New VOA Website coming to a drive in near you

[viperguy69]

For those that care, the new website is getting ready to go active.

Once the new website launches these forums will become historical records and view only under "driveviperforums.com"

We will have a link on the new website to this historical repository of information.

The new website will continue to use "driveviper.com" as our portal.


Out with the old...
OLD Page.jpg

In with the New...
NEW Page.jpg

[mkviper96]

I am excited because the new website will reduce hours needed to run the club. It will also reduce time needed to monitor and maintain the website. In a volunteer organization, anywhere you can reduce operations from a time perspective it improves the club.

[13COBRA]

What exactly are the benefits of the new site over the old?

There are a ton of active threads that will become read only...that doesn't sound very conducive. Why not just archive the ones that have had no activity in the last 180 days or something?

Will the new website ONLY allow Mamba or Members to post? Or will Enthusiasts still be able to utilize the site with the ability to post?

[JonB ~ PartsRack]

I am excited because the new website will reduce hours needed to run the club. It will also reduce time needed to monitor and maintain the website. In a volunteer organization, anywhere you can reduce operations from a time perspective it improves the club.

Reducing the intellectual DNA to 3-4 BOSSES......... somehow improves the club?

Will the site moderators (Scott, Kala, Phil, Don, ___?) be given their papers? Divide and Conquer yet again.

[JonB ~ PartsRack]

List of Site Moderators

The following members are MODERATORS on this site:

Plumcrazy
http://driveviper.com/forums/members/11-plumcrazy

Viper Girl
http://driveviper.com/forums/members/14-Viper-Girl

Whitebeard
http://driveviper.com/forums/members/8-whitebeard

City
http://driveviper.com/forums/members/3-City

In addition to the "Report Post" icon (!) at the bottom left of each post, please don't hesitate to contact any of us with moderation issues.

Remember, this is a car enthusiast forum and we're all here to enjoy ourselves and the camaraderie of others


Thank You for DECADES of generous service.

[JonB ~ PartsRack]

For those that care, the new website is getting ready to go active.

My bet is a lot LESS active. You newbee bosses forget "THE MORGUE"

Learn from your mistakes yet again! Remember all the VCA parallels that were censored several months back ? 1000 truly active posts went POOF.

[13COBRA]

I don't want to beat a dead horse...but will Enthusiasts still be able to contribute to the forum on the new site? Or will it be read-only for us? Or no access at all?

[Viper Girl]

My understanding is the new site will be read only for non-club members.

[13COBRA]

My understanding is the new site will be read only for non-club members.

...I really hope that isn't the case.

If it is, I'd like to know who decided that.

[Sniper]

Well, everyone have a nice day!

[Viper Girl]

It was a majority BOD decision.

[Sniper]

That’s exactly why I didn’t renew.

[13COBRA]

It was a majority BOD decision.

A majority of the Board of Directors voted to make it read-only for Enthusiasts?

I wonder if they thought about how dead this place will be when that takes affect. Am I the only one that feels like this is VCA 2.0?

[Viper Girl]

Having attended the BOD meeting where this was discussed. Plus being on the VCA site since about 2002…

This decision has none of the hallmarks I experienced during the VCA debacle. Not even close.

[ViperSRT]

Having attended the BOD meeting where this was discussed. Plus being on the VCA site since about 2002…

This decision has none of the hallmarks I experienced during the VCA debacle. Not even close.

It may not be a parallel but the impact of turning off enthusiasts will be near certain death of the website. Just check the participation rates of enthusiasts versus members. This site would be Dead with a capital D.

[13COBRA]

It may not be a parallel but the impact of turning off enthusiasts will be near certain death of the website. Just check the participation rates of enthusiasts versus members. This site would be Dead with a capital D.

Agreed.

[J TNT]

It may not be a parallel but the impact of turning off enthusiasts will be near certain death of the website. Just check the participation rates of enthusiasts versus members. This site would be Dead with a capital D.

Agreed !!! Many will move to Social media. The Activity here has been steadily declining.

[Steve M]

[Viper Girl]

I'm not in disagreement about any of the above. It's an unfortunate decision in my book, not gonna lie... I see ways they could have done a hybrid forum. A Members only area, and letting the enthusiasts post as well. To me that would have been a perfect scenario.

I also get that the club had financial difficulty leading up to the recent decisions to make changes. Before you say NO! COVID did have a huge financial effect on this club.

Take NVE that year, in some cases entire regions backed out of going to the event AFTER all the deposits were paid to the venues. It was too late to cancel the NVE event, the vendors and venues could have sued the Club. So you'd have the $ loss, plus attorneys fees. The club was put in a rock and a hard place kind of situation. NVE's are not cheap, and was always one of my favorite things about the Club.

