Should we have private boards for veterans or paid coaching?

[Outsider]

Winston, you're an idiot for even posting that "suggestion".

Good luck to you. You're going to need it, if you can't think any better than that.

see ya

[Winston]

Winston, you're an idiot for even posting that "suggestion".

Good luck to you. You're going to need it, if you can't think any better than that.

see ya

I didn't suggest it. Some people seem to want it. So I am opening it up for discussion. I guess you can't please everybody.

Steve R claimed that some guys here are pissed that others gained from their tip without contributing anything back. Is that true?

[kai1275]

Per the discussion here:
viewtopic.php?t=20976

Should we have a private board here for veteran members to discuss tips or info that they don't want the public or other members to see?

How many of you here want that?

However, wouldn't that make us look divided and segregated, like there is a group of elite members and then there's the rest of everyone else? Wouldn't that project a snobby elitist attitude on here?

How would we decide who gets to be in the private veteran group anyway? What criteria would we use to see who gets into the private board?

Heh. I normally wouldn't post but, I have always wondered what it would be like if we expanded on DJFourmoney's idea of a "Solution-Orientated" group or team. It's hard to help people find jobs, work, discuss private things on such a wide open forum. I basically do this kinda work via PMs and private email, but a nice and trusted place would be nice too. If it were more private the stuff I even contributed could have been much much more. Pictures, phone numbers, very detailed information for travel, goods, products, and services. Since you run this place like a zoo full of bigots, betas, and trash, you really cannot stick your neck out there if you want to live a realistic/private life somehow in the real world. We all cannot live wide open like you do Winston.

However a relatively small gang of solution minded individuals can do all kinds of things the main group cannot do. Just a space for the guys who do not f***ing whine and complain would be very beneficial. A voting system for new people, based upon contributions to the main HA forums would help.

You'd better keep security nice and f***ing tight too. Your salts and hashes for the passwords, etc. better be nice and strong and you better keep your server patched in a timely fashion as well.

You really could have 2 private areas. One for veterans. One for Solutions/Hardcore/Serious Posters and Contributors. You could have forced Avatars/PICs/Bios, etc. whatever. You could use your solutions group as another "Advisor Team". Think bigger. You can spread your message with more guys and maintain a more figurehead position. The more you throw your own self out there, the more heat you get, and the more often pics and stories of Dianne and your son get thrown around like the dead and stinky albatross that mess is. Also having a cleaner advisory team of helpful people can counteract all the trash you let float here that pisses off your serious posters.

One thing is for certain, you will have to moderate a solutions group forum, to keep the content nice and tip top, but most likely the place would probably police its own self when you don't have trash like cornfed in it. Fake, false, and exaggerated information is not good for any private group. You really need to consider vote up rankings on the posts as well. That way newer cats can more easily see the consensus of the site and get a feel for what the good advice here is like. Either option will require more rules, regardless. If you make 2 seperate wild wild wests, then expect people to whine and content to suck and be even more spread out. It might even die off outright.

Also a Solutions Group forum can function as a Research and Development for the main forum. Some of that information posted there might be able to serve some function in the other ones. An inside vote or discussion among the members would be best to do first, but it's an idea. Trust will have to be there and the group cannot feasibly have anywhere near the sheer number of registered users the main forum has. I just found out today someone from Roosh V forum found my guide and posted a link to it. That person seemed to love it, and the feedback was nice, but still....I really do not like self proclaimed whoremongers reading my guide, which is why I held back plenty information when writing that guide at the very beginning.

If anyone calls you a hypocrite for making an Elitist area, they are not being realistic and can f**k off. A wide open forum will always keep people in Guy Fawkes Masks and KKK hoods.

Another quick thought would be that if you were being begged by someone for some in-depth knowledge or information on something a solution group has plenty information on, you could charge them money for temporary access or hand-pick out the information they needed. I say charge them money for 2 reasons. One, this is your website you pay for the hosting not anyone else. Two, you charge them to feel the pain enough so not to be a jerk with it. Not just because you need the money. Trash never appreciate free information, they only spit on it, which is why I will not offer anymore on the main forums anymore. If they paid for good details, they would be far less likely to act a donkey with it.

