I, for one, am not very happy about this.
I speak as the VTR's TR4A Vehicle Consultant and a long time
contributor to the VTR website - I wrote the 4A buyer's guide, much
of the GT6 buyer's guide, as well as the set of pages about the 4A
(recently reorganized considerably by someone else, presumably the
new webmaster).
I did this as a volunteer effort - and as an effort to centralize
the Triumph knowledge for other owners, members or not. I get a
free membership for being the vehicle consultant - but that means
I (gladly) answer phone calls and emails. I wrote those pages long,
long ago - before I was the vehicle consultant. I wrote them for
enjoyment of the Triumph community in general.
(I also run the Monster List -- www.dimebank.com/monster - as a
completely volunteer effort, no donations required. I recently
started putting google ads on the pages, but I haven't yet seen any
money from that. I pay for the computers and the bandwidth out of
my own pocket, as a public service.)
This decision puts the cart before the horse. VTR should be trying to
prove itself valuable to Triumph owners by providing information and
thus inspiring them to join, rather than requiring them to join to
see if there's anything worthwhile.
I won't be contributing new content to the VTR website as long as this
policy remains in place. If VTR can't afford to run the website in a
public fashion, perhaps it should be looking at a different financial model.
Chris Kantarjiev
Palo Alto, CA
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