Future improvements

[huge]

Hi,
I think this website is wonderful and to the people who have put it together we owe plenty of gratitude but in the future, what improvements could be made to make the site even better?

Here are some of my thoughts;

1. We need a reference page with information that people can access to gain documented information when writing letters. This is so the average Joe can quote Walter Stark or scientific info when writing letters to their local rag.

2.We need information pages that can be printed with the ECOfishers loggerhead. For instance, it might be a page on what ECOfishers is about and how to contact us or the politics of NSW marine parks or how to fight for our rights. From that, anglers or tackle shop owners could print off copies to give to their mates or customers. Tackle shop owners might want to print out a couple of hundred copies to give to customers etc. An effective way for our info to be spread to people who don't search the web. Lets face it, many of the newspapers and media lean towards the greens which means we have to look at other ways to spread our message.

3. We might want to consider a celebrity page. Hunt down celebrities or highly regarded people who are sympathetic to our cause, show their picture and a quote from them agianst the implementation of marine parks.

Food for thought. What do you think?

[Rod Burston]

Huge,

Thanks for your compliments and we have taken your ideas on board.

The web site is just a rough draft at the moment. We have been busy constructing a better version over the last few weeks.

Your idea of having ready made quotes so people can use them in their letters is a ripper and we will have a section for this for sure. We will have many examples of protest letters that people are more than welcome to borrow or adjust etc.

We are designing a poster that can be down-loaded, printed, and posted in fishing shops and the like. Our first version might be a little rough but I am sure we have the resources to get out a beauty as time goes on.

We will have a 'take action' section that helps people to promote the cause and, of course, everyone will be able to help by joining the movement via the net.

There is no doubt that newspapers and other media have a green bias, especially in big cities, but they can, and will, be won over with good argument. We have won over a few papers in the country areas already and we plan to take our issues to the mainstream city press soon.

There are some very recognisable people showing interest in what we are doing. It never ceases to amaze me who is likely to be fishing next to you on a dark night. From Brett Lee to Mathew Hayden, Malcolm Frazer to Bob Hawke or even Giovanni Pavarotti and the Russian Ballet. Could be anyone, and some of these people are beginning to contact us! Some are already helping behind the scenes (for understandable reasons) and we will all be surprised by those that decide to stand up to be counted.

We have a section where people can declare that they have never ever caught a grey nurse shark. We expect a big response here from everyone including from me.  And if people have caught one of these sharks we want to know about it, confidentially of course. We have developed this section deliberately to screen out dummy declarations!!! and we will make findings of the survey very very  public (with complete anonymity of course).

There will be a few other surprises

Rod Burston

PS: We need your ideas for our web site, so post them here.

[row]

Keyword search would be handy

[Nete-Quette]

Great idea Row, I will implement a keyword search function on the revised website.

For anybody who is unaware, a keyword search is available on this message board via the top navigation buttons.