POLL: Open Up The Facebook Page(s)?

We have a Facebook page called the Bullnose Forum.  And we have one called Gary's Garagemahal.  Both are set up as just placeholders pointing people here.

But there are people on here, myself included, who frequent the various Bullnose pages on Facebook.  And there are people on Facebook who aren't interested in a forum.

So, should we open those pages up to comments and questions?  If so, we need to use the same guidelines we have here, and we need to enforce them as I do not like the way some other pages are allowed to run.  And that would mean we'd need some people to sign up to moderate there.

Thoughts?  Votes?

Do we open up the Facebook page(s) to questions & comments?

Bullnose Forum only

Garysgaragemahal only

Both

Neither

This poll is closed.   

This poll ended on .

I dumped Facebook just over a year ago, and it was one of the smartest things I've done.  The whole site is a cesspool - so I voted 'no'.

Dorsai wrote

I dumped Facebook just over a year ago, and it was one of the smartest things I've done.  The whole site is a cesspool - so I voted 'no'.

I dumped it for almost 5 years for the same reason, and only in the last year or two re-activated my account so that I had access to FB Marketplace and Vendor pages (where they post their sales and discount codes).

Otherwise, I would probably have stayed off it forever.

In any case, I too voted no. I think it would be too difficult to police and keep it as nice/calm/cool/collected as Gary's forum.

Matthew - I understand from whence you come.  But my premise was that we impose our guidelines.

I do NOT want a cesspool and wonder if there are others like that out there who would be willing to join a Facebook page but don't want a forum.  There appears to be a whole generation of folks who do social media, like FB, but don't do forums.  Do we want to help them?  At what cost?  Those are the basic questions.

Cory - I understand where you are coming from as well.  We sure seem to see the seamy side of people at times on Facebook.  And it would be work, for sure, to police it.

I don't really feel it's a worthwhile endeavor, based upon what I see on the current bullnose groups and other vehicle related groups. There's a lot of Gen Y and Gen Z on Facebook, and they aren't necessarily interested in the "why" and "how", they're only interested in the "how". The nice thing about this forum is that it caters to both. I feel our time would be better spent monitoring the current groups and shall any of us determine somebody is interested in more than just "How do I rig this to fix that", then we can continue to direct those people here.

X3 on Facebook, I'm using an old backup account that has six friends, and only use it for Groups and Marketplace. I ditched my personal account back around the time President Trump was first running for office because I was tired of my feed being covered in assorted "filth". Life is much better without Facebook, and if it wasn't for some of my close friends on Instagram, I would get rid of that as well.

I appreciate the direct and honest feedback.  And I can understand ditching Facebook.  However, our church uses it religiously  () so I'll continue to use it.  In fact, via Facebook I just learned that Steve/FoxFord33 is ill, so keep him in your prayers.

Anyway, I agree it would take a lot of work, and I can see how the view might not be worth the climb.

So thanks.  But let's leave this poll up for a bit to see what happens.

Prayers for Steve. 🙏
I hope he recovers.

I don't have an opinion one way or the other.
I'm not on FB and other social media for various reasons, not the least of which is the echo chamber.

I would open up the Bullnose Forum and leave the Garagemahal the way it is. I am admin on two groups, 429-460 Big Block Fords and Ford Dually trucks. We somewhat rely on member policing and it works pretty well, any member can report a post and one of the admins has to review and decide to keep or delete it.

You would be amazed at what people try to post. We had one guy on the 429-460 group, apparently young, who went to work at a dealership and was forever listing new F150s on there. He blocked the site owner and I was asked if I could dump him (he neglected to see who the other admins were) so he was toast. One guy posted his sister's Chevy 1500 4 times, I deleted it each time (all posts have to be approved by an admin) and he kept coming back, I warned him, asked the group owner as he had added him, and the next time I deleted the post and him. I can mute someone who is arrogant and crude for a period, which sometimes they just quit after that.

Gary, maybe some of us who are on FB could help monitor it for you.

Gary, I also voted no. I dumped Face book an while back also. One, for the bad attitude of most of the yungsters  that have no clue and when you give them a straight answer on the right way to do something, that's not the answer they want. I dumped it because it seamed like the inmates were running the prision.
 Lastly, my account was hacked every few months and I dint think we need a bunch of hackers to swarm over us.

If there are a few that would like to join here, cool. Bring them on, but I deffenetly don't miss Face book or the B.S. that it brings.

Bill - You sure didn't make a very strong case for opening up Bullnose Forum.  If anything you added weight to everyone else's argument not to do so.  But I appreciate you volunteering to monitor it if we do open it up.

