 Poster: A snowHead
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Comedy Goldsmith, the name David Burt appears in several of the posts in that thread - not just as a username. So either it is a real username OR someone has edited the posts to match the fake username. Or there has been sophisticated hacking....
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I know Dave Burt who is a user here on snowheads. No ideas if he's ever used the SCGB forum though
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Apologies to Mr Burt if I got that wrong.
The Burt binding, incidentally, was one of the most wondrous and marvellous inventions of all time. Imagine having a binding that pulls your boot and ski together after a fall. It really existed!
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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 priceless
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Gerry, instead of wasting your time ... how about a progress report on any of your promised objectives?
| Gerry Aitken, autumn 2011, appealing for votes to become a councillor/director at the SCGB AGM wrote: |
| If elected, I’m keen to enhance our reputation as an inclusive community of like-minded people. I will also press for the Ski Club becoming less commercial and more independently financed, with a higher percentage of turnover coming from a larger number of members. I’m also determined to improve communication within the Club, with a greater emphasis on direct, member to member messaging via the website. Finally, I want to encourage a greater number of members of all ages and abilities, both new and existing, to engage in the Ski Club’s on-snow activities. |
Please respond with your established snowHeads username ... conveniently registered as 'Gerry' ...
20 September 2004:
http://snowheads.com/ski-forum/viewtopic.php?t=2517
| Gerry wrote: |
| The Club is actively pursuing the younger generation and we'll have to wait and see if the current strategies work. |
Context: Gerry had already established himself as an analyst and strategic force ...
31 August 2004:
http://snowheads.com/ski-forum/viewtopic.php?t=2254
| Gerry wrote: |
u brain, thanks for the data.
So that's:
6 who joined because of the open forum.
4 who left because of MO day.
1 who joined because of MO day.
1 who was going to join because of the open forum, but didn't because of MO day.
Less than 1% of the 1500 people who completed the Members Questionnaire last year (pre MO day) cited the Forum as the main reason for using the website. What’s more of the 15 different services polled from the website, chat was valued 14th; only the e-ski shop was less valued. So the traffic was anything but forum centred.
Was the Ski Club on the verge of a 'membership explosion' because of the open forum? |
Well, I think we can safely say that snowHeads was on the verge of a 'membership explosion'.
What are your conclusions, Gerry, 9 years down the line, on that nugget of analysis and strategic thinking?
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My goodness, Mr Aitken really does have a way with words, doesn't he? Like several other snowHeads, I let my membership of the Ski Club lapse partly because I thought his posts on the forum, made as an officer of the Club, reflected so badly on it. Plus ça change...
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Pedantica, and he can't get the whole butterfly thing right - surprised you weren't more shocked by that.
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Comedy Goldsmith, What on earth did you do/say to p@iss Gerry off?
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Lookalike
President Obama poses for SCGB leadership
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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| Mistress Panda wrote: |
| admin wrote: |
| It's uncanny but I met your dream-girl just a few days ago - we had after dinner drinks in VT - really did! |
You met Carrie from Mythbusters? In a ski resort? |
She is my hot 2nd choice. She would have to mud wrestle Jess from 'The Real Hustle' and win if she wants to be my dream girl.
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wtf - first time I read this thread 6 minutes ago there was only one page - now there are 24. Anyone care to offer a summary?
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You know it makes sense.
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Just done page 2. admin - that was sick. I thought my monitor was fecked. Looking forward to Page 3 now......erm - of the thread - not the other Page 3.....erm again - second thoughts.........
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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| ALQ wrote: |
Comedy Goldsmith, What on earth did you do/say to p@iss Gerry off?
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I told him Guinness is undrinkable
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Poster: A snowHead
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Overnight message received from The White House (the one in Washington, not Wimbledon)
Dear Mr Goldsmith
Thank you for posting the photo. I have a message that I'd like you to relay to the Ski Club of Great Britain, its members, leaders, and beer sponsors:
"Yes we can"
Barack Hussein Obama II
President of the United States
'God Bless Guinness'
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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GROUNDHOG DAY
PJSki/Gerry Aitken/Tim Brown
I've lumped you all together. It's said, by a high quality source, that there is IP address evidence linking the three of you, but I've not seen this data. You seem to share similar obsessions, mentalities, a proclivity to indulge in online personal abuse/trolling etc.
