Why are you not a Member of BPL?

I think another issue is simply a lot of folks don’t get out as much as they’d like to.

I’ve been posting inane questions recently and searching a lot more because I finally got some vacation time. I recently went two years with only two weeks vacation. I have 9 weeks saved up but no idea when I’ll take them.

A lot of us folk pine for the time to go hiking but perhaps like myself get engaged in the community when we start out but drift away when big plans never materialized. That’s why I haven’t posted in a few years until recently.

+1 on what JCH said. Very thankful for the knowledgeable contributors who are still here, but I definitely miss folks who had lots of knowledge and a colorful way of expressing it. I stick around because there are still some good discussions from time to time, especially in MYOG, and I’ve enjoyed being a part of the community here.

I became a member on 5/2017 because I was using the forums quite heavily for help with UL Backpacking.  I will probably continue to have a membership at least for the next year or two.

When I first joined, I was expecting more articles and reviews than there was.  Also, I haven’t found a way that articles and reviews are organized in any way to quickly find information.  One place that I have always loved how the information was presented was at http://www.outdoorgearlab.com.  It was easy to find information and it was organized in a way to quickly compare items.  They have since redesigned their site and information is not as easy to find, but still easy to compare.  BPL is not a product review site, and I am aware of this.

Another thing I was slightly disappointed in was the UL Boot Camp Video, that is given to premium members now, but when I purchased it I paid extra for it when I joined.  I think the video has very solid information in it and very good advice but it seems like it is out out date as far as some topics and equipment.

It also seems that some forums are stagnated, Gear Giveaways is at 4 months and Reader Reviews are currently at 2 years 11 months.  I do think it is the members responsibility to create topics for these forums, so maybe this is our fault.

Sometimes, I wonder, if BPL is trying to decide which direction to go, it offers a lot of information, and sadly, I wasn’t here when they had a store.  BPL seems to do a little of everything related to UL Backpacking to cater to everybody’s needs. I understand it takes time, money and resources to do all this though and I applaud BPL for continuing to provide the services they provide.

With all that being said, I am happy here, I have learned a lot and people respond to my questions and help me with UL Backpacking, I have even suggested some things that work for me.  Most everybody seems nice and willing to help out.  Since joining I have dropped about 11 lbs. off my pack weight, down to 23.5 lbs for 5 days (base + consumable), hopefully by next year I will be at or below 20 lbs, I am so close.

I’m a member, but now I’m wondering why I joined. I was expecting that there would be a lot more activity and opportunities to interact with a community. It’s nice to get specific tips about gear, but I’m involved in several forums that are related to my other hobbies, and those forums are much more active and interesting.

Interesting first post. Got to put in to get out.

Hey Dan! Start a conversation. I’m game!

Fair enough, Ken. Re-reading my post, I think that’s how I would probably respond in your place and I regret the way I phrased my comments. :-)

I have been lurking and reading, and hoping to get a sense of the culture and find a conversation to which I could contribute. On some forums, there are running threads that make it easy to join in as a newcomer. Here, it’s pretty business-like and technical, so I can’t really find a way to participate unless I have technical specifications for gear or I want to write a 5-page trip report of an epic journey.

I’m not really complaining, because I like reading those trip reports and getting gear tips, and I greatly appreciate the efforts of people who contribute them. In fact that’s why I wanted to contribute the membership fee, basically as payment for what I’ve already received as a lurker. I’m just responding to the question asked in the thread title, which seems to be asking how to get people more engaged so that they want to be members.

And I apologize that my post came across as being negative and entitled. I’m not usually that way.

Maybe there could be a running thread for new members to introduce themselves.

I just got my membership renewed for the year.  I agree with Dan some, that it seems like there is not a lot of interaction sometimes.

I wonder if having chat rooms would be a good idea? There are pros and cons to chat rooms of course, but if members want to talk they can.

I feel like there are people here ready to talk. We just need people to ask some questions. :)

I don’t think the problem is people are not ready to talk. I have had many people offer excellent advice. Forums are a great tool.  I was just suggesting chat as another method people could talk :)

Longtime back I tried to signup for the lifetime, $99 at that time, not directly for any special content, but as appreciation for the invaluable content received from BPL over the years. I needed to use paypal, which at that time was being discussed but did not appear to be available. I sent off an email trying to sort that out…from which there was no resolution.    Still mad about that hence my current level.

