Hi-Fi 4 Sale - Registration & Login

Hi Moderators and everyone,

I have been with this forum from the very beginning and I like to thank the people who are behind this. I appreciate your time spend in maintaining the site and I even received a call as far as from Singapore, just to let me know some technical issues involved in running the site. Thank you.

But lately, I am getting a bit frustrated by the rules set. Now we even need tp 'log-on' to view the pictuures posted by the sellers. It's not a big fuss just to log-on but honestly, do you see a need to do this? It is already difficult to post pictures and the hifi community in this part of the world has not grown by leaps and bounds. Why all these unnecessary restriction? It will only frustrate new comers and there's benefits at all to the present members. Not everyone who likes hifi or wish to look at what's there to offer by this forum would want to be a forum member.

Keep it simple.

I agree

we want to spread the hobby , more people into hi fi more consumer and price may go down because of the demand ..and more up grades .. more used items etc people tend to view us as nut case and making the forum more exclusive isnt helpin.. just my 2 cents..

I can't agree more with pmc and mofaz too.

Instead of helping the user base to grow, this new practice might just drive new users away if they find it difficult and inconvenient to browse the content.

Yeah so i tried to look at some postings this morning, and what the hey? Lo and behold i need to log in first. A bit much for mostly used hifi, no? Not gold and diamonds we are trading, no?

You've got a few minor grumbles from others as well. If you aren't sure which way to go, perhaps take a poll from the usual suspects & inmates here, no?

I would vote NO.

Thank you.

Bal.

pmc wrote: It will only frustrate new comers and there's NO benefits at all to the present members.

Keep it simple.

Thank you, guys. I left out the word 'no' in the above sentence.
In the beginning, things were easy. Less members perhaps, but uploading a picture was a piece of cake. Not all members or future members are tech savvy. Sometimes a simple registration or even doing a search may be a technically challenge procedure for some people. We want the community to grow and enforcing these restriction is clearly not a wise decision.

Regards
pmchoong

Hi all,

Thank you for voicing your opinions. After all, that's what the forum is all about...hearing different views from the minority or (silent) majority.

We have deliberately taken this long to respond for a simple reason, and that is not to confound the data we've been gathering this past 2 months.

A year ago, due to spamming from 'newly' registered members, we decided to manually approve membership, instead of the usual email verification link. This helps us do initial screening, by matching incoming membership applications with 'generic' email addresses. However, that presented problems in itself, where the approval process can take up to a day, when we are finally online to do the approvals.

In early June 2011 (2 months ago), this manual approval method was changed to the email verification method, which allows for self-service & approval within minutes. Since then, we've seen a few spammers re-emerge, but that's not too big an issue, perhaps once every couple of days.

That sparked a thought, which was that we haven't really assessed the true usage & value of the various sections:

• How many people actually use H4S on a daily basis?
  
• Which pages do users (in general, since we can't track by username) go to most often?
  
• The user profiles (age, demographics, maturity)? This is a mainly qualitative rather than quantitative measurement.
  
• Is hi-fi, as we see it, a growing, stagnant or declining hobby, at least in Malaysia?
  
• Are we getting more people into the hobby? What can we do to increase acceptance of hi-fi, especially since mindshare and the share-of-wallet of the customer is subject to more things than ever in this modern age (family, car, property, phone, food, entertainment etc.).
  

At the risk of inconveniencing the regulars, we really wanted as many users to login, to get some accurate data for some analytics. Rather than blocking certain sections outright, a new feature of the forum allows for only blocking pictures & links from guests, which is the least intrusive way. Furthermore, most, if not all browsers (IE, Firefox, Opera, Chrome) allow auto-login via cookies, which isn't really a chore at all.

Just to share some high-level observations, to make the exercise worthwhile for all:

• We average about 1,000+ regular unique visitors daily, on weekdays.
  
• On a monthly basis, H4S are currently doing 800,000 pageviews, not to be confused with hits, which is significantly more (2x-5x). The difference with pageviews vs hits is that the pageview count does not increase as the user hits the 'Refresh' button, so it is a more accurate & conservative measurement of site usage.
  
• Unfortunately, this 800,000 pageviews figure has been stagnant the past 2 months, even in the absence of another large local forum, which doesn't reflect well on the industry in general, at least for online enthusiasts. Annualised, this will bring us to approx 9 million pageviews for 2011 based on the current growth rate.
  
• H4S regular members fall mainly are over 30 years old, spanning right till the 50s. Perhaps some work needs to be done to reach out to the younger generation.
  
• The amount of used equipment less than 3 years old offered on sale is significantly outnumbered by equipment >7 years old. Have a look at the For Sale sections and think about it...
  

It is safe to say that much work needs to be done if we want to make this hobby more fun for all. Hi-Fi is a collective hobby and not a commodity or necessity (some may argue otherwise), so ideally some level of input + involvement must come from all stakeholders (distributors, dealers, end-users, forumers and perhaps even the government) to get things going.

H4S will be doing the following within the next few months:

• Organising sessions involving Computer Audio and how to get the best out of them. We're lining up some specialists for this (dealers, end-users), offering a mix of conventional high-end logic and radically divergent views. Spoken to a few of them, so it's a matter of fixing the right date.
  
• Creating a special section for dealers to provide genuine limited-time-period offers for specific items to H4S members for entry to mid-level equipment, with the objective of growing the hobby.
  
• Getting more moderators into the picture. We'll talk more when we meet.
  
• Creating a space for, catalysing and working hand-in-hand with more location-based audiophile groups eg. the NS Audiophile group.
  

Well, we have finally collected sufficient data and now are able to
restore all functions to the normal state, where guests can view the
posts unhindered too.

(in the voice of Tony Montana in Scarface, with cigar in mouth and all...) ''that sounds like fun to me!''

But seriously, it does sound good to me. Thanks Guys, for putting in such effort to keep this site, not just going, but going WELL.

I for one give the admin a Big Hand.

Bal.

Bravo to the Admin & keep up the good work

If I may, i'd like to post a semi-related question here. What happened to that + - reputation voting system? I don't see it anymore. Did I miss something? What gives?

Due to earlier abuse, only members with a +2 Reputation & above can see the +/- icons. In order to vote, first you have to be 'good' yourself.

There, I've just done a +1 on you. You should now be able to see those icons.

Oh dear oh my, I can now see it. Feels like I've died and gone to where the good boys go. Thanks HF4Sale. I'll be at my best for sure.

Don't forget to get more good fellas in...

As for me....I feel there's not enough emoticons available

Hi Admin and all,

Interesting data and statistics. I can imagine the hard work and time spend on gathering these datas and I like to say a big 'Thanks' to you guys.
Sorry if I voiced my opinion too early. I wasn't aware of such activity going on. Perhaps, in future we might be inform earlier (pm, if necessary) if any such activity is planned and if we, members would help in any way.
Thank you.

Hi H4S and all,

I have seen H4S growing day by day from the very first beginning of the H4Sblogspot.
Perhaps,it's just begin.

Thanks you.

I have noticed that the 'registered and logged in before we can view picture' is back and is here for quite sometime already. Is this going to be permanent?? And what is the reason or reasons now for this? Please see previous tread on this matter.

I don't see any benefit or anything good at all in wanting people to be registered and also to log in just to view whats there to offer here in this forum. Except maybe to monitored forum members activities. I'll say goodbye for now and good luck to this forum.