The Honda Owners Club

[webstuffer]

Hello

I'm the bloke who has run the Honda Motorcycle Technical Help Board for over 10 years now. It was set up as a favour for my mate Graham (was Manchester HOC),

Wondering whether it's time to lapse it and have such a facility hosted as part of this forum.

thoughts ?

cheers
Ian

ps I am not now, and have only once been, a Honda owner.

[Stritchy]

Hi Ian,

thanks for setting up the Tech Board for us. I remember 'The Breeze' well, what's he doing now?

I would happily host the board, but as I'm not a techy have absolutely no idea what's involved.

Please feel free to e-mail me at webmaster@hoc.org.uk

[webstuffer]

Hi Ian,
I remember 'The Breeze' well, what's he doing now?

not seen the very dear old friend and grumpy old scrote for a bit but apparently has a guzzi 1200s and is doing IAM observer training

[SteveD CB500F]

I'm with the "proper forum" view. I've been on and off the HOC Tech Board for years and just hated (but put up with) the process of searching and posting.

I'm sure it will be almost impossible to convert the existing dB. We couldn't do it on http://forums.sohc4.net and ended up just linking to an enormous archive.

A modern bulletin board would allow tech posters to segregate by machine type and use all the facilities that we expect from a professional BB setup.

Am I volunteering to help? Maybe...

Suggestion (this is how we run the Triumph boards):
* Sportsbikes
* Tourers
* Sports Tourers (have to give the VFR boys a place!)
* Cruisers
* Supermoto (or whatever you want to call the Varadero)
* Classics (anything over 15/20/25 years old - you choose)

Others?

Check out Bikers Oracle or t595.net for examples.

Steve

[Stritchy]

Thanks for your comments Steve.

I'll wait to hear what Alan has to say, as he is much more technically proficient than me.
But will bear in mind your offer to help (maybe).

[jimmyb]

When I first joined the HOC I used the Technical Help Board, however since the forum has been stable (thanks Alan & Strichy) I now longer use it. I feel that a single point for assistance would be the way forward, and I vote for the forum. What about changing this to a poll to gain members feelings?

[alansh]

Just back off my hols and seen this post.

I don't think we can take all the existing info and convert it to anything within this BBS system. If I had the database itself, I may be able to port it to an archive format with searching and host that somewhere. Ian, what format is it in?

Alan

[SteveD CB500F]

Alan, when we moved the SOHC Honda forums (run by Glenn Stauffer in the USA http://www.sohc4.net ), we had exactly this problem.

We moved the entire database into an archive and invited our Moderators (three of us at the time) to categorise all the threads by subject to match the new forum. This took a few months but they are all there now.

The format and user-friendliness of proper BB software outweighs the extra work in porting the old messages over.

After a while, everyone forgets about the old stuff. It's still there if anyone wants to write a thesis on "how many oil threads on a motorcycle forum?" or similar. Let's face it - most of these questions have been asked over and over.

I moderate the FAQs on SOHC4.net - it's quite rewarding to receive input from around the world. There are some real experts out there!

[webstuffer]

The Honda Motorcycle Technical Help Bawd at

http://the-stable.lancs.ac.uk/~esarie/honda/techbrd.htm

is to be laid down this week


please remove any links

cheers
Ian

ps

>If I had the database itself ...... what format is it in?

a load of zip files - predates database style boards

[Red V Four]

Does that mean this site will get inundated with questions then?

[webstuffer]

Does that mean this site will get inundated with questions then?

possible that people will end up here instead

I could put an auto-forward from all Honda Motorcycle Technical Help Board areas to :

how-do-i-f5/


there are around 9 posts a day plus spam

Ian

[SteveD CB500F]

Why don't you auto-forward to here and create some daughter boards in the "Help Me" section.

Also, might be a good idea to email the most active reply-providers (there are a few there who seem to be able to answer anything!) and invite them over here.

Worry about the archive at some other time.

[alansh]

Steve,

If we made you a moderator of the "help-me" forum, would you have time to manage it?

Alan

[On holiday so nothing will happen until next week unless Andy does it]

[SteveD CB500F]

At 9 posts a day, yes.

It would be nice to be part of a team though as it helps when holidays/days out etc come up.

Steve

[webstuffer]

All hits on anything in

http://the-stable.lancs.ac.uk/~esarie/honda/

now being redirected to

how-do-i-f5/

best wishes
Ian exAdmin