[Cornfed]

One thing is for certain, you will have to moderate a solutions group forum, to keep the content nice and tip top, but most likely the place would probably police its own self when you don't have trash like cornfed in it.

LOL, what makes you think you would be part of any elite group? People don't spend tens of thousands of dollars a year to avoid all contact with your kind for no reason. An idea I had was for Winston to expand his female forum to accommodate all you affirmative-action classes that the rest of us are going abroad to escape from. It could be called "The Leper Colony" or similar. That way you would not be tempted to inflict your odious presence on the main forum.

[Winston]

Kai,
Those are great ideas. But we should not use terms like "elites" or "elite boards" though. That sounds way too snobby and classist. Better to call it "Veterans board" or "Special Advice/Solutions board".

The Veterans board could be private discussion for veteran expats and quality contributors. It would be MERIT-BASED. Those who qualify would have to meet the following criteria:

- The poster has demonstrated extensive knowledge of one or more foreign cultures.
- The poster has lived abroad for a long time in one or more countries.
- The poster has contributed a high number of quality posts and content. Either here or in another forum/website. Or in in a book he has authored.
- The poster has the respect of most forum members and is reasonably well behaved and civil.

Such members that would qualify would probably be Rock, Ladislav, Momopi, Mr S, and maybe a few others, such as you Kai. I will ask some of our longer time members here if they would be interested in a Veterans board.

As to the Advice/Solutions board, that has potential too. We could take our veteran members and put them into an Advisor Team there. Then we could charge a fee for members to go there and get serious personalized advice there. The fee would be pooled into a PayPal account and distributed among the Advisor Team members evenly.

The membership fee could include a weekly Skype teleconference, where the people seeking advice could talk to the Advisor Team live on Skype. The Skype teleconference would be a great bonus, since it feels more personable to talk to people via audio chat than just on a message board.

Everyone on the Team of course, would have to agree to give serious personalized advice to every paid member, and be willing to participate in the Skype teleconference, perhaps once a week or every two weeks.

Maybe you, Kai, could moderate and manage such a Team? You could also distribute the membership fees collected to all on the Team.

Or we could ask Ladislav. He seems to have the most extensive knowledge of all, and speaks more languages than anyone else here.

Whoever moderates the team and distributes the fees and hosts the Skype teleconference would be paid more than the other advisors of course. But the person should have good counseling and coaching skills as well.

Maybe I could get my friend Walt Goodridge in on this as well. He has very good coaching and counseling skills. It's one of his gifts.

Kai, what skills do you have? How long did you live abroad? Where do you get all your knowledge of China from?

What do you think of this?

To Cornfed: That insult of yours above to Kai was totally uncalled for and unjustified. This is a warning. Do that again and you will be temporarily banned.

[anamericaninbangkok]

There's a lot of bickering going on in this site now. The men sound more like a bunch of whiny little girls who can't have their lollipops.

[Repatriate]

Per the discussion here:
viewtopic.php?t=20976

Should we have a private board here for veteran members to discuss tips or info that they don't want the public or other members to see?

How many of you here want that?

However, wouldn't that make us look divided and segregated, like there is a group of elite members and then there's the rest of everyone else? Wouldn't that project a snobby elitist attitude on here?

How would we decide who gets to be in the private veteran group anyway? What criteria would we use to see who gets into the private board?

Winston, can you stop being hoodwinked by low rent con men like Steve R. who are trying to take over your site with their shitty ideas? Why are you so damned gullible.

[Winston]

Winston, can you stop being hoodwinked by low rent con men like Steve R. who are trying to take over your site with their shitty ideas? Why are you so damned gullible.

Yeah. But Kai's suggestions above are good ones. Did you read them? What do you think of them?

[zboy1]

Seems like it's 50/50 pro and against the idea of making parts of the forum private. Most HA members seem to be split as well...

If Kai were to lead a private forum, than I would be for it. It may also cut down on the bickering that AmericanInBangkok is complaining about...

