Thanks for stepping up to the plate and joining up as a paying member. I for one am glad you see the value and foresee the loss when its gone. Have a great day.

The Chapter 2 situation developed and reached an end just before I joined the Board, so I can't speak to it from direct experience.

I do agree with most of the comments here, there was clearly a misunderstanding which was unfortunate and which was rooted partially in the cultural differences on the two sides. I do know that the Board at that time was put into a difficult situation because the start of that trouble arose from Caterpillar itself. The situation was much like the trouble we all on here encountered with the Great Tractor Race video.

Those who have been on here for a while will recall the very funny video depicting a race of all sorts of Cats with people flying off, knocking down buildings and the like. The video was filmed back in the thirties, judging by the machines and I think it is great fun. Caterpillar trademarks and licensing people are not always rational and reasonable in their administration of the brand. They felt that the video was harmful to the brand because it showed intentional unsafe operation, and I believe they even were ridiculous enough to say that someone might attempt some of the stunts depicted. Unfortunately, we in the Club are bound by their wishes. They own the Caterpillar name, trademark and trade dress. If they chose, they could shut us down in a moment by prohibiting us from using the word "Caterpillar" in our name.

I know this is frustrating to all of us, and many of us disagree with this perspective, but it is the reality. If they don't like what we do with their name, they have the right and the legal might to make us stop.

The situation with Chapter 2 arose because the Caterpillar trademarks and licensing people somehow became aware of the Chapter magazine. They noted that the Chapter used the word Caterpillar on the cover, and also noted that the Chapter did not have a trademark and licensing agreement to do so, and had not submitted the magazine for review prior to publication. The trademarks and licensing people notified our Club that this situation was a problem and indicated that Chapter 2 should discontinue using the Caterpillar name on their magazine.

Keep in mind now, that I have seen old Chapter 2 magazines, and what the Link Club is currently putting out, and I think Caterpillar is darn lucky to have their name associated with a publication of that quality. That doesn't really matter, and shouldn't have mattered to the Board members then, because the fact is Caterpillar didn't want the uncontrolled use of their name on the Chapter magazine.

Upon receipt of that notice, the Board at that time began a discussion with Chapter 2 about the unlicensed use of the Caterpillar name. I don't see that our Board at the time had any other choice than to respond to the request from Caterpillar. This is where I think things went a little sideways because of the cultural differences and probably because of the difficulties of communicating across time zones. I don't know all the things that caused problems in the discussions. I do know that somehow questions about dues payment and remittances came into the picture and I think there were other concerns, too.

However we got there, in the end, Chapter 2 was decertified, those members were lost to the Club. They have reorganized themselves into the Link Club and have continued to support preservation of Caterpillar history and machines with a wonderful magazine and great events. Since I joined the Board, we had a request to reorganize a new Chapter 2 in the U. K., which has happened. All of us on the Board were concerned that the new Chapter 2 and the Link Club support each other and not compete for members or activities. I believe so far that is what has happened. I don't doubt that the Link Club will continue to be the main force for Caterpillar activities in the U. K. for a long time. That is, in my opinion, as it should be.

Any Link Club member who wishes to join us is welcome. The opposite is also true. I'd encourage anyone in the U. K. or with an interest in U. K. Caterpillar things to join the Link Club. Since we are here, with a strong and valuable Link Club and a newly refreshed Chapter 2 in the U. K., I don't want to see one or the other change or become the preferred choice.

I think we need to recognize that however we got here, we have two groups in the U. K. and probably will for the foreseeable future.

tctractors, I have always enjoyed your posts here. I do recall the post which you mentioned complaining about your posting under Bill Glenn's Classic Plant. I didn't understand that post then and still don't now. I can tell you that neither I nor anyone currently on the Board would want to give you the "Boot to the Backside." We do understand and respect, though, your desire not to put the backsides in jeopardy. As you said in your last comment, our goal now is to coexist and complement each other. The Link Club is doing a lot of good work in parallel with our mission statement.

Mike Meyer, you are spot on in your assessment of the bulletin board statistics. I do think, though, that having 14,000 guys registered, even if they have only ever looked once, doesn't cost us anything and we might hook one or two of them back in. I look at this bulletin board like a long line fishing boat for our Club. We troll along here with forty miles of line out set with thousands of hooks, each baited with a piece of rust, a yellow paint chip, or a photo or video of a tractor. Those lines drift along behind the boat while people from all over the world sniff the water, swim over, take a look, then leave.

