Backcountry Pilot

[nickelb offline]

Hi -

I love BCP

I was wondering if anyone else feels it would be a good idea to break the "Aircraft Types" forum into forums specific to primary Backcountry Airplane types subgroups - for example:
1. C18x
2. C17x
3. DHC-2/DHC-3
4. C20x
5. Cubs
6. Backcountry Twins
7. Backcountry Experimental


I'm sure this group can make a better list of sub-forums. I'm of course biased towards 180/DHC-2/LA4

[Mapleflt offline]

Nope, please don't try to fix something that isn't broken. Many of those "makes & models" have existing dedicated sites already.

This site is simply put the BEST aviation site going, respectful community, self-policing, limited "third party" presence with only very targeted solicitation.

That's my 2 cents, cheers

[flyingjack offline]

Mapleflt +1

[WWhunter offline]

+2 I agree, this is the first site I 'click' on when I turn on my computer. I like ALL airplanes and feel I am learning something all the time. Brand/model sites have a way of seemingly boasting that they are the only game in town. Whereas this site is not brand specific which I enjoy. I've come to learn that most aircraft have their pros and cons. Not a single one is better as an all around flyer.

Granted, model specific subcategories have their place, especially when you are looking for information on a particular item or mod.

[Zzz]

First, I will disagree with the idea that the site isn't broken. LOL. From my point of view, it's outdated and badly in need of a refresh. It's a cobbled-together mess of nearly 10 year old tech that developed some bad technical debt and the only way out is to replace it and migrate data. For anyone who's ever done that, you know the fun involved.

I'm glad that you guys enjoy it for what it is, though. Part of me enjoys it too if I can isolate my technical anxiety from the camaraderie.

As for nickelb's suggestion, I think it is totally fair. The site could do better to encourage submission of type-specific content.

He's suggesting putting subforums under Aircraft Types for various popular types. If you use the forum like I do, which is to use the "View Active Topics" search several times per day to see topics from all subforums, it would change absolutely nothing in the site experience. If you wanted to view only topics about Cessna 206s though, it would allow you to drill down into that subforum and easily view all 206 categorized topics. I don't really see a downside unless you want to see all Aircraft Types threads in a single list. I'm guessing no one really is looking for that.

Pro: Consolidation of specific type threads in a single place
Con: Threads with some overlap applicability for all Cessnas might end up in "Cessna 206" subforum instead of Modifications.

Pro: Better taxonomy, organization
Con: More work to manage the forum organization

Pro: There's no single place for good DHC-2 info, might we build it?
Con: It's a lot of work to convince people to forget Facebook and contribute to independent communities who actually care about DHC-2 archival posterity.

Maybe if some wealthy investor were to partner with me by buying a share of BCP to help motivate these improvements....

[CompSciAndFly offline]

First, I will disagree with the idea that the site isn't broken. LOL. From my point of view, it's outdated and badly in need of a refresh. It's a cobbled-together mess of nearly 10 year old tech that developed some bad technical debt and the only way out is to replace it and migrate data. For anyone who's ever done that, you know the fun involved.

Maybe if some wealthy investor were to partner with me by buying a share of BCP to help motivate these improvements....

I've upgraded and converted phpBB forums such as this one. Not fun. I've also converted old legacy government tax software and data into the 21st century, definitely not fun.

I'd be interested in hearing what sort of monetary investment you're seeking and if you've considered sweat equity options. Would like to have a look at current revenue streams and forecasts. I imagine my software engineering background could be super beneficial. I have various technical ideas relating to backcountry aviation which I've thought about over the past couple of years. Would be interested to see them implemented in a site with an already functioning user base.

Shoot me a text or email Zane.

[Zzz]

First, I will disagree with the idea that the site isn't broken. LOL. From my point of view, it's outdated and badly in need of a refresh. It's a cobbled-together mess of nearly 10 year old tech that developed some bad technical debt and the only way out is to replace it and migrate data. For anyone who's ever done that, you know the fun involved.

Maybe if some wealthy investor were to partner with me by buying a share of BCP to help motivate these improvements....

