Considering we have 8000 members why so apathetic?

[KulrMeStoopid]

I think its in the news banner on the welcome panel..i have it on the main page of the marketplace too...ill make an announcement for it sometime tomorrow. Plus its on my signature and we have 3 or 4 threads on it now too. I wont be sending another email out yet as i have to be careful of it ending up as spam and we don't want to blacklist our mail server.

 

[Fleabag]

One of the big problems as I see it is that only a tiny proportion of vapers are really engaged with the community - or even the range of products out there. Every vaper I meet uses an ego and has no knowledge or interest in anything else. All but a couple have been on CE4 (one colleague started out with Ego & protank or similar, another staff member had a faulty CE4 and the vendor had none in stock, so replaced it with a PT mini).

It does frustrate me to see so many people venturing into vaping and not exploring the wealth of wonderful products out there.

I'm based in an unemployed centre, so there are a lot of posters up promoting people's rights etc, so I have thought about making a poster that briefly sums up the threat to our products and points people to action/information available to fight over-regulation.

 

[Fubar1977]

One of the big problems as I see it is that only a tiny proportion of vapers are really engaged with the community - or even the range of products out there. Every vaper I meet uses an ego and has no knowledge or interest in anything else. All but a couple have been on CE4 (one colleague started out with Ego & protank or similar, another staff member had a faulty CE4 and the vendor had none in stock, so replaced it with a PT mini).

It does frustrate me to see so many people venturing into vaping and not exploring the wealth of wonderful products out there.

I'm based in an unemployed centre, so there are a lot of posters up promoting people's rights etc, so I have thought about making a poster that briefly sums up the threat to our products and points people to action/information available to fight over-regulation.

This is very true.
As "enthusiast" vapers who spend time on forums, mix our own liquids, rebuild, collect mods etc. it's easy to forget that we are a minority within a minority.
The wider vaping public often have little interest in the vaping community or the world beyond cigalikes and CE4's/Ego's.
The wider non-vaping and non-smoking public beyond that have even less knowledge or interest in it.

All we can really do is get it out there as much as possible, sell the positives, tell our story. Over 20% of the Uk population smoke, an estimated 1.6 million plus vape.
Most of these people also vote...

We need to move out of the microcosm and into the mainstream. I spent enough time as a "social leper" when I smoked and I'll be damned if they are going to make me feel like that about vaping.

Our plight seems invisible to the mainstream population.

 

[vaporsizer]

I think this is all going quite well here & the points above are realistic & make sense, which is what we have to do, make sense !
Just by highlighting it over the last 24 hours we have gathered some more awareness & it at least chips away at the situation.
I agree that by overdoing it ,it will become spam like if we are not careful & people don't want that but it doesn't mean we shouldn't keep it at a trickle. There's plenty of formal info too & what i was trying to demonstrate is that a polite & straight up layman's terms approach will hit a different crowd. I for one am in that department, wanna have my say or help but get easily dazzled or confused by political jargon that's over my head. I'm a regular working member of the British public & if i ever was close to middle class, the recession put paid to that.

 

[KulrMeStoopid]

I`ve said it until I`m blue in the face…

Why the hell is this not THE MOST PROMINENT thing on the site???

The only way most users, especially new ones, ever see any of this is if they happen to look in the "News" sections but most don`t.

The threats we face should be PLASTERED over the front page and linked to from everywhere on the site so as to be impossible to miss.

It`s all very well having a million threads discussing all other aspects of vapeing, mods, juices, tanks et. but if we don`t get our arses in gear most of this stuff disappears from the market.
What is everyone going to discuss then?
Cartomisers?

If Article 18 passes as it stands the how long, exactly, will POTV last with NO advertising revenue?

Don`t wish to sound harsh here but I think, frankly, @OccultScientist needs to get his finger out and make sure the most important thing going on in vaping, the threat to it`s very existence, is IMPOSSIBLE to ignore.

Sorry to get all ranty but if we don`t all get our finger out and make some noise there won`t be much left to discuss.

