Having only just purchased my CJ and joining this forum recently, as I begin embarking on modding and improving and enjoying my new ride, I think it'd be great to see the forum expand and grow

With the way of the world, social media is definitely a great way to spread awareness of the group, and get it out there in the community more, especially with younger folks. It is a tough one though, as you don't want to alienate all of those who purely use this forum and aren't on facebook/ instagram/ whatever esle, so it is about maybe running the two together/ separately, but linked. Or utilising social media to direct new people to the forum itself..

Just my thoughts and opinion, for what it's worth (if anything ).. Anyway, the merchandise and plan to get more newcomers is great!

This is exactly what I wanted, to direct new members into the forum through use of expanding the reach of our club, to further establish this place as a higher authority on lancer-related topics. I recently read news on the Lancer continuing on for now with potentially, the Grand Lancer to be imported into Australia so I think it's a perfect opportunity to make a move.

Personally, I've already looked into suppliers for key chains, key tags, sticker manufacturers for window banners, and lancer related items we could stock in a store. Additionally I have experience in producing and selling apparel so I'd be more than happy to draw up multiple designs for every single one of these see which the community likes best. However in order for this to all be done we need to talk about what direction we want the club to go in.

[Quixand]

There used to ba a facebook page back in 2010 or 2011.

[valkyria]

There used to ba a facebook page back in 2010 or 2011.

But as far as I know it was pretty low-use and inactive, the AUS CJ page overtook it significantly.

[Skrallex]

I agree with aspir3, I think another election of sorts would be a great idea, there's many new people here who didn't participate in the last once, and with aspir3 being the only active moderator, all the new people don't have much interaction with members of the admin team.

I also agree with valkyria that we definitely need some more active development in terms of the website design and features; the new design came in and since then there's been a number of issue identified that no one has been around to solve. There's many more, but here's some that spring to mind for me right now:

• The chat bar is ALWAYS mistaken for the search bar. With so much info available in various threads here, a functioning search should be one of the top priorities.
• Allow users to set their real name on profiles again! Return to the days of knowing who you are talking to, makes everything much more personal when you know someone's real name (if they choose to set it). Plus, in many old threads people refer to each other by name and not username, so it can be difficult to follow those old conversations.
• I think we should enforce using imgur or the image uploader here. Imgur is probably the least likely image host to go away anytime in the near future, as image hosting is much more affordable and competitive than it used to be. So many old threads here (and pretty much all forums that were around in those days) with dead img links
• I'd like to see a proper markdown text editor for replies/posts. BBcode, while it used to be universal, is not the only option these days, and markdown is much nicer and more intuitive to use
• So many more little things, I'm sure that if we could get some actual progress being made, people here would come up with plenty of awesome new feature ideas.

Anyway, similarly to valkyria, I'm also a uni student working in the IT field (and software development), so I think we probably have plenty of capable people among us, it's just that initial trepidation of handing over the keys to all the newbies

EDIT: Something else that I think would be a huge improvement, but would need to be run by everyone to see what people think, would be a change to the layout of the front of the site. I think there should be more focus on recent topics, news etc. ATM we only show the 5 most recent topics, which doesn't exactly give much of a sense of activity. Probably not many people here have visited it, and it's on a completely different topic, but I think the Minecraft Forum sort of layout puts a lot more focus on recent activity. This is much better, in my opinion, than other car forums such as AusLancer, EvoXForums, etc. I just looked, and a forum design more like Piston Heads would be pretty beneficial in my opinion. I'm interested to hear what everyone else thinks though

[valkyria]

I do agree that the main website needs some fixing, personally I think the layout of the actual forum is pretty good as it's highly readable compared to other forums I'd say. I think what would benefit the website the most is adding a more of homepage of sorts. But I'm glad to see others getting on board with this movement.

[bumblebee]

Who is paying for the domain name and the hosting of this web site?

[valkyria]

I would have assumed JustinR or Kav?

[bumblebee]

Never assume anything.
Before you get too excited with all kinds of plans/ideas i would check out who owns this forum and get them involved if not.then everything in this thread that has been typed wont mean or do anything to make an ounce of change

[aspir3]

At the moment Justin pays the domain from the club's PayPal account which Justin and I control.
The club is doing very well financially with around $8,000 in our account.

[aspir3]

The club is owned by the members. No one owner.
To be honest the club has a history of having issues when 1 person has control. I like having new members keen on changing the club with new ideas but fear what might happen if we gave complete control over. I would be much happier having Justin and I still involved but that would be up to the members by votes in new elections if it happens

[Skrallex]

I don't think anyone here would want to get rid of you aspir3 we need new people, but that doesn't mean we should get rid of those who have been around for ages and are still active

[valkyria]

Well it's good to hear that the club is doing well financially, and I agree with what you're saying, having only one person in charge can issues at times. But I do think it's a good idea to at least have some management when it comes to these things whether it's through a team or individuals. So I agree with you in the regard that additional moderators or ClubCJ organisers would be a good start.

[bumblebee]

The club is owned by the members. No one owner.
To be honest the club has a history of having issues when 1 person has control. I like having new members keen on changing the club with new ideas but fear what might happen if we gave complete control over. I would be much happier having Justin and I still involved but that would be up to the members by votes in new elections if it happens

Any club / organisation will run into issues with a single person in control.
I wouldn't hand over complete control.
More then happy to see you and Justin both involved. Knowledge that you guys have will be priceless in the future as to where we came from in the beginning and to help steer this forum forward

[aspir3]

After the last elections we had a lot of enthusiasm. But then the moderator team had different ideas and time available to commit to the club.
It's really hard getting a good balance and everyone on the same page.
This is why i like to keep everything in the open where members can see what admin team are trying to achieve.
I think we need to set a date for new elections. I will discuss with Justin when he arrives home from his holidays but it is likely to be a couple of months away

[aspir3]

I have contacted admin and moderators to check out this thread. Most are vrry keen to have new blood on board as they don't have time.
So this a great opportunity for everyone to show they are interested in having an input in running the club and moving it forward