CRAP news and Announcements

Crap Race Organising Committee.

For those of you who are new or have forgotten, we have a small team of devoted members who come up with ideas for, and then test and organise our regular events with the exception of the endurance races. This includes events such as the highly successful Crap On A Budget of late last year.

Due to changes in family /work /gaming console :troll: circumstances of several of these cherished members which curtail their ability to regularly contribute to the committee, I am pleased to announce two additions to the team.

Please give a round of applause to Knukken and Micantony!

These two will join the tireless JohnSchoonsBeard in brainstorming and testing to make your weekends so much more CRAP!

Hi Everyone!

Well, I have had the forum in maintenance mode for most of the (Australian) day and have some improvements and announcements etc to report, namely:

1. The 'shoutbox' is gone and has been replaced (not in the same spot, there's nothing there as yet) by the reopening of the CRAP members online now thread.

2. There is now an entire section for the nurb 24hr race. Some is restricted to N24 organisers and another area is visible only to confirmed teams - If all teams are happy for this section to be made public then I can do that, just let me know.

3. I am going to restructure the admin team, mods and the ROC also - Nothing publicly announced yet but expect it to be soon. For now I have deactivated the global mod role and also removed all inactive ROC members from the group for now. I will be working on this as a matter of priority so expect to see a new structure ASAP.

4. Some dead threads and boards deleted.

5. Expect to see an entire shakeup of the racing schedule. The new management structure (as mentioned in point 3 above) will report on this ASAP - Rest assured that this is going to be designed for our members, we want you all to have regular races, great races but above all we want them to be fun races. This will be our mission statement going forward, nothing fancy or full of hot air; just good old fashioned regular fun racing with great drivers from across the planet enjoying great company and the odd gravel excursion (rofl).

6. The racing lobbies will be reviewed and decisions made on their continued existence. This will cover the 5 CRAP lounges, CRAP new members and the CRAP_GTP lounge. We want the best for our members and if that means downsizing, or up-sizing, to suit your needs then we will do it.

7. MWRN: Member Weekly Race Night! We currently do a CRAP Lotto where a member is chosen at random (I think by a ferret or rabbit, possibly even a small child - hard to keep up!) and I am going to use this model to do a weekly race night where the previous weeks winner gets to announce the following weeks festivities. These nights will be held at the same time, roughly and only if popular, as the enduros. There's a new thread up about it so go there and sign up if you are keen and you will be assigned a number for the Ferrabbichild to hopefully draw out!

8. I have archived some threads and boards. There are a few that I archived in the "Archived Crap" section that I am merely parking there for now, these include the COAB, FDNA and F1 boards. These events ARE NOT dead and WILL DEFINITELY return but for now I am simply moving them as part of my clean up of the forum so rest easy, they will be back and in the case of COAB I am hoping VERY soon.

That's it for now, rest assured that CRAP is NOT on the wane, it just needs a refresher and it needs me back at the helm which is where I have now firmly returned.

Cheers everyone, hope to see you all on track soon

HP

PS, if anyone can't find any of the new (or reopened) threads just sing out

Well folks the result is in for activity on the forum for August. We were just shy of the November record but that's OK because the result is still the biggest month for us since December 2012

I would say that a combination of those numbers, the upcoming series and recent enduro interest (along with some old faces returning) sees us well on our way to Returning to full strength! Remember too that CRAPtober is next month and the group will hit the "terrible twos"

It is definitely a good time to be a CRAPper!

Top 10 months by pageview:

1. July 2012: 47,146
   
2. September 2012: 42,465
3. August 2012: 36,518
4. CRAPtober 2012: 33,498
   
5. June 2012: 28,516
   
6. November 2012: 27,788
   
7. August 2013: 27,638
   
8. March 2013: 25,224
9. December 2012: 18,229
   
10. January 2013: 17,472
    

Over the next week or so myself, meanelf and Lissa will be conducting a membership review that will see all members aligned to the 3 lounges remaining (CR1, Free Run and GTP) and any inactive members possibly removed if appropriate.

Long term members that have not been around will NOT be removed, we will be instead targeting those who joined but were not active.

Cheers guys!

Attention all members

There has been a restructure of the admin team and as such an announcement is called for!!

