[Captain Bob]

In his announcement today about removing the “PGCA Member Titles” (PGCA Life Member, PGCA Annual Member, Forum Member) from the forum, John Dunkle asked for PMs concerning his intention to do so. I have made my thoughts known to him and also felt I should post them publicly in this thread as well:

John, Just want to say that I think removing the “PGCA Member Titles” status identification line represents a diminishment in value to the forum. At minimum this bit of information lets us know something about the person speaking, offering information or expounding an opinion. On the other hand I understand that to be valuable it needs to be accurate, and that that comes at the price of your careful regular attention to this matter. It would not be difficult to continue to tag life members since once life, through good and bad, it means you’re a member until the end. And it is important to note that this is one of the ways for regular annual dues paying PGCA members to know to whom they might direct concerns about association matters as they, the Life Members, are the ones in the association with the vote.

In this day and age of electronic communications and data bases it is difficult to understand why this information cannot be simply and easily provide to you by the association membership person on a periodic basis by email. Four times a year a mailing list is somehow prepared to generate the labels to ship Parker Pages, it must certainly be done by computer. If you are not a paid up member, you should not be on the list. Why you can not be provided with a flat file of active members each quarter is beyond my understanding - unless it is somehow either a political issue or thought to be impractical because membership name might not match forum name exactly. It is a point of some pride that the PGCA forum sticks closely to the rule and goes to great lengths to cause forum members to use proper names; and in my opinion we derive great benefit for doing so. My gut feeling is that active participants on the forum do like to be identified as an Annual or Life Member - it says "I'm really addicted! Won't you share my Pain!". So if a membership name does not resolve to a forum name the status value will default to Forum Member, and if so the individual will most likely take steps to fix the mismatch so their status will be properly displayed.

Personally, I will be rather disappointed if the BOD cannot find a way to see that your good efforts are supported in preserving this forum feature. A match list provided to you only needs to be tagged as to member status and does not need addresses or any other information; if that is the fear or concern. I’m Annual Member #810; them's my 2 cents worth...