I was really just pushing back on the idea that we need to do something because all the cool kids are hanging out on Facebook now.
From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> On Behalf Of Daniel White Sent: Tuesday, January 7, 2020 4:37 PM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] WISPA email list We are really putting the cart waaaayyyy before the horse here huh? Changing to the new association management platform was a necessity and there is a lot of additional functionality that forums will enable for the WISPA committees as an example. I'm an anti-forum guy myself... but when it was presented to the Board and all of the reasoning behind it, it sounded like a good idea to me. I don't recall all the reasoning (its been at least a month since we had the discussion) but at least let WISPA finish rolling it out before we make any decisions. A lot of the value of WISPA and Animal Farm years ago was the member lists... but you can look at the traffic now vs. 5 years ago and make conclusions yourself on where the traffic has gone. WISPs have not stopped networking... just not doing it on e-mail lists as much anymore. I view this as a good thing... organizations like WISPA have to keep defining their value beyond access to a mailing list. This WISPA board so far as worked great together and we have a pretty good vision on that front. And has already been said... we will always have AFMUG <https://atheral.co/wp-content/uploads/Atheral-Logo-Vertical-Grad-150px-x-86px.png> Daniel White Co-Founder & Managing Director of Operations phone: +1 (702) 470-2766 direct: +1 (702) 470-2770 Ken Hohhof wrote on 1/7/20 09:10: Given that many (in fact most) WISPs are very small businesses, there has always been a tendency in WISPA from the early days not to view ourselves as serious businesses, but more of a hobby, side gig, or social network. That’s also a view popular in some “new economy” startups. That’s fine, if you never intend to grow really big or sell your business or quit your day job. Or hire more than a handful of employees, and offer them big company benefits and career tracks. I’m sure this will be an unpopular opinion, but if you’re serious about your business, at some point you need more than a cellphone and Facebook. (You also need friends that aren’t work friends.) You discover there are reasons established businesses do things a certain way other than they’re old and stodgy. As far as Facebook, I use it to communicate with customers, but I don’t really like it. It only reaches maybe 10% of them (honestly almost all moms). They also assume that’s our preferred method of communicating back to us, while we view it as more of a blog and announcement system. The rest of the customers think it makes us look unprofessional because we are using a social networking platform they have no interest in joining to announce things like outages and planned maintenance. Pissed off customer asks why we didn’t notify customers we were going to replace a tower router or AP, and we say that we posted to our Facebook page, and that just makes them more pissed off. I have to agree, we need something more businesslike and professional, but Twitter or Slack or whatever isn’t the answer. We probably need to be posting to our own website, or let customers subscribe to an email or text message announcement list. Email and texts are near universal with our customers, voice calls not so good because people ignore voicemails, none of the social media platforms have significant penetration. Social media doesn’t reach the majority of our customers, despite what you might think from the media. Like with all the tweets from Trump, you’d think most people are on Twitter, actually that’s not even remotely true. We hear about it because Twitter is like a press release, the media picks up stories and that’s how regular people hear about it. OK, maybe the diehard Kardashian and Taylor Swift and Beyonce fans follow them on Twitter. If I really thought we could get all our customers to install the Twitter app and follow us, I would use that to announce outages and stuff. But I really expect customers would tell me I’m a moron if I told them that plan. The two things they accept as mainstream are emails and text messages. Those also have the advantage of immediacy. You see it right away, and if you need to reply, you can do that right away also. WISPA as an organization also needs to decide how it views itself. Are we a social network for WISP owners and employees? Or a professional organization that should operate like a business? I would resist the view that Facebook is stealing away our forum traffic. People are going to network. Social networking is good for that, whether it’s Facebook or LinkedIn. It’s not necessarily bad if some “non mission critical” traffic goes elsewhere. After all, another complaint that has