ProBoards Message

[Wandering Man]

I got this message today from Proboards:

ProBoards does not permit the buying, selling, or trading of weapons on our service. Your forum appears to be in violation of this policy. We ask that you please remove all offending content from your forum within 48 hours.

Examples of offending content includes but may not be limited to:

trpistoleros.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=tp3&action=display&thread=176
trpistoleros.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=tp2

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If you have any questions, please contact our Abuse Department at [e-mail].

ProBoards Abuse Department
[e-mail]

ProBoards offers their service to us for free, so we can not complain about the price. But if we want to continue with the forum, we must comply with their rules.

The alternative is for me to ask for donations to run the forum. I can purchase the software to set up a more sophisticated forum than we presently have. And then then buy space on someone else's server (such as GoDaddy). The rules would be strictly ours and we would own it. But I would need sponsors or donations to keep the thing running.

I don't have the figures right now, but the costs were not exhorbitant when I looked in to it a couple of years ago.

So, we have a choice, and I put it out to all of you.

Do I start asking for donations (in other words would YOU be willing to donate to the forum each year.

Or, do we kill the "shootin' iorns" board and never offer up a gun for sale or trade on this forum again?

Thanks for your input and your support.

-Wandering Man
I have always wanted to have a forum that was ours to run

[Verdadero]

I don't sell guns and I have never bought a gun off a forum like this, so being able to do so is not too important to me. My worry is, if you decide to move it and pay for the privilege to sell guns, you may get folks to pitch in the first year and then have to dun them every year thereafter or end up footing the bill yourself. It really sounds like more trouble than it's worth...

I think the forum is great and I appreciate you making it available to us. It's a great way to "get the word out". I'd like to see it utilized more, but I can live without being able to sell or buy guns off the forum.

Verdadero

[Wandering Man]

I don't know if clicked on both links, but my worry is how they are defining "weapon." They targeted Dreamchaser's announcement for brass.

I am worried that now that they have noticed us, they may begin to tighten the noose.

I've found other boards that will allow us to continue with our forum with no interference, save that they are asking for $10 a month.

-WM

[dreamchaser]

Here I go again, straddling both sides of the fence. I agree with Verdadero in that as far as I am concerned we don't need the shooting irons section. I also agree with WM that they may start closing the loop on us. However, if switching to another provider is not hard, why not wait till they cause us more trouble and then switch? Otherwise, just stay with what we have, minus the selling part, and be happy.

[Wandering Man]

The TRP webpage that the club pays for has a forum capability, for no extra charge.

Stinking Badger and I are working with that to see how it looks. So far, I think it shows a lot of promise. We will likely lose all of our old threads if we move to it, but it will be free, not have all of these unsolicited ads, and be totally ours.

More news to come ...

-WM