To Close or Not to Close?

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The GCGC started June 2008.

December, 2009, Facebook hits a major milestone. With 350m registered users and 132m unique monthly users, it becomes the most popular social platform in the world.Jan 25, 2019

In 2020, Facebook continues to grow. Worldwide, over 2.45 BIllion people  log on to Facebook each month in 2020. ... Midway through 2020, the average reach for posts to followers on a Facebook page was down to 5.5% of their Page's followers.Sep 8, 2020

So, we were growing rapidly at the same time.
As for facebook, We have 370 followers with our last post in 2015.  I, as an individual, do not use Facebook. 
We don't even know who "has" the account. There is a staff member that has some control over posting (or something like that, don't really understand or remember)
Sure, we could start anew on Facebook but I don't see how that functionally works for the GCGC.

The contest came about quickly.
You should have recieved an email about it, actually 1 at the beginning of each weeks contest.
Check your profile / notifications / last one in the list if you are not getting them.

Well...I guess that I do view the forum as the GCGC...never thought about it that way though.

The GCGC started as an effort by the founders. There was never any formal organizational structure. No officers or paperwork defining the GCGC.
It was just a group of cachers that came together and started a website that was in the form of the original forum with the founders being the original "Lackey"s.
As individual members faded out others that had been given forum privilages stepped in to fill the voids and granted forum privilages to new Lackeys.
There were no "Lackey" meetings aside from a few at the beginning to get it started. Everything occured on the forum. We had few phones and handheld GPS's were the standard

When the original web admin wanted to "retire" I took it upon myself to takeover as the forum Admin. Without our webmaster I did not have the expertise to run the PHP forum (none of us did) and wanted to save the site and the recurring cost of the web hosting site since that was the primary expense. After about a month of preparation I moved the site to our current host at Proboards and maintained the Domain name. The new site was an improvement with the benefit of no cost.

With no formal documents of whatever they call them organizing the GCGC.
No meetings of officers or members.
No other means of communicating with members...
Yes, this is the GCGC.

Let me ramble on some more.

We do not have 401c status or formal officers.
We have the organizational structure they created. As one steps back another fills the void on their own and interested active members are brought in to maintain the GCGC.

I fail to see how social media sites can do the same things we did in the past and attempt to do now.
We have no meetings or recurring in person activities by staff or members.
I can't imagine how any contest can be managed on Facebook Instagram or Twitter. Promoted, mentioned and commented on, sure.

There are many other Geocaching Clubs around and I was invited to join a group of them elsewhere (for admins of the clubs)
We appear to be somewhat unique in that we are disorganized, uncontrolled and self run.
The others have those formal "documents of confederation" with membership fees for most or all voting members and officers with terms and tax free status.
They have a website introducing officers, activites they are involved in, GC based events and a forum much like ours.
That is when I added the landing page to our forum. I don't updated it with our contests (we have no other activities mostly due to lack of interest in the site in general) I do that in the forum with banners, shouts and boxes on the side.

I don't see an appetite for membership fees and have no interest in going through the documentational effort to formalize our structure in order to gain 401c status.
Our Theme and Relay contests appear to be a little out of the ordinary. Others have contests but they are not like ours and not nearly as frequent even with our lack of interest in most.

When the GCGC first opened. It opened with a Relay. Back then they were actual relays. Find the GCGC relay cache and move it for the next to find. That morphed into something similar to our current contests. The Theme contest promoted hides with a specified style or goal. Those were some great caches out of the norm. rvstauff has been a "Lackey" longer than I have and took on the mantle of GameMaster creating more and more contests. He has formulated the type and style of our contest postings making it easy to participate and understand the rules. We were founded on our GCGC only contests (not listed on GC) that became contests using listing sites that we use primarily today.