The initiative is linked in the welcome panel news feed, it has an announcement stickied to the top of every forum, it's linked in my signature for 24k posts. It's linked in other peoples signatures. It also has several threads dedicated to it...

It's stickied here http://www.planetofthevapes.co.uk/f...5-European-Free-Vaping-Initiative-Please-sign!

News feed 1st instance

News Feed 2nd Instance

Announcement at the top of every forum

Announcement on the Marketplace

And it's linked in nearly 24k of my posts.

I don't know how much more you expect POTV to do, but the one thing we won't do is shove it down peoples throats and come across as grossly political and demanding. Considering I regularly share it and retweet it on 11 social media accounts and am running a "Million to help save vaping" on top of the EFVI initiative to try to bring world wide awareness to a new level.. I dont have a clue as to why you think OccultScientist should do more than everything he's all ready done for us. He built this site, he maintains it. But I'm the one who does the leg work for stuff like this, not him, so please don't pin it on him if something isn't the way you think it should be.

If you want something done, more than what I have done all ready, you should probably ask nicely, but I honestly have no idea how much more you think I (or POTV) can do. If you'd asked me nicely, I would probably have had the heart to see if I could do more.

Sorry if I'm a bit snotty/bitchy/cuntish but that's a slap on everything I have done in this community and continue to do and I think you owe OS an apology for telling him to pull his finger out his ass when he's not even responsible for this kind of thing.

 

[Colonelboom]

I appreciate all the comments so far, my intention was not to point out how people are NOT getting involved but merely to put a big bullet point under the fact that despite all of the work the vendors do to promote this, forums doing mailshots, posts and stickies everywhere etc that still only a very small number of people had signed comparatively to the volumes we see across social media, forums and of course vendor customers (which there will be crossover, I know)

Where businesses and forums are trying to pull out all the stops to promote this (if you are a vendor why are you not linking to it on your customer website at the very least) it is ultimately down to users to spread and promote this or learn what it means.

One point is that there are so many things to add a signature to for support, this is very true and frustrating at the same time. It seems that through frustration that nothing seems to get done or noticed a new organisation pops up weekly to 'do things better'

I think where lots are fracturing the community to try and get their votes the EFVI one is a truly EU inclusive initiative and one that is trying to show a united Europe on this. If you are worried about spam there are a few things you can do - use a free email address like Yahoo which will give you a throwaway email should you need it that runs seperate to your main one (ie [email protected] could also have [email protected]

Setup a gmail account just for vaping related campaigns - these are free options and while they may be an inconvenience to check they do give a place to avoid personal spam and get involved with as many campaigns as you like - then delete them at a stage where the campaigns are no longer running or valid.

At the end of it all though, the end goal for me was to raise the point, from a member and vendors perspective to other members reading the site (which it seems to have worked with a decent number of signatures within the first 12 hours of my post - it was a trickle prior to this). Quite a lot of the time people do miss forum signature graphics and stickies because over the years we have become adept at visually filtering them out as we read other areas.

For those of you who have now signed as a result I thank you and for those yet to do so - do it! There may be a day where we are no longer allowed to vape and out of the millions of vapers who will grumble that nothing was done - only just shy of 3 thousand will have a legitimate reason

 

[fynger]

Im not a pathetic[h=2][/h]

 

[Fubar1977]

The initiative is linked in the welcome panel news feed, it has an announcement stickied to the top of every forum, it's linked in my signature for 24k posts. It's linked in other peoples signatures. It also has several threads dedicated to it...

It's stickied here http://www.planetofthevapes.co.uk/f...5-European-Free-Vaping-Initiative-Please-sign!

News feed 1st instance

News Feed 2nd Instance

Announcement at the top of every forum

Announcement on the Marketplace

And it's linked in nearly 24k of my posts.

