Admin

Not everyone can perform a suvery. It's a very difficult manoevre. Anatoli Crapitoff attempted it in the 1968 Olympics and ended up in traction for 3 long years. It takes a lot of skill, dedication and suppleness and in your tender years Thomas........I would dismiss the idea altogether!

JTB

Indeed

That poll lost me after the first question.

Didn't complete it.

Doesn't make sense to me. :-(

(But so little does, these days....)

I know you're the boss around here, Thomas, but I have to say that I think that Ken's poll was the way to go.

Addendum:

I just tried again, with the same results. There seems to be a big disconnect between question 4 (should there be a discount for annual or semi-annual memberships?) and 6 (if you answered 'no' to 4 then 'you don't agree in supporting the forum' or something like that). Maybe I just don't know how to read anymore.

It's possible.....

Addendum to Addendum:

Ok, I confess to being an idiot. Question 6 relates to question 1 and not question 4 (as clearly explained).

The trouble is that I barely got any sleep last night.

The trouble is that it's probably a very well-designed and clever poll, but I always resent it when I actually have to think.

Sorry Thomas.

No need to apologize. And I'm not so sure it's a good and logical survey. it was just something I created in a couple of minutes to get the general "feel" for a couple of questions.

@thank you too all of you who have taken the survey. Many of the members have offere their thoughts and ideas on how to improve RWG. I'm actually surprised how effective this was and don't understand why I haven't performed a suvery before

Done... and Ajoesmith's avatar has convinced me to become a supporter. Damn the mezmerizing avatar. I just can't stop looking at it.

hmmm that avatar also had me take some involutary breaks....and if that made you upgrade, maybe we should be looking into getting more of these avatars

I agree. Survey updated.

Please take 1 minute to complete this survey (It really should not take more than 1 minute);

http://freeonlinesurveys.com/rendersurvey....fehvffl0p219642

Well, for now, I have created this small servey. All the answers are anonymous, and it's on another server so that you can be sure that there are no "strings attached" to your member name, etc;

http://freeonlinesurveys.com/rendersurvey....fehvffl0p219642

Edge, you have clearly not been North of the polar circle, where I live, and had a taste of the finest tap water available.

A happy baseball birthday

Well...I must admit that when I thought about how much the membership should cost, I didn't really do any "solid" calculations. Like now, a 1 year RWG supporter pays $2.50 pr. month for a membership. What do you get for $2.50 these days

... or use the search feature:

2500 members

210 Supporters

(figures are ±10)

Exact numbers:

2711 members

207 RWG supporters

7.6% of the members are currently RWG supporters.

i am not sure how one checks to see thier staus, but your banner says RWG SUPPORTER....

That's because I just updated his status;). He paid with creditcard and these payments are not automated in the system, so I have to manually upgrade the members;

Again, thank you very much to those of you who have upgraded your memberships these last couple of days

Like I said above: to comply with the rules of the google adsense program, the ads will only be displayed once pr. page. On this current page, ken is the first one with the ads-code in his signature, so you can see the ads there

ok, replying to my own post, I've taken a quick shuftie at the code and only the first signature loaded with Adsense will be shown, which is why your example, Thomas, doesn't show up.

Forgot to mention that. To comply with google adsense rules, it will only show up once pr. page.

You mean Star's computer is what set this whole thing off?

Star-

Would you please get your computer fixed.

Star has a computer that is based on the german "Enigma" from WWII...at least he claims his computer to be at least as "cryptical" as this machine used to be. Usually, his 286-based processor machine crashes instantly on eye contact or if you even think about touching the keyboard. His wireless mouse interferes with his garage opener, so it's quite a show.... . It has alo been known to host some mystical fluids from baby grape juice, if my mind serves me right, and it might burst into flames any time now, by loading this long thread....

Well, I've been a busy bee, as usual, this weekend. I've been doing some background work here to set up a new help/support system to handle all the different questions I get. This will also store all your help requests so that you don't need to ask the same question twice. it also has a knowledgebase that I will populate with useful info. And you should be able to use your current username and password to access it

OK, I'll try and respond to some of the things in this thread.

1. First off all, I am not out here to toot my own horn and have everybody praise me on the job I do. I do appreciate to hear that you people like the job that both I, the moderators and the co-admin does. The reason that post was made is/was that I felt extremely tired of what is going on and I just wanted to get this up in the open so that new members could read about this also.