I've upgraded and converted phpBB forums such as this one. Not fun. I've also converted old legacy government tax software and data into the 21st century, definitely not fun.

I'd be interested in hearing what sort of monetary investment you're seeking and if you've considered sweat equity options. Would like to have a look at current revenue streams and forecasts. I imagine my software engineering background could be super beneficial. I have various technical ideas relating to backcountry aviation which I've thought about over the past couple of years. Would be interested to see them implemented in a site with an already functioning user base.

Shoot me a text or email Zane.

Thanks Logan. I think before I go down that road I need to explore some business planning. But between a few of us, the tech stuff should be doable, hopefully so I don't have to hire my coworkers for the job.

[NineThreeKilo offline]

Type specific sub forums would be cool, but also more clicking


If I’m just browsing I just hit active topics

I think getting a little more into tech and video making and field craft would be cool, but overall there are a ton of lame flying websites, this is the only one I still bother to participate in for a reason, good knowledge and the lay out ain’t really a big issue, would it be nice to have a cleaner way to copy paste a YouTube video or something sure, but not that big of a deal IMO

[rmac offline]

Not to disagree with Zane or anything , but I don't see a lot of problems with the website as it is. I think it looks nicer than any other site I use, and the content is easy to find and of high quality. Really, the only problem I run into is getting logged out frequently. I'm not complaining: I realize it's a well-known problem, and it's easy to log back in. If that's my biggest gripe, I really don't have any of substance.

Zane, as the developer and maintainer, you are more aware of blemishes than anybody else. For me, there are no pressing problems.

-Rick

[Zzz]

Not to disagree with Zane or anything , but I don't see a lot of problems with the website as it is. I think it looks nicer than any other site I use, and the content is easy to find and of high quality. Really, the only problem I run into is getting logged out frequently. I'm not complaining: I realize it's a well-known problem, and it's easy to log back in. If that's my biggest gripe, I really don't have any of substance.

Zane, as the developer and maintainer, you are more aware of blemishes than anybody else. For me, there are no pressing problems.

-Rick

Thanks Rick.

For anyone who suffers the frequent logout issue, I have a life tip that's really changed my life and improved my overall personal data security:

Use a password manager.

For the unfamiliar, a password manager stores any website/username/password combo in an encrypted vault that you can access with a single master password. In this day and age, remembering all our passwords is a huge pain in the ass, right? So what do we do? We recycle them and use the same ones from site to site.

When superhacker baddie steals the database of unencrypted passwords from some mom 'n pop e-commerce website, they can sift through the data and see that "super-agpilot69" uses password "biggestflaps". Hmm... I wonder if that will work to crack his Facebook account? You see the problem.

Password managers are great for 3 main reasons:

1. They let you use a different strong password for every different account. Since you don't have to remember the password, it can autogenerate a super complex password for you that uses no dictionary words—a different one every time.

2. You never type more than one password—your master password to unlock the vault; the end of remembering passwords.

3. The top password managers like Bitwarden (my choice), LastPass, OnePassword, etc have Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and mobile OS plugins that allow you to call up a password in seconds, recognizing the site you're trying to login into. For mobile you can even use your fingerprint in lieu of typing in the master password. Then it just autofills your username and password. Hit submit and you're logged in.

I haven't typed in my BCP password in years.

[Battson offline]

Increasingly, the idea of organizing information into folders or sub-forums is redundant. Relational data, tagging, and metadata is the way of the future. More of a Wikipedia model, for those unfamiliar with the concept (I am not an expert).

I like the suggestion, however I don't support it for the above reasons.

We have sub-threads over on the Bearhawk Forum, by aircraft model, but there is so much overlap that most content ends up in the "general" or similar more generic sub-threads, so it doesn't work very well.

[Zzz]

Increasingly, the idea of organizing information into folders or sub-forums is redundant. Relational data, tagging, and metadata is the way of the future. More of a Wikipedia model, for those unfamiliar with the concept (I am not an expert).

I like the suggestion, however I don't support it for the above reasons.

We have sub-threads over on the Bearhawk Forum, by aircraft model, but there is so much overlap that most content ends up in the "general" or similar more generic sub-threads, so it doesn't work very well.