The Club took out the now infamous loan to recover. If more people had joined the Club during COVID that would have made a ton of difference in what the Club faces today. Currently the club will have a surplus of $ at the end of the year because of budget cutting. Cutting a programmer to keep this site running is just one of the budget cuts that have been made.

Also know it is this BOD's decision to make, it's their right to run the club as they see fit. They had a lot to recover from, and somehow they felt shutting down the forums, was the right call.

Maybe the next BOD will say "Hey! Lets open the forums to everyone!" That could happen.

For now, let's all be part of the change to make this Club be what we want from it.
Thats where my head is at...

Come for the car, stay for the people... at least thats what we used to say...

[Sniper]

Well, if funds were such an issue, they should’ve listened to the members and cut the magazine out and been way better off financially. This is the main reason I didn’t rejoin. We should’ve cut all the big expenses which the magazine was the biggest expense and tried to get back to ground zero.

[Viper Girl]

You have a point Sniper... NVE was also a big part... But nows now and this is a good club, that can be a better club. We can learn from history, and do better in the future.
Throwing the baby out with the bathwater seems a bit extreme. I'd rather talk about what we want from this club in the near future, rather than focus on today. That's how we solve the issue...

Its hard having an all volunteer club. I'm guessing we're all damn busy with our businesses, but all Viper owners being able to connect. Especially as we get further and further from factory support we have will be key. We can have our moment of anger, then how about lets do something about it for the future of the club.

[J TNT]

For the record some regions have increased their membership by 100 percent through out COVID by listening to members and adding Value .
And Yes the BOD Has the Right to Manage or mismanage as they see fit, at The End of the Day it's their membership to loose or increase .

Respectfully
Jay

[Sniper]

Not mad but if the board isn’t listening to the members, hence why I didn’t renew.

[viperguy69]

If we just cut the magazine, like some suggested, we would have been by far worst off. Over 65% of the clubs members want the Magazine because they are subscribers. So, that knee jerk reaction could have cost us at least 35% of our membership! To get a hardcopy magazine, you pay for a hard copy magazine - it was established as a subscription service in 2022.

Most of the regional presidents gave the national team 2022 to get their ducks in a row and get our club's finances in order. What did we do in 2022? We held over 30 Board of Director meeting to cuss and discuss the issues and to uncover areas the club was bleeding money from. The end result of 2022 is that we came to terms with what the club would look like in 2023 based on the programmatic cuts we had to make in 2022.

In 2022 we killed: VOA store (huge money suck) and annual membership cards (a significant expense). We reduced the Magazine cost by over 25% (actually 33% reduction in 2022), reduced club service fees by more than 50% paid to vendors, and reduced web service fees by over 40%. That came at a cost to membership dues to give to the regions ($55 fixed rate for 2022), but they voted on the reduction to help the club back in 2021, thank you.

In 2023 we went back to 50/50 split ($75/member) back to the regions; more than they ever got before by about $8/member. We held the line on Mamba membership is a fee for service to get the hard-copy magazine. We approved the $100K cash reserve we collected over the last 16-months for contingency funds and will be putting this money into a short term CD at 4% interest rate that will be used to pay an extra $4k on the loan. We still have enough cash funds (above the $100K going into that CD) in our other accounts to pay all our bills from today through 31 December 2023 which includes regional splits and all four magazines shipped to Mamba members. We will vote on funds in excess of the $100K reserve to pay forward on the SBA loan in October 2023, currently looking at about $10K surplus based on current efforts and every additional member that joins and every vendor added is a surplus going to pay the SBA loan early and then rolling the $100k forward in 2024 for another year with $4K in interest.

So, the BoD has their hands firmly on the controls and we did not make all the irrational decisions to run the ship aground. It's amazing to the BoD of the contempt that enthusiast have for the club but demand this forum stay open despite their harsh comments. I was not at the meeting when this topic came up for discussion nor how the decision was voted on or made. The National leadership is not the decision maker on this topic as you have to convince the majority of the VOA BoD. The enthusiast position is not winning hearts and minds with all these attacks over the last year; many of the regional presidents contributing countless, and thankless, hours keeping this club and their regions from imploding in 2022.

So, maybe the concern of the BoD is that membership does not use the forum out of concern of being ridiculed and heckled in the current open forum environment. Maybe the thought is that if the forum comments are left to only members then maybe they will use the forum more openly as a membership benefit since they pay for this website - an idea that has yet to be tested for the VOA.

The BoD never said that this decision was firm, fixed, and not open for discussion or further debate.

[Sniper]

And you’ve exactly made my point why I didn’t renew.
Heckling LOL really…