Contact List

[jam49]

Just wonderin' - I had a sad thought - What if the Oliver Forums went offline? How would we communicate about our Olivers?

[DCKiefer]

Maybe one of the modirators can tell us what the risk of loosing the forum is? If it where to happen, what would the cost of keeping it going be?

[technomadia]

Currently, Oliver owns and runs these forums - and hires an IT company to host and maintain them. I don't know what the actual risk is of them shutting down the forums. Probably the same as them shutting down their website. All depends on how serious they are about sticking around and getting back into the trailer business.

 

The software to run a forum like this is fairly easy to come by, and it's not all that expensive to re-set it up. For instance,the hosting company that Chris & I use to run our own blog also provides a similar forum software for free. The real cost is the labor intensity of keeping spammers out - which is being done by some of our wonderful moderators on a volunteer basis.

 

If the forums where to ever go down - it would be best to look into other group management options. Either creating our own self-hosted one somewhere,or utilizing a free resource like YahooGroups, Ning, GoogleGroups, Facebook,etc. We can only hope that if such a scenario were to arise, that the folks at Oliver would be kind enough to give us some advanced warning so that we can reorganize.

 

If they weren't to, I'm sure that those of us with public blogs would be the go-to sources for disseminating information on where to find our community. As would be places like fiberglassrv.com or Casita Club.

 

It also wouldn't be a bad idea to have a contact list that is not hosted here that would be used in the case of the forums going away. Perhaps a GoogleDoc form to collect and store the information to be accessible to the moderators? If that's desired, I'd be happy to set one up.

 

-Cherie

[SeaDawg]

Cherie,

Thanks for the background info on forums. I had no idea what costs were involved.

Personally, I think that as long as Oliver is serious about eventually returning to the travel trailer business when the economy improves that they will continue supporting the forum and their own website. (Their website is, after all, one of their most powerful marketing tools.)

Even though none of us on the moderator team work for Oliver (we all happily devote our mod hours on a free, voluntary basis), I believe that the folks at Oliver would give us some notice to make other arrangements for the forum in the event that they should ever decide to discontinue their financial support of our "sandbox". Perhaps Mountainborn, as administrator, can shed some additional light here, but I believe he and his wife are spending the holidays with family right now.

 

In the meantime, if you're willing to collect an off-line contact list, that's a nice backup in any event.

 

Sherry

[bugeyedriver]

Wow, the discussion of any demise of the forum is enough to make the Christmas Grinch gloat with glee.

 

I understand jam49's thoughts . . . we have become an interesting community of cyber friends with a very unique item binding us together. Our Ollies are very important to us all and the wealth of information, ideas and skill sets amongst those interacting here is invaluable (and FUN as well). There would be a void if it were ever lost.

 

It needs to be emphasized that Oliver has not given a scintilla of evidence they have any intention of pulling the plug on this forum. Our trailers are named the "Oliver Legacy Elite" out of respect for, and in homage to Johnny Oliver, who was the inspiration behind this venture. I can't imagine they would not give this their sincerest efforts for a very long term success.

 

That being said, I'm sure the the FGRV community, over at http://www.fiberglassrv.com wouldn't mind a group of folks striking up more conversations specific to Ollie's. That forum is for all molded fiberglass trailers and is not brand unique. As to the possible gathering of a current contact list, Cherie, thanks for your expertise and willingness to consider helping, if needed. I am sure with your savvy you'd figure out a method to keep it it safe from all of our attempted spammers we're getting from Latvia, Russia, etc.

 

Enough of this . . . I'm going to go back to the land of Christmas Cheer! May everybody have a Happy New Year! See ya'll on the Oliver Forum!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[mountainborn]

Just found this thread as I checked in to bam spammerz. He, he, got in late, well, late for us ol' folks anyhow, and slept in this morn.

Our Moderator Steve, SCUBARX, compiled a good list not too long ago, of nearly all of the Oliver owners. Seems like the last time we worked on it togather, he had about eighty plus percent of all the owners in his database that included contact information.

He will see this and chime in soon, I expect.

Jonathan, our Global administrator would be instrumental in getting this done should we need to go that way.

EDIT to add:

It was Steve's work on this list that prompted the thread titled OLIVER OWNERS GROUP that is directly above this thread. It recieved no responses from the membership. Maybe in light of new developments it will.

[jam49]

Hello to all,

I only wrote about my concern because my Oliver Forum friends have become so special to me. Because we are spread out all over this beautiful land of ours and may never meet in person, we do seem to have a special bond - the love of our Oliver and everything involved whether a trip, problem, solution,video, photo, etc. (Perish the thought that this forum would go away!!!) I don't know how I missed the thread about "the contact list" but I am going to hunt it up as soon as I post this. I am very glad Scubarex has an almost completed master list. Now back to the joy of the holidays!!!!!!! jam49

[SeaDawg]

Jam49,

I don't think anyone seriously took your post as a message of "gloom and doom"... But it spurred some other trains of thought that were valid. It never hurts to have a "backup plan." I would remind anyone who wants to make sure that they are on ScubaRx's owner's group list to send info via a pm, and please, do not post personal information on this or any other open forum.

 

As Pete said, there's not been even one small indication that Oliver has any intention of abandoning our forum support. To paraphrase Mark Twain in response to an erroneous obit, the rumors of the death of the Oliver have been greatly exaggerated... perhaps not so much here, but in other forums.

 

I, too, cherish the many new friends I have made on this forum. I've been lucky enough to meet many folks in person. I hope to get to meet you one of these days, as well.

 

And now, back to the holidays. Pass the lutefisk, please.

 

Sherry

[mountainborn]

He, he, Sherry, tell me please, is lutefisk, a traditional New Years dish ?

[SeaDawg]

I split the topic with my response to Larry's question....

 

Lutefisk being far off topic, and, to many, far off the menu... And, as so often happens, my response is a bit long...

 

Happy New Year!

 

Sherry

[bugeyedriver]

More Egg-Nog & Lutefisk !

[andrew]

If this forum were to go offline, I am sure either Technomadia or I could set up something new. Both Technomadia and oliver.hewus.com are high on the results for Oliver Travel Trailers (at least on the Google) so I am sure we could be found by anyone who looked.

 

Obviously I hope this forum stays as the existing content is great. I do hope if the forum were to go away that someone could get a database dump so we don't lose the content.