We have three outgoing admins that are the "victims" of real life and other less virtual endeavors.

@bngtracer, Lissa and meanelf have had very little time of late to jump online and even less to carry out their admin duties and as such will be graciously stepping aside, for now at least.

Lissa  has been an outstanding contributor to this group and I for one am forever in her debt. Most of you would have had one of her PM's on GTP as your first CRAP contact, she has been a proud advocate for the group, a very hard worker and staunch supporter of myself and the other admins. She will be missed but we are not ruling out a return to the role either, there will always be a spot for her at the admin table should things quieten down on the RL front.

Lissa, thank you so much for all your hard work and dedication to the CRAP cause, you have helped shape this group to what it is today and you should be proud of that Now it is time to relax and get ready for GT6 and hopefully we can see you and Pete back on track very soon for more fun and frivolity.

meanelf was Lissa's predecessor and original member admin. Jim has always been there for me and never dawdled when something needed doing, he got the job done and did it well and that is what made him an excellent admin; super reliable, great sense of humour and a wise head that often provided answers that I needed.

Jim you will also be sorely missed but, as with Lissa, you will also have a place at the admin table should you wish it I wish you well in your endeavors old friend, I expect you to report in every now and then with updates on how everything is going and you better believe we are going zombie hunting soon

@bngtracer is responsible for a lot of what you see on the site today. Hours and hours of work was poured into this site by him, late nights and texts or calls from a freaking out HP because I messed something up in the back end of the site

Ben has a whole bunch of stuff on at the moment and, unfortunately, is unable to carry on as admin BUT you better believe he isn't getting off that easily! You see Ben knows this site as well as I do, and then some, and will be retaining his IT privileges for when I am unable to either fix something or work it out. Consider him our tech support working from home, don't bother calling him for petty stuff but if the manure hits the air conditioning then he can help

Ben, this site would not be what it is today without you mate, you can also be very proud of your work and rest assured that you also have a spot at the table if you wish to return. I just remembered an interesting statistic... I believe Ben was our VERY FIRST member! When I put up the GTP thread I believe it was Ben who responded first and he has put everything into the group since that day, a true champion and deserving of high praise along with Lissa and Jim.

So, who will be filling these rather large shoes? Well, you would think I would appoint 3 more admins but I am not.

Myself and tris73 will continue doing what we are doing but we can't do it all alone can we?

Without further ado I welcome JohnSchoonsBeard to the admin team

We all know how much he deserves it and how hard he works so I shan't elaborate but I will say this: the man has proven to be the hardest working CRAP member over the last 12 months and is solely responsible for keeping the group alive and that says it all really. Mark has probably taken on a few roles at once of late so we may look to lighten that burden with a helper or two but more on that later

Welcome aboard "Schoonsy" I look forward to working with you mate.

Now, one more thing:

This group started out as a CASUAL group for casual gamers who were sick and tired of the intensity of online gaming and the competitive nature of a lot of people out there or ramming idiots who couldn't drive a matchbox car if they tried...

WE LOST THAT CASUAL NATURE, OUR VERY ETHOS, AND I INTEND ON GETTING IT BACK STARTING RIGHT NOW.

We will go back to fun, frivolity and casual banter. Gone are the overly serious races that just incited negative emotion and created tension. I SAY NO MORE!

We will keep enduro's as they are but we will re-write the AUP to be more concise so as to be EASILY understandable and with an emphasis on common sense. Enduros will be there for those who want some added intensity but we won't be racing for sheep stations either, virtual glory and bragging rights will be the order of the day so for those who like that intensity you shall have it. I will also retain FDNA (currently dormant I know) for the same purpose but it will be a one night affair for those who wish to have the banter along with extra pit stops

I also intend on participating more, getting out on track with members more and leading from the front, expect the HP that a lot of you are familiar with from last year.

If any of you have any questions, comments or whatever then please send me a PM and I will gladly reply

Thanks again everyone.

HP

PS, it may take a day or two to get everything sorted with permissions etc but I am on it.

Just an update folks:

The Hall of Fame group hasbeen renamed "Life Member" and some extra members added.