I prefer to do my work in the background and have the "admin things" be invisible, if possible. The same thing goes for the moderators and the co-admins. They have been advised that if it is possible, to solve the different problems we encounter via PM. I think it is a good board when you only see the moderators/admin participate in the regular postings and that's all the members see. All the other "gory" stuff is solved in the background. This is our primarily focus, but sometime things do come to the surface and we try to deal with these issues as best we can. Working this way apparently have it's backside, because very few of the members seem to realize what it really takes to run a board like this, so I guess a post like this was necessary to open some of the members eyes. Since the post was made, this is the result:

12 months RWG Supporter: 8

6 months RWG supporter: 1

1 month RWG supporter: 3

12 months RWG Supporter (recurring): 2

6 months RWG supporter (recurring): 0

1 month RWG supporter (recurring): 1

Donations: 1

Canceled RWG supporter memberships: 2

A big thank you to those who have decided to become RWG supporters!

I'm not asking for much. I'm not expecting this board to provide me with tons of money, but I do admit that it would be nice to take the rest of the money that is left after all the hosting bills, licenses bills, etc are paid and go out and be able to buy myself a couple of beers or even a good bottle of cognac.

2. Support

Basically, I have no problems helping members who have problems. I've done it at TRC for the last 4 years and I've been doing it here for almost 6 months now. It's just the general attitude a lot of members have when emailing me or PM'ing me that is really pissing me off. And like I said; when you e-mail me to complain that the server is down and you have never paid a single dime to use the site, you accomplish two things. You piss me off and you take me away from the work of restoring the server because I have to answer your e-mail. I always do the very best I can, in any situation, to provide info to the members about downtime, server maintenance, etc. If this server goes down, TRC will usually be on-line or vice versa. Both are on individual servers so hopefully nothing should hit them at the same time. Backups are being taken every night of the site so the site will ALWAYS be back online. Sometimes it just takes a little longer than usual, depending on what the problem is.

3. TRC/RWG

As far as I can see, there is currently no reason to "merge" TRC and RWG. Even though the forums might have become similar with me as the admin of both, they are still very different. This is one reason. Another is that it's not really practical to merge them either. One of the forums would have to become the "main" forum, and the other would just become an archive. Also, importing duplicate memberships is a big waste also. Anyway, this isn't really an issue. I will not choose between TRC or RWG. I choose to have both of them here. Because of the lower traffic at TRC there is not the same technical needs, in regards to the server, as RWG requires, so the expenses of running TRC is lower than running RWG.

4. Closed forum/member sonly/limited access

These ideas have been discussed several times before and my mind is very clear on these matter. These forums should never become closed communities. This will effectively kill a forum. A forum should be;

Open - to get new members

Friendly - to make new members feel comfortable

Informative - Help new members

This will make new members comfortable here and will hopefully make them see that they need to support the forum.

From either today or tomorrow all new members will automatically receive a PM from me with a little info about the forum, practical info, etc This will also contain information that we rely on the members to be able to run this forum. And like somebody mentioned, it's not really fair that 10-15% of the members are paying for for the remaining members.....

Now, we could discuss that certain areas should only be available to supporting members. I remember someone once suggested to only allow RWG supporters view the dealers sections. This will not be possible. The dealers are also supporters of our forum and they do of course want maximum exposure, so this forum will be visible to all members.

5 Ads/site design

As soon as the time allows it, I will do a little redesign of the site, so that the Goggle ads will be more visible. This will hopefully remind some members to click the ads more often than what is the case today. Take yesterday. RWG had about 30.000 page views and 19 clicks on the ads The goggle ads can be a good extra income source for RWG if people remember to click the ads. So maybe you wanna help? Well, you can! Place this code in your signature;

[adsense][/adsense]

and you'll display 1 line with google ads in your signature. It looks like this:

google_ad_client = "pub-1298306806357288";

google_ad_width = 468;

google_ad_height = 15;

google_ad_format = "468x15_0ads_al";

//2007-01-18: Adsense Code

google_ad_channel = "2444019975";

google_color_border = "FFFFFF";

google_color_bg = "FFFFFF";

google_color_link = "0000FF";

google_color_text = "000000";

google_color_url = "008000";

//-->

(Please do not post any "encouraging" words that people should click the ads. This will only get RWG banned from the google adsense program.

Again, I think that was it for now. I'm starting my last "BIG" houseproject tomorrow. New roof. Hopefully should not take any longer than 7-10 days and I'll be stopping by as many times pr. day as time permits me to do to answer your questions or participate on the forum as usual

Oh, and one last thing.....what's REALLY taking A LOT of my time is helping Star with his computer....If he paid me by the hours I would be richer than Bill Gates by now......

