Community improvements? Membership? A discussion

[Gust0o]

I was opening this as a "debate", as I've become conscious - as I'm sure others have - of increasing tensions on the forum.

These tensions, as have arisen, have been very reminiscent of problems on our fellow forums - and something we had hoped to avoid with HC, which has normally embodied a spirit of friendship and openness.

This spirit has been relatively easy to maintain, thanks to the smaller user-base of HC - behaviour has been that much easier to normalise - aided by a trend towards age and experience on the behalf of our more regular posters.

However, we have seen strong recent growth, which has changed the demographic somewhat for the younger and inexperienced - and, whilst this is the long-term lifeblood of the hobby and fancy, it has caused some concerns amongst members.

With that in mind, I was hoping to start the debate as to whether there was anything we might do to moderate those concerns - to ensure the user-base of HC is manageable, within the current community constraints; and that it retains the spirit which has made it the home of choice to so many, especially within the UK fancy.

I had wondered if we might be able to offer more screening of the registration process; or perhaps an invite system, where older users would be able to invite newer ones - but with the proviso that their accounts are linked, and the inviting user would be responsible for the behaviour of the invitee (buddy system)?

For my part, I've not been terribly thrilled with the nature of some of the situations we've been witness to - and would very much like to see us have an open debate as to how we might tackle some of these issues, and ensure HC is there for more to enjoy in the future.