COCA revamping their website

[KaChing]

I just read the latest issue of the COCA Times.

I am sure I am going to get yelled at for this, but what the hell.

The following is a direct quote from the "Message from our President" (page 4). "I want and hopefully by August we will have our new site running. Members will have secure logins, ability to update personal information, chat, buy, sell, identify machines and have timely access to information."

Doesn't this site have all those features already? Looks like COCA is attempting a knock-off of this forum.

I see COCA still refuses to acknowledge that this site exists.

On the plus side, if you have not read the magazine check out the very well written article about the Caille Roulette on page 32.

[Marc Hess]

I like this forum a lot. I also am very happy COCA exists and enjoy getting the COCA Times. I appreciate the hard work of this forum's administrator, Dave, as well as the hard work of the COCA leadership.
I assume Dave doesn't want to turn this forum over to COCA and I think there is room for improvement at the COCA web site. Lets wait and see what the improvements are before we start knocking them. I know I will continue to frequent this site and hopefully will gain yet another powerful resource.

The only gripe I have with this forum is its anonimity, i.e., the ability to participate under a username with out revealing your true identity. I would urge Dave to require all to at least post their accurate personal info and identity in the profile section.

My two cents.

[Dave]

Marc:

Sorry for the delay in responding. I was at a family reunion for the last 5 days and just got back.

Thanks for the compliment on the forum. I am also glad to see that COCA is revamping their web site. I think it is long overdue. However, I am not going to hold my breath on how long it will stay current. It is quite a bit of effort to keep a web site up to date and even more effort to monitor and moderate a forum. I just went to the “Breaking News� area of the COCA web site. The last “Breaking News� item has a date of 4/2/05 (over 3 months ago). Even with a revamped web site, it takes ongoing effort to keep it up to date. Especially, if you provide a service where you display photos of people’s machines. These photos almost always need to be edited for size and while this is not hard, it takes time.

I have a feeling that if COCA does start a discussion forum then every post will be reviewed before it is allowed to be displayed. All I can say is good luck. This is a lot of effort and even if they have the time to do it the forum will fail once the members realize that they are being censored.

You are correct that I am not willing to turn ownership of this site over to them. Mainly because I don’t think they have the time or ability to keep it running and/or add improvements. I doubt any of the COCA board has the ability or desire to do PHP programming and I doubt the person who they have asked to build the new web site has the desire to do it or to continually pay someone else to do it.

I have the feeling that they are not open to requests. In the past, I publicly offered to provide the ability to allow COCA members to email each other. I did not receive any feedback. I sent a personal message to the president and received no response at all. I offered to give them hundreds of photos for next year’s calendar. My only request was that they return the photos and acknowledge me for any photos they used. I did get a response from one of the leaders but it was basically “go to h*ll�.

Other people (jcrowley) have offered to help COCA with the COCA website (http://www.ibuyoldslots.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=100&start=22) and I am willing to bet that jcrowley never heard a word from them. If I am mistaken I would welcome jcrowley to correct me.

I just read the message from the president in the latest COCA Times. I found it interesting that all requests regarding the new web site from the members need to go through him and not to the person who is working on the new page. It appears that the COCA leadership wants to filter all requests. If I were developing a web site for a group of people I would sure like to get feedback from the members while I was designing it.

Regarding forcing people to reveal their true identity on this forum (yes, I could do it). I have decided not to for the following reasons:

1. Owning a slot machine is still illegal in certain states. I know there are some major collectors and, no doubt, lots of other collectors who live in these states. These people may not feel comfortable about identifying themselves in a public forum. All it takes is one over zealous prosecutor to make their lives miserable.

2. Some slot machines are worth tens of thousands (even hundreds of thousands) of dollars. People may not want to make it obvious on what they own.

3. Some topics are controversial by nature (reproduction slots for example). Some dealers/collectors may have an opinion that they might be afraid to express unless they can do it in an anonymous fashion.

4. Some people may be afraid of public attacks. KaChing is a perfect example. I think he made a pretty benign comment in a post several months ago and was ripped pretty bad by COCA.

5. COCA tends to intimidate people. I have received personal emails from people who have gone to the COCA meeting at the Chicago show and have said they were afraid to say anything because they didn’t want to get yelled at by COCA.

Anyway, I hope you understand why I am not going to force people to identify who they are and if people ask me who individual IDs are I will not disclose their identity (assuming I even know it).

This forum is all about open and frank discussion. It is also about sharing information. I read that Bill Howard, a person that I have great respect for, gave a talk at the last COCA meeting stating that knowledge is power. I couldn’t agree more.

I do have the ability to ban anyone who posts anything inappropriate, but, to date, I have not had to do this. It is also about having fun (like the contest we had regarding the Caille Roulette).

Once the new COCA website is up and running I have no problem advertising that fact on this forum. The coin collecting hobby needs all the help it can get.

I hope I have not offended anyone. I am just stating exactly how I feel.

Dave

[jcrowley]

Hi Dave et al -

As you noted, I offered to help COCA with any proposed redesign of their web site but as expected, never heard anything back from them. I've been a web developer/programmer since the early days of HTML, and for the past six years have been one of the administrators for the AT&T Enterprise Business site. Like everyone else, I see much room for improvement with regards to the COCA site. Hopefully, they will get their act together, but I'm not exactly holding my breath!

I would strongly discourage you from turning over control of your site to COCA. As you stated, COCA has not demonstrated any ability to maintain a site of this nature, but I also think that this site serves an important function by remaining independent. I've only been collecting Slots and trade stimulators for a few short years, but this site has already become my favorite, and I question whether the same free-flowing exchange of information could be achieved if we fell under the umbrella of COCA.

[TJ]

Hi Dave:
I think this site is super. My wife and I are active members of ACMCA a Southern California club. We also joined COCA shortly after it's inception. We enjoy all coin-op stuff, and think you are doing a great job with this site. I definitely agree with Mr. Crowley. As for computers I am still pretty low on the curve, but hope as I get better at it, I will be able to contribute more. Hope to see some of you at the COCA convention in L.A.
Sincerely,
T.J.

[goodguy]

There is little enough of general (day to day) information on the hobby.
This forum lends us an opportunity to keep current, and has bcome
to many a daily "checkit out " for things we would not be aware of.

The buy and sale feature is tops, you right in print the day you decide to sell. And others should be aware of the fact that Dave kindly takes and enters the photos.

Keep it up. goodguy

[Dave]

There is little enough of general (day to day) information on the hobby.
This forum lends us an opportunity to keep current, and has bcome
to many a daily "checkit out " for things we would not be aware of.

The buy and sale feature is tops, you right in print the day you decide to sell. And others should be aware of the fact that Dave kindly takes and enters the photos.

Keep it up. goodguy

Just a reminder that people can set an option to be automatically notified (via email) when a new topic is posted. That way you don't need to go to the forum every day to see if new articles are posted.

This feature is very useful in the for sale section if you are in the process of trying to build your collection.

Dave