Thomas

These last couple of weeks I've deliberately not spent the same amount of time that I usually spend on these forums. To be perfectly honest, I've been extremely fed up with RWG and there are several reasons to this. What really made me take a step back an review the situation was the whole situation we had with the server problems a couple of weeks back. For those who do not now this, running this forum is a hobby, just as replicas are a hobby for you. It is not my full time job, I do not get paid for the work I do (all the funds that the RWG supporters and the dealers pay in fees goes toward keeping a rather intricate server setup alive to be able to host this forum in a safe environment). I certainly would not mind being able to have something left after paying the different bills every month, because you would not believe the amount of work it takes to run this community. So in the near time I will probably do some minor changes to the ad placements here on RWG and hopefully a lot more of you will start clicking the ads on a daily basis. If you not are a RWG supporter, you can show your support by clicking the ads if you see anything interesting. You don't need to worry about BIG ads all over the place. I will make them as small as possible and fit right into the current site design. Hopefully we will also be getting more RWG supporters, as we need it. I'll get back to that later on in this post.

I don't know what is going on with some members, but you would not believe the amount of emails and Pm's I receive every day. When the server was down I actually received several Pm's and emails from NON RWG supporters complaining about the downtime. We are talking about members who are not paying a dime and have, as far as I can see, never paid a dime to spend time here. This is not a unique situation. Pretty much every other day I when I open up my mail-client and all the mail is downloaded, you'll see these kind of emails;

What is going on? Please help immediately!

I signed up recently and have not received my validation e-mail.

So I go and check and the member signed up 2 minutes before sending me this e-mail. If I take a look further up, there us usually a new email, sent 5-10 minutes later;

Never mind. Got it now

And these I usually get from the people who bother telling me that they have actually gotten their e-mails. Most of the time, I have to log into the admin panel, verify that they have not been validated and then sit down and write an email, asking for more details or ask them to try again. Most of the time, I get a reply, like this;

Oh yeah. I got it. Just haven't clicked the link yet and validated my account

So it seems the member wasn't in such a hurry after all.

I also have several examples of people getting more and more pissed in their emails/Pm's because they have not gotten a response within x hours. Again, this is NOT my job. I have a full time job also and a family to take care of . On top of that, most of my spare time this summer has been spent redecorating the house. I even go traveling and don't check my email every day (God forbid!). I can only imagine how the dealer have it. I don't have a product that requires pictures, re-shipping, fixing, etc. I get about 30-60 Pm's/emails every day in connection with RWG, so I can only imagine what the dealers must get.

It seems that the replica forum world has changed into a "me, me, me, NOW!" kinda thing for many members. A lot of the newbies that come here are only after 1 thing. They want a watch and they want it NOW! They will bring nothing new to the forum and I have no problem with that. That's the way it always has been. It's just that with the speed they act in, they miss important info on the way. They forget they are dealing with replica items. They have high (sometime extremely high) expectations and they are let down when the watch does not arrive in three days "because they read somewhere that he got his watch after three days". Not to mention some of the trouble these members are giving our dealers. I guess most of use have been reading all the paypal-stories these last months. Because of this, it is making life a lot harder for those who want to buy a replica and I guess the authorities and watch companies would be glad to hear it. The dealers seems to be taking the consequences of this and some of them now have stopped accepting paypal for first time buyers and you have to be a trusted member to be able to use paypal, which I think is fine. In this context I would also like to talk about another thing; we, the watches and the dealers;

1 thing you ALWAYS have to remember is that we are dealing with replica watches. They will look a lot like the real thing, but they will NEVER look the same or act the same way! Personally, I have been collecting watches for almost 5 years now. I have about 50 watches in my collection and I love them all, despite the flaws, either if the CG is wrong or the pearl is way of. I know a lot of members are not like me. When I see a watch I like, I buy it, regardless of the flaws. I ever go looking for flaws either. When I see a watch I like, I don't start looking for pictures of the real on to compare and to find tons of errors. I go with my "guts" and they tell me "Heeeyyy. Nice watch" If I then start to look for errors, I'll just disappoint myself. The point I am trying to make here is that we are dealing with "low" cost watches. So please don't expect it to be anything like the real thing. A lot of watches are really good, but they are not the real thing.

Another thing is our relationship to the dealers. People seem to forget that RWG is not responsible for the actions of a dealer and what goes on between you and a dealer(get a lot of emails and Pm's about this!). Sure, we can contact the dealer and try to make things right and if a dealer all of a sudden stops shipping out watches or anything else goes wrong, we can remove his dealer status and warn the other members about this dealer. Other than that, whatever goes on between you and a dealer is exactly that; a matter between you and the dealer.

