How can we improve JowettTalk?

[Forumadmin]

People have different requirements from JowettTalk.

• Buying or selling a car or parts.

• Answering technical or historical questions.

• Reading or contributing articles.

• Telling a story of their rebuid or renovation or journey in a Jowett.

• Finding out what is going on in the Jowett world.

• Just chatting and having a natter.

So please comment here on how you think JowettTalk can be improved or cater for other requirements.

[alexander]

I have found JowettTalk most useful and members response alway helpful . The only area I find difficult is in the search of topics. Improving the search would be helpful .
To all who keep the JowettTalk running many thanks

Alexander

[JamesG]

I have not used Jowett Talk much, but have had helpful and prompt responses when I have posted. I should use it more, there are probably helpful topics and tips that I miss.
It might be my lack of tech ability, but one thing that would definitely prompt me to use it more would be if I could set it so that alerts came through when mew items were posted - particularly if that could be filtered to relevant topics (e.g. Jupiter, Javelin.)

[Forumadmin]

Hi James.
Already can...
app.php/help/faq#f8r0

I find that using the Unread posts link in top left menu hamburger is the best way to check for new things. Subscribing and bookmarking means I could miss a lot as sometimes responses are not in the topic I have subscribed to.

[Forumadmin]

Hi Alexander.
Have you tried advanced search ...
app.php/help/faq#f7r0

There is also the Search Server Menu button and try the Search Archive and Search jowett.org. These services are only available to club members.

The forum cannot be searched by Google or other Bots by design as it contains personal or at least friendly information that many do not want made available to all and sundry. A private Google Search engine could be implemented but would need to be a chargeable service.

You may need to try out a few different search terms to find want you want or try a sequence of filters on the search results to reduce the number of results.

The Forum Software (phpbb) is not equiped with a semantic search engine so you need to be fairly exact with the search term but you should also try common mispellings which might find what you want. The Search Server does have a semantic engine and I could, with some effort, get it to search the forum database!

[Chris Spencer]

By far the largest feedback that I receive especially from new members is the difficulty to register in the first place - The requirement for long passwords / clunky / awkward set up - and when they ask for help / complain are met with lengthy technical spiel that they simply don't understand nor wish to get involved with - At which point they simply walk away - Not many knowledgeable long served club members bother with JT either - its simply unappealing to them. Form my own point the loading of images & attachments is lengthy & outdated my hence my heavily detailed & documented restorations are placed to other forums that operate on a simple platform & use full size images - Examples below

https://brm-forum.org/thread/886/1953-j ... llTo=27106

https://brm-forum.org/thread/332/1952-j ... ollTo=4037

https://brm-forum.org/thread/881/1953-j ... llTo=27053

[Forumadmin]

I will have another look at registration as it has not been touched for many years.
The reason JowettTalk is a bit more rigorous than some other forums is that JowettTalk not only caters for public guests and registered users but also provides a place where users who are club members can discuss club affairs and provide appropriate responses knowing other users are club members.

Many club members value this and some have said we should be more rigorous and not provide 'free' advice and information to non members. Hence the recent more rigourous club membership checks which have taken a lot of work to implement.

Identity is extremely difficult to ascertain over the web. Registration is a good place to make sure that we do not get undesirables having access. So some extra information is asked for and some protection against bots and those not interested in Jowetts is implemented.
In addition we had the introduction of privacy legislation which required to accomodate.
I do not think registration is more difficult than Gmail, Facebook or any application that stores non-public information. Most now require two factor authentication.

I may have another look next winter after the next major update of the base software has been completed.

JowettTalk was born in the 1990's out of the desire to allow Jowett owners around the world to communicate when they could not get along to the few Noggins and Natters organised by the clubs. It has developed into an archive of Jowett information, contributed by some members who are no longer with us, and this is made available to all members and is not just shared between a few lucky ones who are close to other members.