Like most people these days when we buy anything major we always do lots of research online beforehand. One of the reasons we set this site up was to add to the information available to people like us who are researching various bits of camping kit.
A good source of advice and information are forum sites. People are willing to offer advice on all manner of subjects from Software Engineering to baby sleeping habits (quite contentious that last one). Campers are no different it seems. But I have found with camping that there seems to be very few forums for campers based in the UK. This is unlike any other subject I have experience of, where multiple forum sites flourish, each offering a different set of opinions and answers.
I have found only 2 camping forum sites for UK campers so far ukcampsite and the camping forum and they are (I couldn't resist the pun) 'poles apart' on many levels.
Content. As ukcampsite is the established forum it is full of posts, which are actively being updated with replies. I recently posted on there and got over 10 replies within 24 hours. The camping forum on the other hand is very new and so at the moment is pretty sparse, it's in a Catch 22 where it needs the support of the camping community posting on it to get it off the ground but it's hard to get people to post when there is little content and few other posters. Time will tell if they get over this initial stalemate.
Organisation. This is a difficult area to compare as the camping forum doesn't have a huge amount of content to organise yet. I can say though that the organisation of ukcampsite is not great and it would be easy to improve on. Their search is quite rudimentary, there is no way to tag posts and there are no related posts suggested, all of which would help to mine the wealth of information the site holds.
Design. The camping forum's design is slick but unobtrusive and looks clean and modern (I wish we could get such a nice logo and graphics but my skillset does not extend that far) whereas (and this might be a case of the pot calling the kettle black) ukcampsite's design is very old skool, which is a polite way of saying it's dated and boring. I guess you can make the argument that if it's not broke ... but I think that a bit of a facelift really wouldn't go amiss.
Moderation. From experience so far, the camping forum takes a very open attitude to moderation and control. They weed out offensive and illegal content but apart from that they seem to use a very light hand. We try to do the same here, user contributed comments and reviews are moderated before publication but that's mainly because that's the way the system works, in practice we don't remove much at all. My experience with ukcampsite is that they have a more heavy handed approach to moderation, which I feel is unfortunate.
Links. The camping forum are more than happy to post links to other camping related sites, they have a links page just for that purpose. Ukcampite doesn't have a links page and seem to vet links to other camping sites from their posts.
Social networking. Although it's possible to set a homepage in the user profile on ukcampsite I can't see anywhere this is displayed and it's not possible to add other social networking contact methods (like facebook or twitter). It's sometimes useful having found a review to get a more rounded opinion about the person and you may wish to contact them outside of the forum none of which is possible with ukcampsite. The camping forum allows profiles to have web and social network links and displays them with the posts.
Overall feel. The camping forum has an open and inclusive feel, it's obviously embracing social networking (they have a twitter feed like us, for example) and the site feels modern and functional. Unfotunately it's also quiet. Ukcampsite feels more old fashioned, like a walled garden. The level of control and unwillingness to make links to the large number of other camping related sites that exist feels insular. It is however very lively.
We post on both sites and we're hoping that the camping forum can get established and become another vibrant forum for UK campers, as we feel that it would be a case of the more the merrier.