'Tim Brown' was banned from this forum many years ago, for an extremely nasty personal comment, but apparently re-emerged to continue trolling as PJ Ski. Gerry Aitken occasionally falls back to posting horrible stuff (despite having been officially reprimanded by the Ski Club of Great Britain about ten years ago). The public SCGB forum re-started a couple of months ago and, hey presto, you're unable to contain yourself again. Your posting, wishing someone to "rot", doesn't exactly chime with the SCGB's strict rules against abusive postings. As of now, the comments remain on the record, unmoderated:
http://www.skiclub.co.uk/skiclub/membersonly/snowtalk/discussion.aspx/The-Ski-Club?discussionID=14314#.USshPTd7TTo
The added problem is that you're a director of the Ski Club of Great Britain. Are the SCGB's moderators, employed by the Club's directors, supposed to moderate one of those directors?
Perhaps you, Gerry Aitken, could address some of the more important issues concerning the future growth, development and health of the SCGB. The Club reports that it has recently spent £100,000 per annum upgrading its website. Has this delivered the requisite growth in users and use? The Club reports recent expenditure growth to £230,000 to £260,000 for its resort operations. Are there sufficient members skiing with SCGB leaders, or joining the Club to do so, to justify these budgets?
In going forward, a process of truth and reconciliation may have to take place. Here's some SCGB-published data:
A. “Ski and Board advertisers benefit from reaching almost 100,000 affluent ABC1 readers”
[Source: Publicom (SCGB advertising representatives) website November 2011]
What was the evidence for this?
B. “Ski TV is watched by 33,500 subscribers”
[Source: Publicom (SCGB advertising representatives) website Nov 2011]
“Number of Ski TV subscribers: 33,600”
SCGB website (advertiser section) October 2010
What was the evidence for this? Ski TV (now Ski Club TV) subscriptions were discontinued after autumn 2010. What was the number of subscribers at that time?
C. “We continue to sell Ski and Board magazine on the newsstands and we increased our audited ABC circulation to 22,996, against a declining trend for other snowsports magazines.”
Caroline Stuart-Taylor, SCGB CEO, 2011 Annual Report
“Britain’s most popular snowsports magazine”
Slogan on Ski+Board front covers, Autumn 2011
The ABC-certified figure for newsstand sales of Ski+Board for 2011 was 1193 (giveaway copies have been increased to 4172). Daily Mail Ski sells 7625. The Ski Club’s previous magazine Ski Survey sold over 12,000 copies on the newsstands in the early 1990s. What measure of popularity is being cited here?
D. "About the Ski Club
We currently have around 34,000 members (skiers and snowboarders)."
[Source: Current home page for SCGB members:
http://www.skiclub.co.uk/skiclub/myskiclub/default.aspx#.USsjaDd7TTo
Is this "current" membership figure - for February 2013 - true? It's the highest the Club has ever published.
E. "There are over 380,000 unique visitors to skiclub.co.uk in peak months of the ski season, 5.7 million visitor sessions each year. This equates to over 1.8 million unique users each year to the Ski Club website. 1 million people in the UK take a snowsports holiday, so the Ski Club is touching the majority of these people through its website."
Source: http://www.skiclub.co.uk/advertise/webadvertising.aspx#.USsoczd7TTo
What are the sources of this data? Is it true?
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Comedy Goldsmith, crumbs! You are obsessed by the Ski Club, aren't you?  Whatever! (As they say.) It's up to you.
I will say that you are right about PJSki/Gerry Aitken/Tim Brown. I have found him rude, charmless and a truly dreadful advert for the Club. If he really is a director I can't think how he gets away with such behaviour. He should be an ambassador to attract potential members not someone who drives them away. I am very puzzled by this. Any views, anyone?
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Point E doesn't make sense, 380,000 unique visitors and 1.8m unique visitors in the same paragraph?
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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maggi, They speak through many socks . . . even the old Cochon d'Roz turns up as a panty-liner occasionally 
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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From the "About us" page
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| Winterhighland wrote: |
| Point E doesn't make sense, 380,000 unique visitors and 1.8m unique visitors in the same paragraph? |
The claimed 380,000 unique visitors is in a "peak month" and the 1.8 m unique visitors is in a year, so the two figures are not necessarily contradictory...
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Winterhighland, there's numbers, there's statistics, there's server analytics . . . listed in order of bolux 
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Alastair Pink, the way it's written to me with "peak months" suggested several months lumped together over the core of the season.
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| Quote: |
40 million page views a year
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oh, perleeze
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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The SCGB website is audited by ABC Electronic. This is the latest ABC certificate (5-page pdf):
http://www.abc.org.uk/Certificates/18216329.pdf
I can't find any data on that certificate expressed as anything other than "daily" or "monthly". My understanding is that ABC do not certify annual data. I'll take a further look into this.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Comedy Goldsmith, they've audited one month - January, presumably THE peak month, and then multiplied by 12 to get that 40 million page views figure. Hmmm.