Steve - You've seen the same guys I have, I can tell.  I just checked and I have 52 of them blocked so I'll never see their posts.  But there seem to be plenty more where they came from.  However, there are good Facebook pages with good users out there - Keith/FORDification runs a good one.


All - Let me try to outline why I asked this question.  We don't want the "normal" (is that what "rank" of rank and file means?  ) Facebook user from the various Ford pages to be part of our "family". However, I can't help but think that there are plenty of "us" out there getting fed up with what they are seeing.  I know there are some as I've seen them say so.

Given that, what if we had a "gentleman's" Bullnose Ford truck page?  We state the guidelines up front and police them tightly.

Having said that, is the view worth the climb?  Most of you are saying it isn't, and I'm sure the maintenance would be time consuming.   And trust me, I'm not looking for more to do.

Anyway, I thought it an interesting question and one we ought to kick around.  Please keep the thoughts and comments flowing.

I wish I had gotten here a bit sooner.  I just hope I can get the words out right, been a long day.  Or rather a normal day after two long days with little sleep.  Seems to me with all this self quarantining everyone is busier than normal and those that aren't are remodeling their houses.

Facebook has a lot of obvious cons.  I has a lot of pros though.  For starters you can reach out to a lot of people quickly.  It's not as involved as a forum to use.  It's doesn't endure the same way a forum does though.  In my head all I see is a Facebook community being a compliment to the forums.  Media is easier to upload, photos and videos and you don't have to host it here.  Facebook foots the bill for that.  You don't need a YouTube account to upload a 30 second clip of the noise your truck is making that's hard to describe.  Built in market place feature.  You can post a truck part and have it shared to everyone you know and everyone they know in seconds.  All businesses have some form of social media these days and it's because everyone out there has a phone in their pocket(when it's not stuck to their nose) and they've got their finger on the pulse.  I mean, yeah, you wouldn't want all of those guys to come flooding here.  But if you thought of it like the parlor. Folks can get their foot in the door and talk with you but you don't have to let them in the house.  You could use it to get members here, quality ones who appreciate this format and what takes places here.  But at the same time you could weed out those 1 post members.  Pop in for a quick question and you never see them again until the next thing breaks.  The groups that I am on, I may answer the same question three times a day, but it's the quick easy stuff and usually 40 other people have beat me to it.  Guys that like to contribute but don't have the time to dedicate to a forum or growing the Bullnose information base.  Forums for the most part are for the older guys, I bet a lot of younger folks don't even know what a forum is.  And I know a lot of you have no use for Facebook.  But I think there is a lot to be gained by having one.  It'll be more work for sure but I also think if started right it'll be manageable.  And I definitely think it'll bridge the gap.  I feel like it's got a lot value as far as organizing and promoting social events, truck shows, swap meets, you name it. ...that's it, that's as far as this thought train will take us for now.  If I remember something I've forgotten I'll come back and add it.

I think it's worth trying.  As far as opening one page or the other?  I couldn't say.  I feel like it should represent this site, but it should also be easy to locate so I think it should have Bullnose in the name or description as well as a small description of what that is.  So something that combines those but accurately represents the forums, whatever that may be, is the way to go in my opinion.

On more thought I'll leave you with.  The Bullnose community in general is small.  It's not as small as the inline six community, but it's only a fraction of the Ford community. For the most part it is a lot of the same guys, though I have seen some smaller clusters of folks doing their own thing, representing the 80-86, that I haven't seen on other forums or groups.  But it's not exclusive.  I think most all of us share what knowledge we have, when we can, whether we want to or not.  Who is going to keep that community alive when we all get tired of hanging out together?  Better yet, what about that teenager who picked one of these beautiful trucks as his first ride or project or both?  What happens the second or third time he gets bad advice from someone who doesn't know these trucks like we do and decides this era of truck must just be junk?  Not build as well as the older ones, not as reliable as the new ones... it was a rough decade for Detroit Iron.  Just like that, one passionate eager hopeful at a time, the dream dies....

-Clifton


*edit* I went back and looked over both pages, I think the garysgaragemahal page is the better of the two because the content is already there and it's got a jump start on the other one as far as reputation goes.  One thought I did remember is the Facebook page isn't for the forum so much as it's for those that don't do forums, know about forums, and in general anyone on Facebook.  It could lead to new members here, and probably will.  But what I'm trying to say is the Facebook page can do, for social media types, what the forum does for us dinosaur types.  All the good stuff is here obviously.  And I can't see this getting duplicated on the Facebook page.  But common knowledge can be shared quickly and easily and in a manner that most people these days can understand and are familiar with.  Going to end there before I start repeating myself too much.

