This is a mistake.
To start out with, I well understand the concerns that the people running the MFCA website have expressed and the diffiiculties, financial and otherwise, that ensue in the running of a website. Nor do I see malice in the decision that has been taken or any sense of elitism being expressed by the website managers.
But this move is a mistake.
Not only will this not solve the MFCA's immediate problems of financial support for its activities, membership growth, or the further promotion of the hobby, this move effectively shuts off what any group of people should most value for an activity: an outside source of ideas.
The free and active exchange of information is vital if any hobby or activity group is going to thrive and expand. This is an intangible, but the value of having and attracting more people willing to share ideas, insights, perspective, alternatives to set formulaes, and humour, is incalculable.
Beyond that, the bleak fact of the matter is that, in the course of a simple Google search for "Electric Football Forums" or "Miniature Football Forums", only three or four sites come up in thirty pages: one of them is a private forum, one has sporadic activity at best, and one has had only one new post (within 2009) in two years, unlike the case with any search for "model train forums" or "model airplane forums" in which you easily get the first five pages listing open-access forums available.
In this environment, you need as much of the outside world to keep coming in here as you can invite in. Practising exclusion as opposed to inclusion can only lead to an eventual dead-end when your closed-loop exchanges become increasingly stale and bereft of original thinking.
There have been problems with dead-wood users who sign up but never post anything in a year or even ever. There have been problems with people bringing in their disputes and touching off the odd flame-thread or two. But this solution is rather akin to treating a small cut on one's finger by amputating the entire hand.
It is also not helpful to just dismiss the legitimate concerns people have expressed over their own financial constraints as barriers to MFCA membership as if they are mere trivia. These days, nearly everyone has to face that sort of decision every given day, especially if one might not be too confident that his or her job which they've got today won't be eliminated tomorrow. I often have to make that choice and it always comes down to what decision gets the most mileage out of my available cash. To put this in terms of EF/MF bugeteeering, I can either spend that $20 on a membership, or I can put it toward buying up to four bags of Miggle/Tudor men for bargain prices off e-Bay to repaint and add to my own solo empire. Or, I can save that $20 for a rainy day. I might actually need it.
I've said my piece. I suggest that there might be alternatives worth exploring, such as a PayPal donation button for one, and I will continue to contribute to the boards for as long as I remain able to. I may one day be able to work a membership to the MFCA into my own budget. I only point out that practising exclusion rather than inclusion has not succeeded for any group that has ever attempted it, in the end, and that you may want to be really really sure that this is the route the MFCA wishes to follow.
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