come up in the past has been too much email traffic on the lists. Some people unsubscribe because evidently it’s too much trouble to hit delete or create message rules to sort messages into folders. So maybe ask, is the traffic moving to social media traffic that needs to be on a WISPA managed platform? Is WISPA falling down on its job to provide essential services to members, and that’s why people are turning to sites like Facebook? If the answer is yes, then maybe a change is needed. But only with an understanding of the goals and the problem we are trying to fix. People are social and are going to use social media no matter what, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. From: AF <mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com> <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> On Behalf Of ch...@wbmfg.com <mailto:ch...@wbmfg.com> Sent: Tuesday, January 7, 2020 9:29 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <mailto:af@af.afmug.com> <af@af.afmug.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] WISPA email list I hate all things FB unless I am working as a contractor building stuff for them. Then I love FB. From: Mathew Howard Sent: Tuesday, January 7, 2020 8:21 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group Subject: Re: [AFMUG] WISPA email list Facebook groups are not forums... As much as I dislike forums, I must admit, I dislike facebook groups much more (although in a different way) On Tue, Jan 7, 2020 at 9:07 AM Mike Hammett <af...@ics-il.net <mailto:af...@ics-il.net> > wrote: "Would a forum have done as well?" If you define Facebook groups as a forum, the answer is yes. The Facebook groups and pages did respond well to the issue. The difference between AFMUG and the others is that Forrest's expertise in the matter was on AFMUG. ----- Mike Hammett <http://www.ics-il.com/> Intelligent Computing Solutions <https://www.facebook.com/ICSIL> <https://plus.google.com/+IntelligentComputingSolutionsDeKalb> <https://www.linkedin.com/company/intelligent-computing-solutions> <https://twitter.com/ICSIL> <http://www.midwest-ix.com/> Midwest Internet Exchange <https://www.facebook.com/mdwestix> <https://www.linkedin.com/company/midwest-internet-exchange> <https://twitter.com/mdwestix> <http://www.thebrotherswisp.com/> The Brothers WISP <https://www.facebook.com/thebrotherswisp> <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXSdfxQv7SpoRQYNyLwntZg> _____ From: "Ken Hohhof" <af...@kwisp.com <mailto:af...@kwisp.com> > To: "AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group" <af@af.afmug.com <mailto:af@af.afmug.com> > Sent: Tuesday, January 7, 2020 8:41:27 AM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] WISPA email list IMHO, projects should have goals, otherwise they are change for change sake. One needs to ask, what problem does this solve? It is popular to categorize people as either conservative or progressive, which I think is false. Most people are both. They want to fix what’s broke, and keep what works. So what’s broke, how does this change fix it, and are any babies being thrown out with the bathwater? I see a lot of vendor forums. Some work, many don’t. The key seems to be that a vendor forum needs the vendor to have moderators constantly monitoring the forum posts and recruiting internal resources to respond. Unless you just want it to serve a social function, rather than being transactional, like announcements or requests for assistance. Unmoderated vendor forums tend to become a space for bloviation and for noobs to foolishly ask for help not realizing nobody will respond. Look how well this list responded to the GPS problem when the GLONASS rollover occurred. Would a forum have done as well? Now it’s possible this is much fuss over nothing. Maybe what WISPA is contemplating is a mere technical change that will allow the existing transactional email format to continue, while also providing a convenient archive for the people who visit only occasionally or when they are researching something, maybe with cool search features. But I still ask, what problem is being solved? There has been a long running discussion at WISPA that pretty much consists of “I like lists” vs “I like forums”. It seems like either somebody feels it’s time for the forum likers to have a turn, or else the new WISPA software has a forum feature that somebody wants to use. But decision making without goals is basically “listening to your gut”. My gut wants a fish taco. From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com <mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com> > On Behalf Of Josh Baird Sent: Tuesday, January 7, 2020 7:59 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com <mailto:af@af.afmug.com> > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] WISPA email list It doesn't seem like members@ is being used much