Two Gringo Guide and Agency Lists

[elcolombiano]

Does anyone have an opinion on the Two Gringo Guide by Rascal Web Services? They do not seem very professional. It's $25 for the book. On the cover they misspell Colombia Columbia. They also do not take credit cards.

I want to go to Colombia soon and would like a current complete list and ratings of all the different agencies.

Appreciate if anyone can help.

[Ken2]

... in response to Two Gringo Guide and Agency Lists, posted by elcolombiano on Sep 23, 2002

I asked the same question that your asking about the book.  I never bought it as the archives here have so much "current" information you can glean from. I think it was updated less than a year ago, so it might not be a bad investment.  Goodwife.com had a lot of useful links on it, you might check it out.

[greg]

... in response to Two Gringo Guide and Agency Lists, posted by elcolombiano on Sep 23, 2002

Joined 2 Gringos back when cost was $20. Very Helpful Website. Worth every Penny.

[Pete E]

... in response to Two Gringo Guide and Agency Lists, posted by elcolombiano on Sep 23, 2002

The book can be good for beginers,particularly in how to avoid getting ripped off.I think its worth the money from that standpoint alone.I used to follow their list,when I found this one I drifted from them and then I had trouble posting and didn't bother to figure out why,just gave up on
them.
They have,or had when I first found it,a good review of the agencies.They also have discussion sites per city of interest.
For a beginer I would try all the sites and then settle in to one that fits you.

Pete

[elcolombiano]

... in response to Re: Two Gringo Guide and Agency Lists, posted by Pete E on Sep 23, 2002

Thanks for all the inputs. Since I am a beginner and do not want to get ripped off I will buy the book.

[greg]

... in response to Re: Two Gringo Guide and Agency Lists, posted by Pete E on Sep 23, 2002

Cannot get back on myself. Lost me guide and password. Guess I would need to email Tim.

[valuedcustomer]

... in response to Two Gringo Guide and Agency Lists, posted by elcolombiano on Sep 23, 2002

The only reason to get the book is to get on their private website.  They don’t have as frequent posts as Planet Love, for example, there can be several days before anyone posts, however, the posts are generally of higher quality than Planet Love.  In contrast, Planet Love has an easy-to-use interface which encourages volumes of posts and up to date information, but the disadvantage is you have to wade through tons of junk to get to an occasional good post.  Another alternative is Latin Women List which has a better archive search facility than Planet Love.  For example, you can retrieve information based on a combination of keywords and date ranges.  Latin Women List (LWL) use to be good, but now has degenerated into an armchair psychology forum.  I think Planet love is taking away their business.  However, there is still a lot of useful information in the  LWL archives genereated during its hay days.
 

[pablo]

... in response to Re: Two Gringo Guide and Agency Lists, posted by valuedcustomer on Sep 23, 2002

Speaking of different discussion boards and their pros/cons...has Patrick ever considered a format similar to the discussion group RWG?  Members need to log in, topics are categorized, new posts are placed at the beginning of a thread, etc.?  I enjoy the P-L site, don’t get me wrong, but in comparing some other sites I see certain advantages in other formats.  Just wondering.

[Patrick]

... in response to Discussion board comparisons., posted by pablo on Sep 24, 2002

I actually bought the Vbulletin software a few months ago and installed it.  Even I found it somewhat confusing to use at first.  It's got more features than this one, but I thought many people would have problems using it, so I never opened it up to posting.  There are plenty of people who have trouble even with the simple system here and the more features a forum has, the more complicated it is to use.

The other problem is conversion.  This is almost a completely custom message board and converting the accounts over would be quite a job.  I also have quite a bit of "anti-troll" programing built in to the registration system that doesn't exist in Vbulletin and would have to be re-written in PHP to function inside of Vbulletin.

The third thing is that I posted messages to all the boards with a link to the Vbulletin site to a demo board and the overwhelming response was negative.  The thing that really seemed to turn people off about the other format boards is separation of posts by topic.  People just don't want to change.  

Lastly, I think monitoring the other type system would be more work.  With this system, I can scan down one page and see all the subjects and easily spot developing flame wars.  With the other type system, each topic is a separate page and I'd have to go through many to look at everything.

After trying out Vbulletin, I decided to scrap it and add new features to the existing forums.  I changed the archive format to increase the number of archives we can store by about 8X and built the new search engine which now includes search by subject, message, or user name and has a feature allowing you to not only see the hits on the search phrase, but also allows you to view the thread from which each hit came.  I also added email address blocking so only registered members can access the email address of another member (assuming that member included a message board address when registering).  At least with the current system, I'm very familiar with the code since I wrote it and making changes is not too difficult.

[pablo]

... in response to Re: Discussion board comparisons., posted by Patrick on Sep 24, 2002

Hi Patrick,

Thanks for your quick reply and comments about the format here.  I don't know if RW Guide uses the Vbullentin software that you mentioned or not.  They did change their system dramatically this past year, and if I recall correctly, without a prior vote or input from the board.  I guess the owner had previewed the new format and thought it would meet their needs better.  Most of the old timers were not giving a whole hearted recommendation after it was implemented, some objected and asked for the old format back.  Gradually though the naysayers started to like it and saw the advantages to the new format.  It does not surprise me to hear some of the guys make the same comments about change.  I wasn't suggesting you Deep 6 this format but I do think comparisons and evaluations once made could be very useful.