I don't know how much more you expect POTV to do, but the one thing we won't do is shove it down peoples throats and come across as grossly political and demanding. Considering I regularly share it and retweet it on 11 social media accounts and am running a "Million to help save vaping" on top of the EFVI initiative to try to bring world wide awareness to a new level.. I dont have a clue as to why you think OccultScientist should do more than everything he's all ready done for us. He built this site, he maintains it. But I'm the one who does the leg work for stuff like this, not him, so please don't pin it on him if something isn't the way you think it should be.

If you want something done, more than what I have done all ready, you should probably ask nicely, but I honestly have no idea how much more you think I (or POTV) can do. If you'd asked me nicely, I would probably have had the heart to see if I could do more.

Sorry if I'm a bit snotty/bitchy/cuntish but that's a slap on everything I have done in this community and continue to do and I think you owe OS an apology for telling him to pull his finger out his ass when he's not even responsible for this kind of thing.

Fair enough.
I don`t think my post was especially harsh and I personally have far less to lose than the site owner.
I certainly didn`t say or imply that you, personally, were not doing your part, no-one could accuse you of that.

My issue is that the unless it is more prominent then no-one other than the devoted die-hards will do anything about it until it`s too late.
And it isn`t as prominent as it could be.

As I said before, an advertising ban would seem to have the potential to do serious harm to the future of POTV, unless you feel it could survive without advertising revenue from the vendors on here?
As the site owner this would make me pretty nervous.

I get that I come across as a bit ranty sometimes which may rub people up the wrong way sometimes but I feel it`s better than the general apathy or lack of knowledge about the threats we face that I seem to come across all the time.
The thread title says it all really.

I could take the attitude that "I`m all right so why bother fighting" given that I have enough supplies in to last well over a decade but I don`t I keep fighting mostly for the benefit of those who have yet to switch from smoking.

I have no wish to fall out with you so I`ll cease posting on this subject on POTV as I don`t feel there`s anything more I can usefully add to this topic.
Once again, sorry if you feel my post was, in some way, an attack on you or OccultScientist it wan`t intended that way.

 

[ZT]

Im not a pathetic

you need to pull your fynger out

 

[KulrMeStoopid]

Fair enough.
I don`t think my post was especially harsh and I personally have far less to lose than the site owner.
I certainly didn`t say or imply that you, personally, were not doing your part, no-one could accuse you of that.

My issue is that the unless it is more prominent then no-one other than the devoted die-hards will do anything about it until it`s too late.
And it isn`t as prominent as it could be.

As I said before, an advertising ban would seem to have the potential to do serious harm to the future of POTV, unless you feel it could survive without advertising revenue from the vendors on here?
As the site owner this would make me pretty nervous.

I get that I come across as a bit ranty sometimes which may rub people up the wrong way sometimes but I feel it`s better than the general apathy or lack of knowledge about the threats we face that I seem to come across all the time.
The thread title says it all really.

I could take the attitude that "I`m all right so why bother fighting" given that I have enough supplies in to last well over a decade but I don`t I keep fighting mostly for the benefit of those who have yet to switch from smoking.

I have no wish to fall out with you so I`ll cease posting on this subject on POTV as I don`t feel there`s anything more I can usefully add to this topic.
Once again, sorry if you feel my post was, in some way, an attack on you or OccultScientist it wan`t intended that way.

Don't think you were attacking at all mate, just misdirected passion maybe?

I am pretty sure if EFVI could get us banners in the sizes we need, that I could ask OS to put them in with the vendors advertisements. But that's only if they have them for us to put there So if some one wants to contact them, that would be great. One less thing I need to do in the daily grind.

An advertising ban would be simple enough to deal with on the internet. Its not something we've discussed as of yet, but there are other possibilities. We also have time (if it does come into effect) to figure out how to work it. I think between all of us, we would come up with something feasible which would still allow the vendors the ability to reach their targeted audiences and hopefully still keep this place open. We're a creative lot, so I am sure something can be done.

Trust me, we all know and are aware that we could lose POTV as a whole over the ban. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about what it would mean to lose over 8,000 friends in the blink of an eye.