I think both work in different scenarios, Contextually, tags and links and metadata are great. Sometimes browsing and drilling into some taxonomy or hierarchy works better. Neither are mutually exclusive. We can have it all if I find a sugar daddy...lol.

[hotrod180 offline]

There's more than enough sub-forums on the BCP website,
esp since there's also the make-and-model groups (which I don't even know how to access).
Too many sub-forums makes it tough-to-impossible to search out a specific discussion when the "search" feature fails to find it.
The supercub.org site has even more sub-forums than BCP-- ditto the hard to find stuff problem,
esp when people don't post in the forum you would think was appropriate to the subject.

[Zzz]

When I released the 3.0 version of BCP in 2013, my idea was to make all the information more accessible and useful—more useful than a forum.

My grand plan was to curate the best knowledge from the forum and put it in a formatted version in the Knowledge Base, and have all the pages interconnected with contextual links.

Many of you helped with this, writing greater knowledge base articles from scratch, but I was never very successful at creating a good workflow for curating that forum knowledge. Basically, it's a full time job for a knowledgeable person in this space. And with the advent of social media and Facebook, participation of enthusiastic volunteers waned.

So here we are. I'm still working on a plan to create something better.

[CompSciAndFly offline]

When I released the 3.0 version of BCP in 2013, my idea was to make all the information more accessible and useful—more useful than a forum.

My grand plan was to curate the best knowledge from the forum and put it in a formatted version in the Knowledge Base, and have all the pages interconnected with contextual links.

Many of you helped with this, writing greater knowledge base articles from scratch, but I was never very successful at creating a good workflow for curating that forum knowledge. Basically, it's a full time job for a knowledgeable person in this space. And with the advent of social media and Facebook, participation of enthusiastic volunteers waned.

So here we are. I'm still working on a plan to create something better.

I think a good step in the right direction for knowledge base additions would be to set-up a dynamic list on a thread which contains Topics that people would like to see in the knowledge base which aren't currently there. Then, allow people to sign up for those topics so that only one person is writing something for it at the same time. Once the release of the topic, the topic list is updated, removing the topic from one's that still need to be written.

In addition, I think there should a security update, allowing users the ability to update/edit knowledge base topics. This allows us to add and/or correct things as time goes on. With such implementation, a log should be kept of modifications/edits similar to how Wiki works. Giving a couple of users access to Approve/Deny those updates to the knowledge base topics which are submitted.

[Zzz]

I think a good step in the right direction for knowledge base additions would be to set-up a dynamic list on a thread which contains Topics that people would like to see in the knowledge base which aren't currently there. Then, allow people to sign up for those topics so that only one person is writing something for it at the same time. Once the release of the topic, the topic list is updated, removing the topic from one's that still need to be written.

In addition, I think there should a security update, allowing users the ability to update/edit knowledge base topics. This allows us to add and/or correct things as time goes on. With such implementation, a log should be kept of modifications/edits similar to how Wiki works. Giving a couple of users access to Approve/Deny those updates to the knowledge base topics which are submitted.

The wiki convention really is the best. It has version control, the ability to dynamically create new pages just by creating an arbitrary link, and usually the autoformatting of markdown is very readable and lends itself to creating hierarchy of the information.

[hotrod180 offline]

There's more than enough sub-forums on the BCP website,
esp since there's also the make-and-model groups (which I don't even know how to access).
Too many sub-forums makes it tough-to-impossible to search out a specific discussion when the "search" feature fails to find it.
The supercub.org site has even more sub-forums than BCP-- ditto the hard to find stuff problem,
esp when people don't post in the forum you would think was appropriate to the subject.

Although I'm not much of a computer guy, and therefore blissfully unaware of the technical shortfalls,
I guess I'm saying I like the website just fine the way it is.
The above was not meant to be a criticism.

[Battson offline]

And with the advent of social media and Facebook, participation of enthusiastic volunteers waned.

Don't worry, Facebook is in it's death throes now. None of the new generation use it
Whether people come back to forums will depend on Google's search engine and the like, if the knowledge is out there they will come.