Also,

I don't know when the "unwritten" rules for the dealers appeared. We all know that the "good" dealers will help you out if your watches is broken, lost in the mail or confiscated by customs. But is this something that we should take for granted? Hasn't a dealer done what he is supposed to do when he has shipped the watch and provides proof of shipping? Is it the dealers fault that an illegal item YOU have ordered is stopped and confiscated in customs? Or stolen by some postal worker? (I know this can be discussed and it has been discussed many times. I'm not writing any conclusion here, as I only write it to illustrate a point) My point here is that this is a privilege we have because of the fine dealers we have here, but with all the stuff that has been going on lately, I'm afraid there will be restrictions to this. People have started taking advantage of this and many dealers have reported suspicious reports from buyers who have received empty envelopes. I have personal experience with several dealers here and I know how they wrap their "goods". It would not be a postal worker in the world who would not be noticed if he/she tried to lift something from these packages. So when somebody receive an empty box from these dealer, I also find it strange. So I just wanted to warn you; as usual there are a few who is ruining things for We've seen this with paypal, because the dealers will no longer accept paypal because of the few members who can not follow simple payment instructions or other who file complaints way to soon. We have a few members who have used the member trading zone as their personal dealer area, so we have to implement new rules and finally we have members who receive their watches but claims to have received empty boxes which I guess might impact the way the dealers are operating (I hope I'm wrong on that one)

And when I'm on the subject of the members and the dealers. People seem to forgetting the incredible service they are getting from the dealers here. I can understand that you want to pay as little as possible for your watch, but you are forgetting sooo many things here. When you start complaining about the price of the watches, remember all the work and risks that lies behind all this for the dealers. RWG is not here to get the prices down. Our original mission is to educate people about replica watches to avoid the real scammers out there. Please keep this in the back of your mind when you contact a dealer to get the price down "because you have seen it offered $5 cheaper elsewhere" and the dealer will not give you any further discount than his quoted price.

I'll also have to say that it's not just the regular members that has been on my back these last couple of months. A few months ago there was decided that we would limit the number of dealers on RWG. We would have 12 dealer slots available to the dealers who wanted to be able to offer their products here at RWG (that's only watch dealers) After this was in effect, all of a sudden, dealer have started showing up everywhere. As we all know, English is not their native tongue, and that's OK, but it's actually making it hard for me to explain to them that they can not sell their products here. This one dealer wrote me and wanted to become a dealer. This is what I wrote;

I'm sorry but we do not allow any more dealer on RWG. We have a limit on 12 watch dealers so as long as all the current dealers stay, you can not sell your items here.

this is the response I got;

Oh, no problems. I have 12 watch so I can sell now?

But the place has been crawling over with new dealer who want to sell their products here. Since they offer nothing new, I see no need to bring new dealers to the board. We have, without a doubt, the best dealers here already!

Another thing that really..well, pissed me off, was the fact that for the first time since RWG started, I had to pay some of the server bill out of my own pocket. It's not enough that I spend countless hours to keep this forum running, but now I actually have to pay for having to work So please, if you appreciate this forum and find yourself using it on a daily basis, consider upgrading your membership to RWG supporter. Due to the fact that RWG is set up on a dedicated offshore server + another smaller server that handles "reversed" traffic not to reveal where the original server is. It's a nice setup, but the major drawback with "safe, offshore servers" is the price. If all the RWG supporters paid monthly, we would be close to cover the server cost (included the dealers), but since a lot of them have prepaid for 12 months and their monthly price is less than $3 pr. month, the costs is higher than the income these days. We also have some ads at the bottom, to help pay for things, but, like I said above, I will probably have to move them to a more visible place, because nobody seem to bother looking at the bottom and click on these ads.

So again, if RWG has saved you some cash or you just like being here, RWG supporter membership is something I would like for you to consider. If you do not want to upgrade your membership, we also have a donation button in the top right corner.

So, what's next...ah, yes, the members trading zone. This was originally set up to let members either sell or trade their used replicas. Watches that no longer got any wrist time or you just had gotten tired of. It has become evident that the intent of use of this section is being misused for the sale of new watches by "amateur" dealers. Since the dealers of this board is paying to be here and sell their watches, this will no longer be tolerated. Admin have discussed this and have decided to limit sales in this area to used watches only Any person wishing to sell new watches ( be they dealer or not- and there is a fine line of distinction there) will need to apply to the admin for a spot in the dealers area ( limited to 12 dealers) if and when a spot is available. We will of course let the members sell the occasional new watch, that has gotten no wrist time or for some other reason is brand new, but if you start selling many new watches, you are breaking the rules. Your posts will be deleted and your posting rights will be removed for this section. You will also be issued a warning and might face further sanctions. And please do not post new watches, but described as used, but in perfect condition. We will soon see through this ruse, if nothing else a used watch would be expected to be considerably lower priced than a new one.