I guess, I'm for the pro side of the argument, but only if it's not pay-for-fee (that would be ridiculous!). And only have members that are actually or have lived abroad as members of this private forum, Winston!

[Cornfed]

Winston, can you stop being hoodwinked by low rent con men like Steve R. who are trying to take over your site with their shitty ideas? Why are you so damned gullible.

Yeah. But Kai's suggestions above are good ones. Did you read them? What do you think of them?

What problem is this supposed to be addressing? If people want to post advice there is nothing to stop them from doing so now. The idea that they only want certain people to read their advice is just silly. This is the Internet FFS. Beyond that, this is just more affirmative-action entitlement whining you get all the time, whereby certain classes of people want any inconvenient truths they don't like hearing suppressed, since being coddled and having their egos massaged all the time is what they are used to. Experience has shown that pandering to these types will quickly destroy a forum. You really should forget this nonsense.

[TerraFirma]

Don't go and get carried away because it was just Veterans day, now...

In fact, the only veterans I recognize in this forum are the originators, like Winston and his rag-tag bunch of Eastern travelers, like Ladislav.(sp)

Then, comes Cornfed and that guy who uses that Anime Avatar, because they espouse in-your-face manly wisdom.

And lastly I respect PAN, he is a god, after all.

I am no one, just a deep lurker, but I am also a wealth of information unto myself that would altogether go missing if you decide to compromise unity here by segregating members or making it a womens forum or any nonsense like that.

[Cornfed]

The Veterans board could be private discussion for veteran expats and quality contributors. It would be MERIT-BASED. Those who qualify would have to meet the following criteria:

- The poster has demonstrated extensive knowledge of one or more foreign cultures.
- The poster has lived abroad for a long time in one or more countries.
- The poster has contributed a high number of quality posts and content. Either here or in another forum/website. Or in in a book he has authored.
- The poster has the respect of most forum members and is reasonably well behaved and civil.

Your choice of who to include in this private forum is bound to be controversial and alienate people. There are some posters who seem to have a somewhat polarizing effect, such as myself. I think I technically fit your criteria. If you don't let people like me in, this will alienate a lot of people, whereas if you do it would defeat the purpose as far as the PC/affirmative-action crowd is concerned. The safest thing would be to keep the status quo. I really believe that you will suffer from a massive loss of traffic if you pursue this idea.

[Banano]

Sounds like NWO in the making,

What is the purpose of this 'private club'?

Steve Rs idea was to let anybody in as long as they pay membership fee but it seems to me it will be free for selected few.

Either way it will suck, can you imagine heavyweights such as Win, Lad, Rock and such posters arguing endlessly about SEA women. Why not use PM or email unless you wanna have group live video masturbation session

There is not a single topic that is not covered 154 times so there is nothing to protect anymore.


Start charging membership fee and site will go down, somebody else will come in to fill the gap

[Winston]

Seems like it's 50/50 pro and against the idea of making parts of the forum private. Most HA members seem to be split as well...

If Kai were to lead a private forum, than I would be for it. It may also cut down on the bickering that AmericanInBangkok is complaining about...

I guess, I'm for the pro side of the argument, but only if it's not pay-for-fee (that would be ridiculous!). And only have members that are actually or have lived abroad as members of this private forum, Winston!

Yes good points. However, if certain members want a private board, why not? You gotta understand that some people might have issues to discuss that they don't want to be made public.

We could have a hidden Veterans board too, which would not even be visible to others that are not in it.

Also, what about an Advice/Coaching board? It could be for people to get private coaching and would include a Skype teleconference hosting by someone with good coaching skills, like Walt Goodridge. He is very good at that kind of stuff and is part of our movement too.

Yeah the private Veterans board could be moderated by Kai. He is a good choice.

[HouseMD]

It would provide a barrier to entry that would reduce overall forum activity and keep valid opinions out of interesting topics. It's a bad idea all around, in which no one wins- the people behind the wall get to make excellent threads that few people get to read or participate in, and the people locked out wonder why there are no good threads on the forum. Old people will get bored and leave, new people will have no incentive to stay, and the forum ultimately dies.

I've seen it happen to a few forums in the past, the outcome is always the same.