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Yes, it seems crystal clear that the ABC certificate is specific for 1 Jan - 31 Jan 2012 - one calendar month's data only.
ABC state:
| Quote: |
What is an ABC web traffic audit?
An ABC web audit verifies activity for a calendar month or over a 6 monthly period. Supporting data (log files), site filtering rules and a claim form is sent to us in order to verify the claim made. The log files need to be filtered so that any invalid traffic is excluded. Invalid traffic includes non-human actvity e.g. robots and spiders which crawl the web in order to build search engine indexes and internal usage. Only valid web usage which complies with industry agreed standards is counted for certification. |
Source: http://www.abc.org.uk/Rules-Regulations/Audit-Information/
Not surprisingly, given that this is the pre-eminent media auditing organisation, there are strict reporting regulations:
ABC Publicity Byelaws
http://www.abc.org.uk/PageFiles/44/New%20publicity%20Byelaws%20Feb%202013.pdf
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You know it makes sense.
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Another spot check on SCGB forum activity:
With the forum now open to the general public (as registered users), plus the 34,000 stated membership of the SCGB ...
24 Feb: 5 posts were made by 4 posters
25 Feb: 9 posts were made by 6 posters
As always, these figures are for posts visible to non-members and members banned from the members' sections.
One development: the forum guidelines no longer include the 'excessive postings' rule, which limited participants to no more than 4% of daily posts, and probably therefore put some people off. Now that the floodgates are open, let's see what happens.
One comparison: I counted 15 posts on snowHeads in the ten minutes before 12 noon. Traffic on snowHeads is currently well over 1000 posts per 24 hours (the average over the 9 years of the site's existence has been around 660 posts/day).
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cran
cran
Guest
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| Comedy Goldsmith wrote: |
| One development: the forum guidelines no longer include the 'excessive postings' rule, which limited participants to no more than 4% of daily posts and probably therefore put some people off. |
I doubt it... Since when did anybody ever read forum rules... 
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Poster: A snowHead
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I think there's a very fundamental point being missed here.
SH is/was a forum first, and has become more club-like as it's gone on.
The SCGB website is a club website that happens to have a forum. It's not a like-for-like comparison.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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feef, you forget that the Teacozy was a club first and is now just lip service to a TO. Its forum is just the tits on the boar.
Last edited by Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person on Tue 26-02-13 14:09; edited 1 time in total
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Masque, the numbers don't really support that description. Roughly 1700 members take a Freshtracks holiday each winter. So that's about 5% of SCGB members, if the 34,000 figure is correct.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Comedy Goldsmith, What are you trying to say? We already know from sampling here that the majority of people who join are in it for the easily accessed discounts and many don't cancel their standing orders out of man's basic fiscal inertia (too friggin' lazy to bother) so that membership number is complete bollux . . . you, me and the paid liars (marketing) in the Teacozy know that. The club has no more purpose to its management than to 'gentrify' it business operation and prop up the vested interests of a few who like a cheap week or 20 on the snow. Basically club membership is a ponzi scheme for those few to take a salary and extended vacations on the back of a fading reputation.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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All I'm saying is that about 5% of SCGB members use the club as a tour operator. As you probably know, Freshtracks was purchased by the SCGB when Caroline Stuart-Taylor (who had founded it) was hired as the chief executive in 1996. The numbers have been very similar since then: 1,616 members took Freshtracks holidays in 1998-9, from a membership base which was about 10% lower than it is now.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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| Masque wrote: |
| feef, you forget that the Teacozy was a club first and is now just lip service to a TO. Its forum is just the tits on the boar. |
One's opinion on the status of the club as a club is largely irrelevant to my argument.
Allow me to rephrase..
SH is/was a forum first and foremost, which has since developed some aspects of a club.
the SCGB website is there to promote the activities of the SCGB first and foremost and the forum is incidental to that.
That's why comparing forum traffic is a pointless exercise, they are not the same.
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| Quote: |
...is a pointless exercise
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feef, Welcome to Snowheads.
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| Bode Swiller wrote: |
| Quote: |
...is a pointless exercise
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feef, Welcome to Snowheads. |
Touche! 
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Comedy Goldsmith, How many non-members go on Freshtracks holidays? and what was the age breakdown on the vacations in only 1700 members used the club TO?
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Masque, unless things have changed since my day, non-members cannot go on Freshtracks holidays.
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FAQ