anyways. It's so low traffic, that I thought I got removed for some reason. At least we still have AFMUG, amirite? On Tue, Jan 7, 2020 at 8:45 AM Dennis Burgess via AF <af@af.afmug.com <mailto:af@af.afmug.com> > wrote: Yep. While I really thing that the WISPA mailing lists are important, moving it to a forum and discontinuing mailing list would be a bad idea for WISPA. Dennis Burgess, Mikrotik Certified Trainer MTCNA, MTCRE, MTCWE, MTCTCE, MTCINE, MTCSE, HE IPv6 Sage, Cambium ePMP Certified Author of "Learn RouterOS- Second Edition” Link Technologies, Inc -- Mikrotik & WISP Support Services Office: 314-735-0270 Website: <http://www.linktechs.net/> http://www.linktechs.net Create Wireless Coverage’s with <http://www.towercoverage.com> www.towercoverage.com From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com <mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com> > On Behalf Of Mike Hammett Sent: Tuesday, January 7, 2020 7:36 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com <mailto:af@af.afmug.com> > Subject: Re: [AFMUG] WISPA email list When a couple non-WISPA FB groups became popular, WISPA mailing list traffic plummeted. ----- Mike Hammett <https://imsva91-ctp.trendmicro.com:443/wis/clicktime/v1/query?url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.ics%2dil.com&umid=F35A4989-9B8C-FC05-8FFD-D714EE199469&auth=079c058f437b7c6303d36c6513e5e8848d0c5ac4-ba2a74ae624d6c038621c1c64097aeab4a24f399> Intelligent Computing Solutions <https://www.facebook.com/ICSIL> <https://plus.google.com/+IntelligentComputingSolutionsDeKalb> <https://www.linkedin.com/company/intelligent-computing-solutions> <https://twitter.com/ICSIL> <http://www.midwest-ix.com/> Midwest Internet Exchange <https://www.facebook.com/mdwestix> <https://www.linkedin.com/company/midwest-internet-exchange> <https://twitter.com/mdwestix> <http://www.thebrotherswisp.com/> The Brothers WISP <https://www.facebook.com/thebrotherswisp> <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXSdfxQv7SpoRQYNyLwntZg> _____ From: "Sean Heskett" <af...@zirkel.us <mailto:af...@zirkel.us> > To: "AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group" <af@af.afmug.com <mailto:af@af.afmug.com> > Sent: Monday, January 6, 2020 11:54:41 PM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] WISPA email list I don’t use the book of face so I’m unfamiliar. I think wispa should offer every opportunity for us to communicate and not limit it to just forums. Forums are get for knowledge base/tech support type stuff because you have a threaded searchable archive. But it’s a repository of knowledge, not a communications platform for interactive daily stuff. I check wispa, animal farm and NANOG email lists multiple times a day. Cambium went to forums which makes sense for a solutions provider so that they have the searchable database, but I go there maybe monthly to check for new software or known issues. But I’m not very active in their community, mostly because I don’t have time to also go login and check a forum. Email is constantly flowing my way and I interact with it all throughout the day. One way to find out I guess is to gather some data. Find out how many messages are currently being sent and then look at the data after it’s forums only. My money is on a steep decline in engagement...I know personally I won’t be on there. Not because I don’t want to be there, but it’s simply I don’t have the time to add yet another thing to go log into and check to my daily life. 2 cents -Sean You can catch me on afmug (animal farm) or nanog On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 10:21 PM Daniel White <dwh...@atheral.com <mailto:dwh...@atheral.com> > wrote: Yes it is going away to a forum. Personally not a fan myself but demand seems to be more for forums than the mailing lists. Will also make some of the committee work that happens easier so I have been told. Most of the day to day conversation happens on Facebook anymore... was the only reason I ever signed up. Not sure what was so wrong about e-mail :-) <https://atheral.co/wp-content/uploads/Atheral-Logo-Vertical-Grad-150px-x-86px.png> Daniel White Co-Founder & Managing Director of Operations phone: +1 (702) 470-2766 direct: +1 (702) 470-2770 Ken Hohhof wrote on 1/6/20 19:10: You mean the main members list? Where did you hear it was going away? From: AF mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com On Behalf Of ch...@wbmfg.com <mailto:ch...@wbmfg.com> Sent: Monday, January 6, 2020 7:55 PM To: af@af.afmug.com <mailto:af@af.afmug.com> Subject: [AFMUG] WISPA email list I thought the WISPA email list was going to be shut off. But just now I got an email. Like to delete my folder once it is defunct. -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com _____ -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
-- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