I was going by memory when I made my previous post about the comparisons between these two formats so I took a look again at their site in order to explain the differences better.  As one other board member said "don't categorize the cities", he obviously has not been at that site or understood my previous post.

Here in a nutshell are some of their features:

They have categorized different topics.  

These Categories are under general headings that are broken down into small headings.

1. Education- general discussion, advance discussion, already married, trip reports, scams, immigration/visa, and polls.
2. Locate- dating agencies, tours & socials, and travel discussion.
3. Communication- translation, flowers/gifts, telephone.
4. Editorial- respected guest speakers in the field have been invited to post varying topics.
5. Other- Chat room, culture, off topic posts, classifieds, board modification requests.

New posts by board members in each topic are brought to the front.  No missed posts because someone hasn't scrolled down far enough or the necessity to place whole or partial threads at the top of the tree in order for increased exposure.  An example was a recent thread you placed up the tree for more people to read.

There are many similarities though.  Member info, date joined, email listed (if so chosen), and member comment section.  One different feature that I don't care for is a public tracking of where a board member was last reading and who has recently visited the web site.  Too big brother to my liking.  On the other hand, one feature I do like is the ability to send a private email to someone at the board even though their email is not publicly listed.  How many times have I read, "what's your email?" or "email me".  This would not be necessary with this feature.  I also like the ability to edit or even delete one's personal thread.  Another positive is the ability to place live links within a post, eliminating the need to copy and paste.  A silly feature they have is a rating system from other board members (again if one chooses to have this option listed) ranging from one to five stars.  I think there is the ability to choose to have new posts sent to your email also, although I am not positive on this.

The issue regarding monitoring does not seem to be a problem especially since new posts are always placed at the beginning in each thread and topic.  The board owner there has enlisted a couple members to act as moderators to make his job easier.  No weekend triads while you are gone by whoever, like we had a month or so ago by someone going off the deep end and placing all those obnoxious posts.

Change is not always necessary or even better.  I do not envy your job.  I do want to go on record and publicly thank you for how open and receptive you are to suggestions making this board a better one.  My post on comparing this format to another was meant for suggestions only and is no way meant to be critical or a desire to imitate another board.  It is just food for thought.  To my way of thinking, I actually prefer that board format better than the style here for some reasons mentioned above.  I too was one of those naysayers  after they made changes and thought why can't they leave well enough alone, but now I like it much better.  If you were to rely on old or curent posters as a deciding factor to give a thumb's up regarding a switch, I doubt if you would ever get a green light.  

The recent changes you've made are great especially the improved search engine but it is great to be able to go to a specific topic at the other site, like Scams, and view all the threads listed under that topic.  That to me has more advantages than simply using a search engine as I might not even know the "correct" question to ask and one can learn a lot within specific topics.  But after all is said, it is your board and you can do what you want.  Thanks though for being open and objective.

Enuf said.  

[Patrick]

... in response to Re: Re: Discussion board comparisons., posted by pablo on Sep 24, 2002

I suspect they're probably using VBulletin or something very similar.  The separate board for each topic seems to exactly what the people here did not want.

I'm working on post editing right now and have it about half way finished already.  It's turning out to be easier than I expected.  I roughed it in, but still need to add a second script to take and edited message and update the message file.  I hope to be able to finish it sometime during the coming weekend.

I think I'll stay with the current format for the forseeable future.  I've got to get back to the rest of the site some day and finish the banner ad scripts so I can start turning a profit again instead of losing money for my work.  I also am currently unable to add new agencies to the agency list pages until I complete the work on the new system I started a couple of months ago.  If I switched over to VBulletin, the account conversion process and building in of the anti-troll features I want would probably take over a hundred man-hours to complete.  As things are, I can add most forum features with only a few hours work.

[Pete E]

... in response to Re: Discussion board comparisons., posted by Patrick on Sep 24, 2002

Patrick,
I prefer this format.Also by not seperating it to different cities we get some imformation about different cities.Our slant here seems to be Cali,but guys interested in other places can get some Cali imput  and we some about other cities and general topics.
One thing 2 gringos does have is a good agency review section.This can be usefull for beginers.

Pete

[DallasSteve2]

... in response to Re: Discussion board comparisons., posted by Patrick on Sep 24, 2002

Patrick

I prefer your current layout.  I hope you don't change it to one segregated by topic.  It would be nice to be able to edit our previous posts, but that's not very important.

Steve

[Patrick]

... in response to Re: Re: Discussion board comparisons., posted by DallasSteve2 on Sep 24, 2002

I could add post editing without too much trouble.  Probably a day's work.

[Cali vet]

... in response to Re: Discussion board comparisons., posted by Patrick on Sep 24, 2002

Patrick, just curious, how many registered users are there  on the latin forum?