Every once in a while, something catches someone's eye. It might be the faint smell of diesel and dust, it might be a piece of advice about adjusting a carburetor, or it might be something misstated or misinterpreted which needs correcting. That guy swims back over for another look, and maybe makes a post or two. Sometimes, the hook is set then, sometimes it takes two or three or twenty tries. Eventually, though, if the yellow is in the blood, they can't resist and they'll start talking. Once that happens, it is only a matter of time before they're rooting around in the blackberry bushes, trying to pull the tenth froze up solid, ten ton treasure out of the brush with none of the right tools except for the five friends they've talked into joining the adventure.

I'd love it if everyone would dive in headfirst, post their basic information, location and start posting away. Unfortunately, human nature seems to take a while to get comfortable, figure out that this is a warm and welcoming discussion and begin to contribute. As long as it doesn't cost us anything in space or bulletin board operations, I'm for just leaving the door open to registering, posting what they want and when they want and requiring no commitments.

I can't wait, though, until we have a way to identify those of us who care and do financially support the Club and/or the bulletin board. That is coming soon. I'm also hopeful that the system which will allow contribution and an acknowledgement of that contribution, will also allow all of us participants to elect other participants for certain banners. We participants should have a way to acknowledge and identify contributors like Old Magnet, edb, tctractors and others. I'd like to have a way that we could go to their profile and record a vote so that their name and avatar would also get a little flag that says something like "Listen to this guy, he is one of the great yellow sages." After so many votes, the flag would appear, indicating that users of the forum recognize and appreciate their contributions. I don't know if this is possible, but I think it is something that would be good for our community.

As far as the olive branch to the Link Club, I think we've made some progress. We need to continue in that direction. I'd be the first on a plane to carry one if anyone is offering a ticket! I'd want to make sure, of course, that my trip could include one of those great Link Club working weekends.

You mentioned the need for representation on the Board. This need is one of the main reasons we created the International Director position. We felt that it is important to ensure that at least one Director from outside the U. S. is on the Board at any given time. There is no problem with having more Directors from overseas, but the Club should always have at least one non-U. S. Director. The current Ballot provides the first election to this position. There are some logistical difficulties with having people serving on a Board who are located in the U. K. or Europe, in the U. S. and in New Zealand, Australia or Asia.

It becomes very difficult to have telephone meetings with all participants when we are evenly spread across the world. For meetings now, we generally hold our calls at 7:30 pm Eastern Time, which works out to somewhere between 9:00 am and 11:00 am Australian Eastern Time for Lance, as the current non-U. S. Director. If we had a participant in the U. K., that time would work out to 1:30 AM in London. You can see that with that spread of participants, to have a meeting with all involved, someone would have to be talking in the middle of their night. We can deal with that problem, and will if necessary, but it does complicate matters quite a bit.

The importance of having representation, especially to ensure that we minimize the risk of another problem like the Chapter 2 de-certification, far outweighs any logistical concerns we might need to overcome.

Pete.

"Old wrote:

Hi chumduffy,
I hope it is not me you are referring to, but I don't think it is.
If it is directed to the post a few above, it is well known who makes the rounds of the splinter groups and stirs the pot. No credibility there whatsoever and belongs with those groups.

I started off with the same reaction and censored my own post but it is to significant to just let it go by.

Hello OM,
Definitely not you. My rant was triggered from a post a few above yours. I did suspect your retracted post was to be on this topic, I'm sure yours would have made more sense than mine.

Well, since many of us are chiming in with ways to help the club and forum, I might as well add my $.02. I am not a paying member of the club, but would pay in a second for access to technical articles and "how to" sections (ie. convert a 9U to oil clutch as I just went through this). I would also be first in line to pay small fees for individual parts book/SRB pages. To me, these are great ideas and we need to have these things. As someone said up above, books, magazines, etc. are a dying technology. We need these things accessible online through the forum if possible. As far a selling models goes, I have no experience with this. However, having watched the forum for 5+ years, I notice the vast majority of the conversation here is based around technical questions about fixing these old machines. If that is the bulk of the conversation, that's where people's needs and interests are. We need to focus on this. Making available manuals, technical sheets, "how to's" etc. is something (I feel) people would pay for. I also feel the number of people willing to pay for a model is tiny in comparison to this. Of those many forum members who visited very few times, I'll bet many had a repair to make and looked for the info. they needed. If they were able to find it for free they did and didn't come back. Why not make a dollar or two off of this valuable information by having special access to it? Thanks for listening. Joel

I don't buy the "cultural differences" suggestion. The old Cat hobby is about as focused and universal as it can get. It's the political shenangans that get in the way.