So again... YES, THIS FORUM IS THE GCGC



 

Well that feels like an insult, but maybe I'm just reading into it.  If I touched a nerve with my question I'm sorry.  C-ya

Forums and Geocaching sites see people come and go as they run through their daily lives. This is the nature of things. I think more and more people are searching for something more than just social media. When I ran across this forum on a traditional terracache, I thought hmmm, let me go check it out. I was so happy to not get a 404 message. I see a group of people trying to keep a club together and have a place where they all can come and discuss things that are not possible on other formats. The closeness of a community of geocachers is special. The connection of shared experiences and checking in is better than than the thousands of scrolling on Twitter, or mindless misimpressions of life on FB, or pictures after pictures.

I look at this club and format more like all of us sitting around a campfire after a fun day of exploring in the field. Yes, it takes a little extra effort. Yes we have to keep reaching out for people to engage. I see your contest and feel this is one way, but just sending personal emails to your former active members and letting them know we miss them at the fire is another. Letting people know that they are more important and that their opinions and feelings matter. Friends of the GCGC and ask them to just check and post about their geocaching experience. I like what I am learning about The GCGC, and hope to a part of regrowing the community of geocachers. I thank all of the ADMIN for their efforts, and appreciate their time. This just makes it more special and cozy around the fire.

I am in agreement with all you say. Your honest discussion is not rude in any way.

What can you get here that you don't get there?
Actual discussion? I am not really going to be able to answer in a comparison of the GCGC forum vs a FB group because I do not use FB. From what I have seen of FB (not the group format) there is no back and forth expanding ideas like a conversation. It appears to me as more of a string of random thoughts followed by other random thoughts. I assume a group would be more topic oriented. Would you be able to ask a question about how to find a cache or solve a puzzle and get a couple direct answers to the query in the next post?

Contests have been the mainstay of the site since the beginning and I know that that is about the only thing visiting members look at now. Yes convienience matters. I personally don't find Twitter convenient but rather cumbersome and for me. IT is the extra step. Instagram is visually entertaining but I just see the randomness.

Tapatalk was first mentioned several times in March of 2017. It is mentioned in the Did You Know section when refering to the mobile version in 2018. I thought that Tapatalk had been mentioned more over the years but I see it really has not directly been promoted. I will set something up for just that. The site itself has a mobile version that works well on phones but it of course does not have all the extras of the site or tapatalk.

You can set individual members on your profile block list to block their interaction with you. Not sure exactly what that does but it is an option. Tone and emphasis is often difficult to convey in a text statement and is just as difficult to interpret correctly in every instance. There just aren't the other cues we as humans use to follow when reading or typing a response. I will try to be more aware of this.

We do have an Instagram, Twitter and FB group. They are listed in the news scoll on the board page as well as in little buttons to the left on every page.
They are not very active since there are virtually no "members" that follow them.(except I assume FB.) They do have followers (a decent number) but they are almost exclusively from out of the area and most of those are from out of the country. I have requested help several times from members that I hoped would have a better grasp of FB, Twitter and Instagram and the interest to develop our place there. We even asked for a Social Media Czar to come forward in the past. Hard to get another member to take on the task of even a portion of it when they are not here to read it. I don't even have the neccesary info to give another member to take over our FB group/account or whatever it may be.

As for geocaching events, That is just me. I have never been one for events. I rarely attended any (perhaps 3 or 4 since I started caching) I don't care for them in general but of course I see their importance which is why we need them for the GCGC. Creating, planning, organizing and attending an event is not something I would be good at and why I would hope members would step up or incorporate the GCGC in their own event. Promoting it here, on Twitter, Instagram I can help with. I have offered a GCGC Banner available for any to use.

While we used to come here and talk about all things geocaching and had the GCGC Relays as a bonus, Now the Relays are the reason for visits with the other discussion something to be avoided. If those that visit for the Relay would look around and participate we would have more discussion which in turn generates more discussion. The overall inactivity feeds the cycle of inactivity just as posts create posts. Visits alone to read others comments do nothing for the forum.

The recent activity is not Covid related. You would think that when everyone was stuck at home or had to go out alone more often they would gravitate to the GCGC as an outlet. They did not. Recent activity is very recent. Related to the Fantastic 5 Relay and the arrival of cash108 and his efforts.
I am asking for help.