This means that those in the group are considered lifetime members and immune to the member removal reviews for inactive members, you have earned the right to come and go as you please.

Congrats to those added today and thank you for your contribution to the group

There's no real criteria to be added, I've started with those who have contributed to the group in large and small ways and others for simply sticking around for so long.

Hoping to get many more added over time

Cheers all

Further to the above there is a somewhat less pleasant post I need to make I'm afraid:

In short some members of the group have slipped in the area of grammar and general forum etiquette, no fingers pointed and there's no apologies needed either so stop right there if you plan on publicly apologising as it is honestly not necessary

Please take the time to read this post which is located on this thread

Now it happens to us all sometimes where we miss the shift key and we don't capitalise a word properly, or maybe a slight misspelling here or there but that is not what I am talking about here. What I am referring to is constant grammatical errors, text speak, text 'walls' and general laziness with posting.

As you should all be aware we use the GTP AUP (relevant point #2 pasted below) as our guideline to help keep the forum tidy and free of things like what I have referred to above.

Of course there is one other reason that this can happen: Mobile phone keyboards... Obviously that can happen, but it shouldn't happen every time and it would be nice, for when it does happen, if you recognise it and perhaps edit the errors later when you are on the PC.

I'm not being a grammar Nazi here guys, I just want the forum to look nice (and honestly the odd mistake is perfectly fine) for existing members but also for the new members too so let's make an effort to lift the standards back to where we all know they should be.

One point of the rules we follow as listed on GTP is listed below, please note that we follow these rules but we did not create them nor is any member of staff claiming any credit for them, that credit goes to GTP in entirety:

2. You will not use “textspeak” (“r”, “u”, “plz”, etc.) in your messages. Decent grammar is expected at all times, including proper usage of capital letters.

Thanks guys.

HP

Hi all, apologies for my slight absence.

A lot has happened recently. My phone died so no internet access on it and the main PC ran into dramas.

Add to this a friend tried to 'end it all' and we've had her staying here whilst we clean her house which looked like an episode of "how clean is your house" so the amount of effort required to do that whilst getting her back on her feet has been huge plus it has been a very emotionally taxing experience.

Then a travelling band of muso's stayed and, well, let's just say that as far as debaucherous weekends go it was right up there... Then we had a house inspection scheduled... for tomorrow!

Just got that rescheduled because the place looks like, well, like a band of travelling muso's used it for a weekend of drinking and anti cleaning

On top of all that I have been doing a 3 week course which I took up after quitting my job, got my last day of the course tomorrow... Wow, been crazy times.

I will be jumping online either tonight (after I attend a parent teacher meeting which I only just remembered lol) or tomorrow night for some MUCH NEEDED online racing and to catch up with some of you guys.

Hoping you are all well and safe and I look forward to catching up with you all very soon!!

HP

Just an FYI here everyone:

Over at GTP I found the following regarding PMs:

How “private” are “private messages” on GTPlanet? (#)

Private messages are stored in GTPlanet’s database and are readable only by myself, the site owner. As part of GTPlanet, private messages must also adhere to the site’s Acceptable Use Policy and, if necessary, may be shared with other members of the staff. Please do not use GTPlanet’s private messaging system to share any sensitive personal or financial information.

Just want to clarify that this forum does not operate like that, the CRAP staff and I are unable to read any PMs that we are not personally involved in so if anyone was wondering about that you now have clarification.

Cheers

HP

Seasons greetings to all!

In what has been our slowest year I would like to thank JohnSchoonsBeard for his tireless work in just about every regard, fair to say the site could well be a tumble weed town if not for you Mark.

Also a huge thanks to our regular members, the same applies to you guys, thanks for keeping the faith!

I trust you will all stay safe and well over the break. Enjoy the family time and reflect too on all those who did not make it through the year and also on those who are struggling alone, a bit of perspective at this time of year goes a long long way.

Bring on 2015!

HP

It's not work when it's for friends (I'm filling oop 'ere). Anyway all I've done this year is say "buy Project Cars on PS4". Maybe next year it will be buy GT7.

The best parts of CRAP this year have been hoolio, esiotrot and mightypickles trading dreadful "jokes". Maybe we could have an end of year joke off (or as they say in Newcastle a "jerk off").