France forums
Everyone tells me that discussion forums are nothing but trouble – forum members are rude to each other; spammers sign up just to tell of the delights of via*ra; everyone thinks they know better than everyone else; and worst of all – there is no possibility of ever making a penny from a forum despite the time and effort they take.
So what to do? Ignore public opinion!
france this way have taken a bold step into the unknown, and added a shiny new France forum. At the same time I also added a ‘comments and questions’ box to most of the pages in the ‘main’ site so that people can, well, ask questions or leave comments.
What does it all mean ? Well it would be good to get a dialogue going, where people wanting to find out about France before they visit can talk to people who know or live in France or experienced visitors. And expats in France can convince others why it is (or isn’t) a great place to live, etc
In principle we all share our knowledge, learn something new, find new places to visit, meet new people etc…and people with gites and businesses in France get a bit of free publicity for themselves.
Everyone benefits? Well that’s the idea.
Typical questions so far include:
“We want to move to Poitou-Charentes but when we were talking to someone about it they said oh no all you get there are ticks flies and thunderstorms.We dont know what to do now”
“Who designed the French flag?”
“We plan to spend three or four days in the area of Chamonix next May. Would you recommend Les Houches, Servos or one of the outlying areas instead of Chamonix?”
Anyway you get the idea I’m sure. It would be great next time you have a few minutes spare if you could stop by, say hello, even tell us whether Poitou-Charentes really is besieged with ticks and flies, because a forum without members is frankly rather quiet! See where the action is (or will be…) at France forums.
edit: ooh errrhh seems people were right, the forum was rapidly besieged by loonies posting spam so has been temporarily suspended while we test other forum software. Sorry, we’ll try and sort it out asap!
Great idea! I’ve just joined and will be using it.
This forum ticks all the boxes for all gîte owners and visitors to France. Well done!
Couldn’t find the forum on your website any more and found your final paragraph on the startup post. Sorry there are loonies out there, some people have too much time and no sense. What’s the status now?
Hi Janice,
Many auto entries on blogs and forums are posted by clever machines rather than people. I don’t currently have the time to keep an eye on the amount of ‘spam’ and idiotic entries it was attracting – I also didn’t really find a good way of getting genuine people who visit the travel pages on francethisway to then go and ask any questions at the forum.
So it’s on the backburner until I have a better idea of how to control it and also integrate it with the main site…