We trust the members understand the reasons for this step, and will comply.

It was not a move taken lightly, we really don't want to burden the membership with a huge list of rules, but in this case felt that something needed to be done for all members interests.

I actually have more on my mind, but I will finish this post for now. But just to add to some of the things I have said above;

The first thing I will do, is take a little vacation from the board. We're not talking for long. Just for the weekend, to recharge the batteries. The moderators and co-admins are still here and they have access to all the important features of the board, so they can do pretty much everything I can do. If there are server problems, I get notified on my cell, so I'll take of these things.

When I get back, there will be a brand new support system in place. To be able to handle all the different requests I've purchased a really good support system that is being installed "as we speak". This will allow the entire RWG crew to help respond to the different questions I am getting all the time and it will make my inbox look like a normal inbox. There is also another use for this, but I'll get back to that later

It seems like we need some new guides or something, so I'll try and sit down during my free time to do a write up of general information that new members will find handy. This goes for several section of the board, and hopefully it will lead to fewer questions and a more comfortable and fun day for all of us

Thank you for reading this post. It's a long post and it's taken me a couple of hours to write. I could probably have said a lot more and elaborated more in certain sections of this post, but it is what it is. The general meaning is there. RWG is here for us to share our passion to watches and in our case, replica watches. Free speech will always be allowed here and you are allowed to say both good and bad things about the dealers, transactions, etc., as long as you stay within the rules. Personally, I will always do my best to keep all members satisfied, be it a dealer or a member. It's a not an easy job, but somebody's got to do it, right? I sincerely hope you enjoy the board that we have create for you and that you appreciate the work we do to keep this your favorite forum. Finally, I would like to thank all the members who ahve donated fund to RWG, the RWG supporters and also the dealers. Without the finacial "input" from these members, we would not have this wonderful safe-heaven for us replica addicts.

Thomas

1 Pugwash to hijack the thread with pics of his lightbulb.

8 Sichuans and Paulmarts to say "We got 2006 SWISS LIGHTBLUB 60W MAN no paypal" and show pics of a 40W bulb.

1 TTK to start.....poking.....fun.

85 TTK bashers seeing the big man and wanting to take a chunk out of him.

4 Mods to shut them up.

1 Ubiquitous to post a frankenbulb on a marble top.

3 Modders (Finepics, Palpatine and Ziggy) to show us how to lume the ceiling instead.

9 to complain how their hair is full of lume now.

1 Nanuc to post a tale about the lightbulb he destroyed (AND HOW!)

...

Anyway, here's the picture of my 60W Bulb.

Pugs, I hope you didn't pay toooooo much for that bulb. because it's obviously a replica....the colory is WAY off.... (not to mention the light....)

So far, it is behaving and I have not been able to reprodue one yet. Hopely, it will stay that way..

Anybody else experience any problems?

Happened to me a couple times last night, but not this morning. I thought Thomas just want to make a few bucks and nothing wrong with that.

Well, we are trying to finance the site as much as possible using ads, but nobody seem to be clicking the small text ads at the bottom, so no luck there... As long as we have enought paying members I don't worry to mcuh about it. Don't want this to be a site full of ads everywhere. I could have large banner ads at the top and other places, but we'll keep the text ads for now Just remember to click them once in a while.

I've updated all the ad codes, just to make sure that it's not the advertisers streaming new content due to some settings that I haven't updated. I haven't seen any of these ads some of you mention so far, so I hope it's just some minor "bugs" in the advertisers ad-seeding software.

Can somebody try and grab a screenshot? RWG is only displaying text ads at the bottom, so there should be no pop-ups or any other types of ads...

Edit to add: I'll check the advertisers (google/adbrite) and see if there are some new features in the ads that I can disable or something. This is the most likely place this will be coming from.

Looks like one of those websites that use the ETA "no movement"

Sounds far too much like hard work.

hehe..don't you mean "Sounds far too much like work"

Keep it up and you'll never get back into the admin area either

I'm going to break a confidence here, we in Admin know that Thomas has had around 16hrs sleep in the past four days, just understand one thing folks when the server starts acting up just be thankful that Thomas is our Admin. No one and I mean no one will work harder to keep giving you guy's your dailey fix of RWG.

OI, KEN! What happens in Vegas......

In all fairness, It should be noted that I have not been wwrking on the server issues all this time, but the server problems takes time of my "regular" schedule and domestic tasks, so there has been little sleep these last few days, yes. But I guess thats all part of the "job"