Gary,
I think you're wading out into the morass.

Bill has a comment about about playing with alligators, I believe...

None of us want to deal with it
That's why we're here.

If you want to go there, administrative procedure has to change.
NO warning, no question, no second chance.
Ban hammer at the ready, any and all posts will be deleted.

Poof! They're gone.
I've had to salt the earth before
I can do it again.

I'm not nearly as kind and forgiving as you.
Ray considers me a jaded and bitter old man.
I'll own that too.

BTW, I didn't vote, because I'm not on FB, for the very reasons outlined above.
I feel if I don't participate I don't have the right to vote, but I do have the right to my opinion.

Clifton - Thank you for the thoughts.  And what you said makes sense.  We don't get a lot of young people on here, but we have some.  Perhaps you are right about how to better reach the younger generations.

Jim - I'm not wading in.  I'm thinking about wading in.  And doing due diligence before getting a toe wet.

All - I, personally, do not have the time to moderate anything else.  I believe my time would be better spent adding content to the documentation on here.  For instance, I have two more brochures that should be added.  I have the over 1,000 pages of the part number to ID number cross reference scanned in but that needs a lot of work to add to the site.  And soon the 1986 Standard & Utility Parts Catalog should arrive in the mail and need scanning and uploading.  Meanwhile I have two trucks that are begging to be worked on.

So if this were to happen, and that's a big IF, I'd have to have commitments from several others to help manage it.  But not manage in a loose fashion where we let the inmates blow the whistle when someone is out of line.  Instead, in an active hands-on fashion where things that do not meet our guidelines, not just your personal guidelines, are immediately dealt with.

So keep those thoughts coming in.  And keep voting.  The vote is 6 no and 2 yes, so it isn't looking likely.

I have started and continue to moderate a handful of facebook pages.  All are working really well and have nothing but "grown up" activity in them.  The key is to post clear enforceable rules and keep the group "private", requiring prospective members to get approval.  In order to get approval, I ask my prospective members to answer a simple question and now FB allows us (moderators/admins) to ask them to agree to the rules during this process.  If they don't answer the question or agree to the rules they don't get in.  It's simple.  This alleviates lots of problems.  Most of my requests are denied solely on this criteria I've set up and all the members benefit from it.

I think there are handful of Bullnose Ford FB pages, so it's very confusing to know how they are differentiated from another.  I would prefer to be in a small and focused group of ADULTS than a large and loose group of people who tend to waste my time with nonsense.

All this being said, I think it will be hard for members to follow content from both sources on here.  Some are opposed to FB, so they won't see the FB postings and such.  Some will only see the FB stuff and not bother to also come here.  It may be extra work for everybody.  Just a consideration.

Troy

Troy - Those are good observations from someone that's been there, done that.  And the vetting process you described is something I'd assumed but hadn't mentioned, so some may not have understood that it would happen.  I would use the same guidelines on Facebook as we do here on the forum.

And you are right, there are a handful of Bullnose FB pages.  I'm a member of several, and I'll confess I've not tracked which ones are full of what kinds of people.  Maybe I should.  Perhaps one of them is tightly managed?  Which begs the question of whether we need our own or not, doesn't it?

But I wouldn't expect people to follow content from a FB page to this forum.  If we do this, and that's a big IF, some of us will be on both.  However I'd expect that 90 - 95% of forum people won't be on FB and vice versa.

Having said that, I would expect there to be some crossover, mainly from FB to forum.  I say that because I believe that some FB users will come to realize that if you want continuity, like a build thread or serious problem solving, then the forum is the place to do that.  But forum members might learn that getting a quick answer to a simple question is faster on FB.

However, Troy, not to put you on the spot but it appears you voted "no".  And yet in reading what you wrote I'd have bet on "yes".  If I'm right, and if you don't mind, could you share your thinking on why you voted that way?

Hi Gary,

Yes, voted no after typing up my response and realizing that I like the forum.  Many forums are being replaced by FB, and if a viable forum exists I fail to see the need for repeating things on Facebook and it's more to manage.  In my case, when I created the facebook pages I own, there was no other/better place to have those outlets.

Troy

Thanks, Troy.  That makes sense.

I think you run the risk of creating an alternative group by setting up on Facebook. You will have the people that only use the Facebook resources and then people who only use this forum.

It will be the Peoples Front of Judiah and the Judian Peoples Front all over again!

Disclaimer: I have not been on Facebook for some years and I love Monty Python.

Gsmblue wrote

It will be the Peoples Front of Judiah and the Judian Peoples Front all over again!

Hahahaha!