Straight up- I was a paying member because I wanted to read the members-only articles. I stopped being a paying member when some folks were thrown off the forum because someone got their feelings hurt. I’m fine with rules. I’m not fine with arbitrary application of the rules and harsh penalties for minor infractions, not to mention the loss of years of experience and high levels of activity on the forum when those members were permanently banned. I don’t come around as much myself (today is my first check of the forum in probably a couple of months). If I feel the value of the forums increases and the rules and application thereof become more reasonable, then I might pay money again.

Edit to add: One other thing that I’ve found is that if something has been covered before in another thread, even if the thread is old, people will hassle the OP with “Search the forums!” and “That’s been covered in other threads!” etc. I’m guessing that other than the very newest technology that EVERYTHING has probably been discussed in at least one thread before. But if you want to attract and keep new members, you need to allow them the freedom to rehash old topics. This forum has less value if the only thing new members are allowed to do is search for old threads that answer a question that is new to them.

I agree concerning rehashing old topics, and even posting to really old threads.  But it doesn’t hurt to remind people that some research might be useful.  A gentle reminder is all that’s needed, not a scolding.  The problem is that on forums you have to word things very carefully so that the former doesn’t sound like the latter.  This happened to me once on reddit and I felt pretty embarassed, and apologized, and am much more careful now.

Too bad that you have to be a member to post to this thread now. Dena makes good points. Lots of good suggestions and insight here.

Overall still a good community here, though smaller and way less active than years past. True on many forums these days of blogs and people wanting all information free of charge. Love to see BPL drop the subscription now that there are ads. At least go to a volunteer donation model plus ads. Get busy with those software updates. Been years now…

I don’t know what the site used to be like, I paid to join the site in its current state.

I joined because this is the most civil and knowledgeable forum I have ever seen on the internet. Shills are a very real problem on every other forum. Most millienials don’t know what shills are, despite interacting with them more than any other generation. While this maybe cynical of me, I think if you’re a baby-boomer, you probably have twice the reading comprehension and writing skills of the average millennial. The rise in ‘mud-slinging’ or ‘ridicule’ is probably due to the average user age decreasing. I think people very very rarely are mean to each other here, but more and more common are people misunderstanding their audience and using poor word choice.

As a new member I am scared to post about a topic that already has an awesome 10page thread, but if I do, I’d greatly appreciate it if you could post the link to said thread while ridiculing me :)

The ads are not intrusive, but the subscription is the only thing preventing this forum from devolving into ‘aditorial’ content.

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Generation X here but my feeling is that Boomers are much more likely to get into mud-slinging than Millennials.

Regarding “search the forums!” – this is a common problem in any online community. Go look at the JMT Facebook group or the Reddit ultralight group if you’d like to see some intense examples of this phenomenon.

I find BPL to quite civil most of the time.

WHG,

I’m a millennial.

In the effort to communicate my sentiment, I want to say your response is what I am talking about. I wrote reading comprehension and writing skills, trying to refer to skills like interpreting tone, inference, word choice, understanding your audience, and making good rhetorical choices. Not critical thinking, not general knowledge, I never mentioned anything of the sort, yet I communicated those meanings to you from my words. I assume that’s because of my bad word choice and poor writing skills in general. I was trying to say millennials are more likely to accidentally mud-sling, nothing more.

I’m sincerely trying to be nice here. My point is people should cut each other a lot of slack. If someone posts something that seems mean, just remember that they aren’t Mark Twain and probably didn’t mean any offense.

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Hey all,

I think that whether millennial or Gen X or New Generation is a valuable discussion and I am not going to put my opinion in on this topic on this thread.  But the topic here is “Why are you not a member of BPL”.  We can have a good discussion on this with another post, but we are getting off topic, even though it is a valid topic that has been brought up.

So maybe have another topic on this?  Just my thoughts :)

Nathan

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Hi WHG,

Didn’t mean to offend anybody.  The millennial post was a valid one, all I was saying is it became a hot post :).  What I was referring to is it could become its own thread on its own.  Maybe I was drinking a little too much when I posted lol.

Nathan

I think the key reason behind the drop off in participation is the fee to post.  It’s an archaic model.

It was originally done to prevent automated  bots from spamming the forum.  There were better ways to resolve that issue then to Paywall the site.

the reason this is an issue is that new posters are the lifeblood of any forum as they repopulate the old people who leave.  Cutoff the flow of new members and the forum slowly dies.

The other thing that happened is that UL became easy.  A 10lb base weight takes no unique skill or even excessive cost.  Back when tarp and bivy or just tarp were the only practical ways to drive down weight it was a challenge.

All of the options are pretty good for most of the conditions.