I agree totally with David and his comments, I admit I have been a critic of the site and it's lack of progress since it started. But the LDWA's interests have been at heart, in that I hope some of my criticism has been taken as positve; the membership want to see response from the 'commitee' and some reaction from them. This has been sadly lacking - on the surface.
I have always been a firm believer that the website is a potentially powerfull tool, in recruitment to walking and subsequently the LDWA, something that has not been realised.

Hopefully we can now move forward, rather than stagnate as a website. Certainly you have my support in change and I hope others will start to contribute to the various forums in the future, I am sure the 'chatroom' will liven things up!

What thoughts on opening the forum to non members (positive or negative)? There must be an opinion on this, but again it is something that has not been explained. Matt.

David,
I merely thought it better to start a new thread for something that is moving the LDWA forward, rather than continuing with a thread that started 18 months ago and was a bit of a mixed bag.
I can only comment on the situation since I became chairman 6 months ago (although it seems a lot longer!). So far as committee input is concerned, the policy is that everyone is encouraged to participate without the need to make sure that the contribution is "on message". I estimate that around 50% of the committee are regular posters.

Negative Implications!! Lack of interest!! Some of us have to live in the real world and any one who has looked at this site in the past two years will have seen lack of interest in most parts of it and pointing this out is not negative it is fact. With a few notable exceptions none of the committe have made any postings on the site unless forced too. Tony I will for one will back the L D W A to the hilt when it needs it but I will speak up when I think it is wrong. The site does need a good shake up and if you can do it you will get the full backing of those of us who do look in to it, after we have opened our E mails I just hope others do the same.

Glad to see that the facility to enter events online is to be trialed. I've done it for the Durham Dales Challenge for the last two years and we've had a small number of entries that way. As I've now taken over as webmaster, hopefully I'll be able to push it more for next year's event.

What do you mean by retain my sanity? I will have to regain it first !!!!!!!!

I don't like the negative implications of "lack of interest" so I have started a new topic. The significance of last week's first meeting was that after a long period where development has been on the back burner, mainly due to the membership system/direct debit problems, we can now start to focus on the future. Not that development has stopped completely, for instance a template for local groups was recently released which means that even the smallest group can have it’s own website. There are still changes to be made to the membership and direct debit system to ensure that Peter Haslam retains his sanity when the 2007 renewal peak arrives, and this will remain a priority in the immediate future.
There are no plans to make fundamental changes to the forum, but some new categories will be added including a General chat section, if we can think up a more interesting title (I see that a LDP section is already there) and “latest post first”. It’s really up to members to make the forum lively and interesting.
Other items are an improved photo gallery and an archive of the best articles from Strider. A record of AGM minutes will go on the site – I’m sure you can’t wait! There will be improvements and extension to the Hillwalkers Register section, and the recently proposed National Trail Register of Completions will be in there somewhere.
I am keen to introduce the facility to enter events on line, and we plan to trial this on a couple of Challenge walks as soon as possible. I suspect that this may be one of those developments that proves to be more complex than first appears.
Systems work on the on-line Long Distance Paths project is almost complete, and very impressive it is too. Paul Lawrence’s post elsewhere on the forum gives more details. Do please contact Paul if you can help in the route verification phase of the project so that it can go live as quickly as possible.
When will all this happen? Some we can do quickly. Others have cost & resource implications that may need quantifying and signing off by the National Committee.We will keep you posted.
As ever your comments and suggestions are welcome, just back off on whinging about the forum!