animalsonly said:
I am new here so I don't know about previos threads. I went to tractor cupid forum and it is just a listing of who bought what. Don't get me wrong I apreciate the trouble someone has gone through to link all the sales. I like to look at the craigs list adds as much as the next guy but there shoud be a separate forum for it.
While I agree with you that this forum seems somewhat top-heavy with C/L ads at times, when you think about it..... ADMIN has no real control over it. Suppose for a second that we did create a separate forum for such ads. Would that change suddenly cause other members to post problems with their tractors in this forum? I don't think so. After all, there is nothing stopping those with tractor problems from starting a thread about such problems on this forum at any time. ADMIN cannot force the members to come forward with tractor problems. Our job is to provide the membership with a forum where all issues concerning Colt, Case and ingersoll tractors can be discussed, preferably in ONE spot on the site so member don't have to go jumping around looking for the main action.
We are constantly receptive to suggestions that may improve the site but let me reassure you that this subject is not new and it was hotly discussed between Chuck and myself months before we took the forum live at the beginning of this year. On Chuck's former site, he had a separate forum for such listings and he fought for the same thing here but I convinced him to go this route. So, if anyone is to blame, it's me. The thing is, Chuck has come around to my way of thinking on this issue and as far as I know.....his mindset has not changed. Jack is on board with the current structure as well. The listings are clearly marked in the subject line and no one is required to read them. It is a very simple matter to skip over them if you wish. If there was a separate forum for them, then you could just skip over that and come to this one only. But if there was zero going on in this forum due to lack of member input about tractor problems, then you would still have nothing to read, correct?
I know that the C/L listings seem to be somewhat redundant but we began this site with a view to bring something totally different to the community. We wanted this site to focus on teaching the membership about every aspect of these tractors so that when they saw one somewhere, they would have a better idea as to what they were looking at. The constant parade of C/L listings often reveal nuggets of information concerning the changes in how the tractors were constructed over the years. Any who thinks that all 444's were created equal has a lot to learn and the same applies to any other model put out by Case. We are ALL learning more and more about these tractors as more and more of them are brought into the clear light of day and we get to inspect them closely. There isn't a single person out there that knows everything there is to know about these tractors. I have yet to speak with a serious aficionado that has told me he or she does not continue to learn new things all the time.
It's no secret that there are several other Case-oriented forums out there. I've been a member of every one of them and I'm still a member of several of them. This site came about as a result of everything that Jack, Chuck and I learned on those other forums. We kept the things we liked and changed the things we disliked. While I am highly biased, it is my belief that YOU will learn more about these tractors HERE....much faster..... and with more accuracy..... then you will on any other site out there. That statement was not made to take anything away from some of the members of those other forums because many of those members are also members here. If you go to our members list (link at top of this page), the first 15 or so members have "join dates" that precede January 3rd of this year. These are all people people that I personally invited to join here because of my high regard for the knowledge and help they bring to this community. Some of those people are highly active on one or more of the other Case forums out there too but most of them have expressed their preference for how this site is structured.
We are just 147 days old, as of today. And yet, we are 20 members shy of the 800 mark and have almost 17,000 posts so far and that works out to an average of 115 per day....every day. The Yahoo site that has been in existence since 1998 is averaging less than 40 per day in spite of their claim of over 5000 members. Are WE perfect? No we are not. But you can count on Chuck, Jack and I to do our level best to continue making this site to be the best site on the internet when it comes to Colt, Case and Ingersoll information.