Another step the club is taking this week to better manage Spond is to restrict use of Spond Posts to club announcements. While regular members are still able to make comments on Posts and under individual ride Events, you can no longer make your own Posts. Going forward, if you want to offer general cycling or club-related information, ideas, or questions; buy or sell bike components; discuss pickle juice wonder-cures; or share your favourite meatball recipes — please do so on the Tripleshot forum.
WHY ARE WE DOING THIS?
Spond Posts have many limitations. Most importantly they are transient. If a member doesn't read a Post within a day or two of its posting (i.e. usually about 200 members, or about two thirds of the club!) that Post becomes buried under a slew of newer posts and will likely never be seen. There is no ability to search past Posts — and viewing historical Posts means burning out your scroll wheel and waiting hours for Spond to load content. Finally, there are also no sub-threads or ways to categorize Posts by topic (save by ride level), meaning we are all notified about every Post, regardless of personal relevance. With our membership and overall activity continuing to increase, it's important we have effective ways to communicate club information and that Spond remains as useful as possible.
WHAT IS THE FORUM AND WHY DON'T WE HAVE SOMETHING BETTER?
Tripleshot relied on the forum for club discussions from 2007 until June 2020, when we left lockdown and nearly all our eyeballs moved wholesale to Spond. The forum features 41,593 moderated posts, many of which contain useful information about Tripleshot and about cycling generally, all searchable and organized by sub-thread. While it’s free and easy to use on any browser (including any mobile device), the forum is admittedly built on a dated bulletin board platform which lacks some of the conveniences of similar apps, including push notifications and emoji reactions etc.
For now, the forum remains readable to the public internet; posting requires a simple registration: here's the link to the registration page. We may revisit this and make the whole board private, but for now please remember that your posts are public.
Our return to the forum may not be permanent. Because of their various shortcomings, the club continues to look for an application to replace both the forum and Spond. The board has beta-tested several apps but has yet to find a suitable solution. If you have any ideas to forward, we’re very interested! In the meantime, we hope those of you who only joined us in the past two years will come to appreciate the forum, despite some of its limitations. Thanks!
~ The Board
Spond Posts Now Reserved for Club Announcements
Moderator: mfarnham