[Thomas J Stamp]

Well, we usually dont move such topics so fast into the members section so you were unlucky.

Anyway, the sole reply was by moi and was "The RPA know this too" so there you go, you're bang up to date.

Joking apart, there is a reason for this. When P11 started we were lobbying heavily on infrastructure, freight, passenger issues and all other things. We observed that most of the posters who were interested in infrastructure were paid up members and that almost all of the visitors were concerned solely with customer issues. Also, we encountered some considerable passenger/consumer resistance to a lot of the infrastructural topics and, also, highly technical explanations which went out of control and whcih were, frankly, a major turn-off for passengers/consumers.

We decided, with great fanfare, that all technical and infrstructural issues will be going to the members section and only passenger issues would be allowed in the non-members ections. That policy was put into place on the 1/1/07 and announced about a month before.

I appreciate what you say about making sections of a messageboard members only, we've been down that debate before here and on boards.ie and IRN. The best way I can explain it is like this: P11 is not just a place where armchair warriors just give out on their keypads. We actually have policies, we have a constitution, we have paid up members: we are the lobby group on behalf of rail passengers. In order to do that properly it takes time and it takes money, and as i've said on these forums before, if you want to be more than a keyboard warrior (I'm not saying you are btw) and formulate and develop our policies and hellp out, join up.

Quite a lot of messageboards have members only sections, even boards.ie has them. Some message boards are pay only, some are free. Our last message board was one that was free software, it crashed without backup. We (Members) pay v-bulleten for this one, we have our own server and that.

Finally, dont forget that we're up against a highly paid and well staffed PR-department in Irish Rail, who have to work full time to explain the rubbish service they dish out to customers.