Emails to me

[roy4matra]

Hi all,

This is to notify you that if you wish to email me, please do so BUT do it directly, not via this forum.  I am always happy to receive emails on Matra or anything really, but please use roy@matraclub.org.uk  I will never give out your email address if you inform me to keep it private.

I will no longer answer emails using this forum system.  I don't understand why anyone would want to use it anyway, as it is ten times harder to use than a proper email program, takes much longer, you have no record of your reply, it often crashes in the middle and you have to start all over again, etc. etc.

I have a superb email editor, that I much prefer to use, and takes far less of my time, does not require logging in or remembering not to exceed a time limit, has backup, and logs...  Surely your own email program is better too?  So please use normal email in future.

Alternatively, if you wish the questions and answers visible to others please use the matra-cars-forum at chaossolutions (link on my website) which effectively uses normal emailing.

Thank you.

Roy

[Anders Dinsen]

We will miss your irregular but always competent and helpful input on the forum, Roy. I'm sorry about the experiences you have had with the forum system. I think we have a good friendly community here, but I respect your choise to focus on the e-mail. Thanks for posting this friendly message, Roy!

[roy4matra]

We will miss your irregular but always competent and helpful input on the forum, Roy. I'm sorry about the experiences you have had with the forum system. I think we have a good friendly community here, but I respect your choise to focus on the e-mail. Thanks for posting this friendly message, Roy!

Sorry I did not really make myself clear.  I will still look in here from time to time and if I think I can help, I'll try to answer questions.  As you have probably realised I do have strong views and some may not miss my opinionated style, so if i have offended anyone it wasn't intentional, honestly!

No, my real annoyance is with the personal emailing via the forum, and I see no reason for having to use something I consider that sub-standard.  It is too awkward, time consuming and unnecessary.  I have enough problems using the program here, so there is no way I'm going to use it for very often long emails privately when I can use something far better.

Lennart has done a wonderful job with this forum, but the server is now suffering because of the very success of the forum, and the program we have to use to type everything with is just poor I'm afraid.

So email me directly for fast response if you need help or even just want to 'chat', but please don't send me private emails through this system that expect me to reply through it too.

Roy

[Anders Dinsen]

We will miss your irregular but always competent and helpful input on the forum, Roy. I'm sorry about the experiences you have had with the forum system. I think we have a good friendly community here, but I respect your choise to focus on the e-mail. Thanks for posting this friendly message, Roy!

Sorry I did not really make myself clear.

.... I just reread your post. It's me, Roy. I didn't read it carefully enough first time and misunderstood you! Sorry! But the opinion I expressed still stands.

I will still look in hear from time to time and if I think I can help, I'll try to answer questions.  As you have probably realised I do have strong views and some may not miss my personated style, so if i have offended anyone it wasn't intentional, honestly!

With your posts always being to the point and not personally insulting in any way, I would be really, really surprised if anyone here was hurt.

No, my real annoyance is with the personal emailing via the forum, and I see no reason for having to use something I consider that sub-standard.

I agree. This particular feature is designed for a forum where people prefer to remain anonymous or don't want to use e-mail for some reason or another. With the nature of our interest, it's not much of an issue. And I agreee, it's not particularly useful or user friendly. But it's a part of the forum software package, probably more difficult for Lennart to disable than to keep.

Lennart has done a wonderful job with this forum, but the server is now suffering because of the very success of the forum, and the program we have to use to type everything with is just poor I'm afraid.

Indeed he has. The suffering is - AFAIK - more due to the www.clubarnage.com forum which actually owns the server hardware.

- Anders

[Lennart Sorth]

No, my real annoyance is with the personal emailing via the forum

I do agree, and would like to urge the members to minimize the use.

I spent quite sometime pruning off a lot of such features, to make the forum leaner and (IMO) nicer, than most forums out there. All the forum software available are fairly bloated with features which really aren't that necessary.

However, one reason for 'personal messaging' is if members (e.g. for spam-reasons) prefer not to disclose their real email address, but still want a way to communicate 'privately' between members. (i.e. more personal exchange of prices when selling/buying things etc)

But in general I prefer all exchange to be in the open forum - or in direct "real-world" email.

but the server is now suffering because of the very success of the forum

Matrasport and the forum is popular, but its not the reason for the servers unfortunate state.

The Club.Arnage forum is much more active, and the server also runs a number of commercial sites (some 33 websites, 10 of which of substantial bandwidth). The RAM is the bottleneck. Lack of memory causes the server to constantly swap - which makes the whole thing very slow. The (only 650Mhz!) CPU is hardly ever loaded over 10%, as it is waiting for swap-in.

The server was reasonably modern about 8 years ago, and has been due for replacement for several years. I really hope we get this done in 2008 - *before* Le Mans, as the databases have grown to an extent that drains the remains of the very limited RAM resources. Unfortunately the server (a Dell 1U server) is very picky about which memory it accepts - and trust me I have tried ALL combinations, even something which came from an almost identical machine - to no avail.

In fact I'm rather proud that the server works as well as it does , with resources that today more look like a wristwatch or PDA, than a server

A new server would speed up the forum considerably, and I can't wait to get it sorted.

/Lennart