If Cat gets their nickers in a knot over the use of their name on the magazine, just change it. Link Club or whatever works for me.

Also agree those registered BB members are a highly inflated number, probably an accumulated total over many years.

Whether or not the numbers are real the internet is still the most far reaching media, far exceeding the potential draw from the magazine.

If I had a $1 for every BB contributer that I've seen come and go for various reasons ( a lot of it due to frustration with the club) I'd be a rich man.....well maybe richer....you get the point.

It is to bad some toes have been stomped because those of us that like smoke and noise have been the losers. Mike and OM and others I think a little pot stirring is good,just keep it positive.
Hopefully there are one or two for you that are new and don't know the history.Someone with great talent doing great good for old gas Cats got there nickers in a knot that they had been disrespected.They and there supporters have been stirring the pot in a negative way ever since.The other issue was the Chapter 2 expulsion which has to be placed at Caterpillar Corporation 's door rather than the clubs.So don't be scared to open your mouth and express a opinion,as long as you can do it in a civil way.
So now that I am on a soap box, hopefully there will be some more ideas put forward on what to do to keep this place going. I don't see the model thing or selling parts being able to carry the load.Also I don't think charging up front will work as that will keep many from opening are door and seeing what we are here. So what do I know the model business did manage to pay the bill for number of years. Come on all you people.OK start throwing the rocks. Donkyhead and I need someone smarter to come to are rescue.
Ray

There is a feature I see on the HEF forum that should be implemented here now (same program though obviously newer).

As a new BB member it allows a new registered candidate to only respond to an existing post for about 5 times I think it is, before they can submit a new posting on their own. This gives the opportunity to scrutinize the sincerity of the poster by moderators and helps keep out the unwanted.

If the program can count this function it also ought to be able to count how many inquiry posts before a request for membership (payed dues) is automatically generated. Granted, a work around by continually changing the registration info. could be done but a check of the requester IP address should help limit these cases.

There is also a lot more sophisticated catagorizing of topics available if that is desired.

The HEF site also utilizes payed advertisers which certainly could be adapted here. I know that may seem annoying but I have not found it to be the case on that website.

In short, we don't have to re-invent the wheel, most of what we are talking about has been done already, just have to get away from the "back room" mentality and utilize the modern media.

Garlic Pete, I would like to thank you for your well scripted and forward looking post, it did make a great read that I could well understand, without doubt the Forum is a Blinding bit of greatness that must be classed as the Cement between the Bricks keeping a large and dynamic following informed.
tctractors

I do not comment on here much any more, in the past I have. The only reason that I am a current member of the ACMOC is that my dues are paid for by a third party. When that ends I will have a very hard time paying for a magazine that has no purpose besides publishing chapter news. I did have a technical article nearly finished a few years ago, it was ready to go out to friends for fact checking and proof reading, but after the Chapter 2 mess and the banning of members it will never see the light of day nor will any other articles that I had planned.
The last models I bought were the Twenty and Twenty Two, both because I have both tractors. Neither were quality models, they could not even get the tracks put on the Twenty Two in the right direction. The other two models that I have bought from the club were the Thirty and the Sixty. I have no interest in 95% of the diesel tractors.
The club should stay out of the parts business unless they can produce a quility product that is exact to print. Yes I am OCD on a lot of things, if a brass part would have been painted at the factory then it should have paint on it when you paint the tractor and it should not be polished. Some times even to blue print is not correct for all year tractors because of changes to the parts during production. Track bushing S234 for S and PS thirties and other tractors that used the Thirty tracks went through 23 changes before it was canceled. How many know tha tthe heat valve end caps on the L and PL Twenties had several different part numbers but only two of the are shown in the parts book? If you are going to sell reproduction parts you will need to know all of this. If some of the manifold parts I have from Logue are an indication of the condition of the patterns, the patterns will need magor work before they can be considered correct.
Back to work and hiding in my shop with what little free time I have
Ken
I love how this BB program reformats everything you have typed.

Garlic Pete,
I hate to dump on you, but your the only communication link so far.

So how long do we need to keep up this banter until we see some results?
Or is it time to get more aggressive? Should be more than enough material here to get the drift.

So when is the next board meeting?

Who will represent/present these responses?

When can we at least see some incremental steps that can be discussed in an open forum other than by yourself or that's fine if you can speak for the BOD's.

That battleship you refer to is taking on water, as well as needing direction change. The time is now.

Keep the great responses coming guys, were dealing with a tough group to convince.