Seeing Barry’s note above, can anyone explain why members seem to prefer to use Facebook rather than the club website?
Many folks simply don’t use FB
Is there any point in having a club forum if folks prefer to use a commercial platform?
Well, I used to use facebook, but found the braggarts and show offs tended to clog the air, also its open to abuse by every village idiot, and has very very poor security controls ( this from my Specialist who actually does this for a living)
I much prefer a club forum, and if any member gets out of hand and all gobby, it is easy to forward a report, and then a hit squad is dispatched to make them ride a Harley Davidson for a month ( the shame )
also facebook is so full of fake news, and show offs flaunting the latest bit of boring tat, that they think will improve the world
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All well and good, but still doesn’t alter the fact that the FB group is much busier than here – ditto, BTW, the BSA Bantam club … forum is stagnating, FB group is thriving … despite the forum having the data archives 
I have never been on FB and if the club forum has less but more meaningful conversations then that suits me fine. I have a blog page with a handful of regular viewers , no doubt if I joined the FB community I could get more “followers” but why?
I’m fine with avoiding the masses 
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I would tend to agree…club forum seems to be much better for objective technical discussions while some of the FB groups are more like “fan clubs” if that makes sense…
At least on here, you can have a “warts and all” discussion… 
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I use both. As a Branch Organiser I use facebook as a tool to reach out to members. I set up a branch site and only allow club members to join. I prefer the forum, but we need to appeal to younger tech savvy members too.
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Single interest forums everywhere are in decline, I see this with car, motorcycle and clothing forums that I look at. . Unfortunately many of those who have grown up in the digital age are attuned to a very superficial level of communication where they look at pictures, dash off a sentence prefaced with ‘wow’ or ‘amazing’ then rapidly move on - it’s the 140 character mindset. The forum format allows a meaningful discussion of topics and it also provides a retrievable archive of topics which is invaluable for motorcycle maintenance. Whereas FB is not so readily searchable and attracts its share of numptys. Maybe the answer is for admins to channel the FB group to towards advertising events and ‘ooh ah’ pictures of bikes. While referring maintenance questions to this place, at the same time turning off further comments on the relevant FB post. That would require more time spent on moderating of course. In short - keep the Forum going please!
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Just to mention, for those that don’t ‘do’ FB, the groups are private (or at least the ones I use are), and are moderated – in fact for the MG group, any posts not directly relevant to MG usage or MG or club related events are deleted by the admins – so ‘tripe’ is not tolerated. 
Moreover, there are many interesting photos, travel reports, rebuild and repair discussions, trouble-shooting and fault-finding questions and discussions, and discussions and test rides for the new models etc., all of which can be very useful and interesting.
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Thanks Mike,
The FB forums sound most interesting, but you have to sell your soul to the devil…
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We have had this discussion many times.
I would say general chit chat is better on FB.
Searching for technical issues and solutions work much better on a forum.
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Facebook tends to give you more immediate responses. As for the comment about many people not using Facebook, well many, many people do and tend to pop into it in spare moments. Anyone can get Facebook, it’s free, it’s easy, and you can do as much or as little as you like with it. So if all you want is to talk Guzzi on there, make a profile with some basic info on there so admin can hopefully tell you’re a real person, and join the Club group. You don’t have to post or read anything else if you don’t want to. Although there are plenty of other Guzzi groups, specific model Guzzi groups, motorcycle groups etc to join if you so desire.
Complaining that you’re not in Facebook and that’s where most of the people and info is seems a bit moot.
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Paul,
What you’re saying is “Facebook is where it’s at”, which may be true, and may not suit those of us who do not wish to be part of it, but fundamentally eliminates any kind of purpose for the Guzzi club to invest any money, time or effort in maintaining a forum.
Why be a member of MGCGB?
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Love the punishment!
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I’m a bit of a social media addict, but I do think that there is a place for forums. My older brother (who is much wiser than I am) will have nothing to do with FB, as amongst other things, he doesn’t want to be offered up for sale as one of FBs saleable products and I sympathise with him and anyone else who shuns FB for this or other reasons. Also, I do feel that, although FB offers an immediacy and wide spread of information, forums offer a more in depth and structured access to the same.
In some other of my areas of interest (one in particular), forums have died and it is a loss.
Yes, there is a place for a forum.
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I don’t use Facebook and I’m not going to start using it to be part of a club I pay a fee to be in. If it goes Facebook only I’ll just do without it and stop paying.
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I committed Facebook Suicide in 2005 after three months with it. It was puerile in my opinion although with enough knowledge I could have probably switched off the pokes, gifts, idiot game invites and I can’t remember what other junk. As John Gruber has stated many times on his blog (daringfireball), Facebook is a very dodgy enterprise and has shown to be so repeatedly. They want your data and to know everything about you so have the only areas for discussion being Facebook does not appeal at all to put it mildly.
Clearly though, as about 1/3 of the world’s population use Facebook every day, I’m in the minority as I always seem to have been …
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I am of a similar opinion. I don’t want to be monetised by some faceless corporation, but I would welcome a broader forum.
I guess the issue is more one of “how does the club convince members and potential members to move their (useful, interesting, relevant) traffic from that platform to this one?”
I don’t do Facebook, my kids set me up on it when I split with their mother but I realised that apart from the potential exploitation of my data, that all of it was no longer my property. Sorry folk but I am not a fan of that sort of control. I will be staying off Facebook.
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I just got a 7 day ban from facebook !!! ( again) I only use it to keep in touch with a small group I belong to
however one of the motorcycle theft groups posted, what would you do if you came back to your motorcycle and 5 youths were using an angle grinder on the locks
apparently answering
I would throw a can of petrol over them, is not the correct answer, silly me
I have no qualms about hurting thieving scum though
Of course I would not really use petrol as you dont get many to the gallon and its bad for the environment
but a claw hammer to the skull is a much more environmentally friendly way of doing it !!
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You’re probably only allowed to say you’ll give them a stern talking to, on Facebook.
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