UKFGSS - Fixed-gear in the UK

So you're thinking about setting up a sub-forum on LFGSS for your city? Great... where to begin? Well... here.

Does your city have a forum already?

First and foremost, does a forum exist already?* It's not helpful to the wider cycling community to go around creating duplicates of forums that already exist unless you have a really good reason to do so.**

So, how to check whether one exists already... first stop LFGSS: http://www.lfgss.com/forum50.html

If there is no forum for your city there, try Google:
"dublin fixed gear" for example would show you that Dublin were on LFGSS before they set up their own forum at www.dublinfgss.com ***
"glasgow fixed gear" would show you that Glasgow always had their own forum at www.glasgowfgss.com

My city has a forum, but it's not listed on LFGSS so can you add it?

Sure thing... PM me the URL to the forum and I'll take care of it.

My city doesn't have a forum, what next?

Well, do you want to host your own or would you like to have a free forum on LFGSS to get you started?

Self-hosting an independent forum

If you want to host your own then you need to find hosting, some forum software (most start with vanilla as it's free and easy to use) and then register a domain name (I recommend 123-reg.co.uk as thy are cheap and have never let me down).

This is the harder option I know, but I really think the best thing long-term isn't a homogenised epicentre, or someone else owning your voice... it's you guys riding bikes somewhere getting together and doing something on your own. When I was younger I watched a teen angst film called Pump Up The Volume, the film is character and dialogue driven and focuses on the issues of free speech in America. In the film the main character setup a pirate radio station, when he finally realised it was getting closed down by the FCC he pleads with people to not listen to the crap on the mainstream radio and to go out and setup their own pirate stations. It's easy he says... and running a web forum is easy too. I can't give you all of the answers or hold your hand or walk you through everything... but really, the best thing in the world would be for the UK to have hundreds of independent and strong communities. All able to tell the BikeRadars of this world where to shove it, all able to have an independent voice that cannot be silenced easy. Cycling communities deserve strong local sites and strong local volunteers to get stuff happening.

That said... if starting your own thing really isn't for you then read on.

Getting a free forum on LFGSS

If self-hosting is too much trouble, then I'm happy to set up a forum on this site for you providing that you really did check that a forum doesn't already exist and that you can show by a simple measure that there's some demand to have a forum.

So... how do you show demand is there for a forum? Simples... just start a thread in the General forum for your city (i.e. "Fixed gear in Edinburgh") and once you have 50 posts in the thread and at least 10 people have participated in the thread... let me know and I'll create you a forum.

You can drop me a line by PM and I'll do the honours once you meet the criteria.

And that... is all there is to it.

Cheers

David

• I personally think the value in forums are the communities, and that communities are best when people get together en masse and achieve more than the sum of their parts would usually achieve. I'm a bit of a hippy like that, a real believer in people. This does mean that I also think the strength and good of these communities stem from their numbers within a small geography and that it's really important to support and protect communities that exist... so don't expect me to help you create a rival to any existing community, I won't.
  
  

** A really good reason would be that a schism is already occuring within an existing forum due to over-moderation and generally nazi behaviour by the moderators of that forum. That's pretty much why NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, etc all popped up... BikeForums.net became all weird. If you can show this kind of thing is happening then I may consider setting up a forum even if one exists. Another good reason might be if someone from that location doesn't have control... i.e. if a company tried to cash in and we discover that bikeradar sets up a forum for each city, I'd make sure that someone local can still set up and run their own thing... again, it's really important for cycling communities that they are owned and represented by people from within that community.

*** I know very well that Dublin is Ireland and not the UK, I'm simply trying to illustrate that even if LFGSS does host a forum for you I will support you setting up your own independent one later. You aren't locked in.