I am shocked. Not so much with the My bigger valve head, TPR2, journey that got "moved" (buried) but also this other thread "too bad" by a new forum member that merely lamented of the "locking" and then buried of the thread. It can no longer be found.

This is like the Game of Thrones of forum moderation. Not to forget, the OP of My bigger valve head, TPR2, journey was a NAM moderator Whine Not Walnuts.




this is what I get clicking on the google search link



I have seen the came and went of NAM moderators but this is rather unsettling. Will this thread be censored and deleted for merely raising the question?

 

Searches on nam are pretty much useless. Do a nam Google search for better results.

 

That thread was deleted because the only replies to the OP were accusing him of being ThumpR52 and posting under a different name and other lies and conspiracy theories. A couple of mods contacted the OP via PM and explained the situation and asked him to please stay around and continue to post. And, that most of the members are much better behaved.

 

Why delete it? Let the idiot's be known

 

 

Forum drama.

I'm not fully aware of the situational events leading the the ultimate causation, but I was familiar with the thread talked about here and also the noob "white knight" post.

There are obvious things, like ad hominem personal insult which may lead to such drastic measure, but there's also usually behind-the-scenes stuff going on that members don't really see yet the mods are aware of.

There's a very fine balance involved to maintain the decorum of an internet forum,
it's hard work.

I'm glad that NAM is still quite active and lively, unlike many other forums which have become unvisited ghosttowns due to smartphones and facebook.

Critical thought and engaged debate is always fun, but all too often it easily crosses over the thin line into a mudslinging melee and just ends up being an exercise in alienated anger.

 

Thanks for the reply. I didn't subscribe to the tread so I only saw the first few posts including one of the first attack. One lesson learned is it is not a good idea to allow for forum screen name change, except when there is very good reason. For me it was the opposite. I wanted to use my original NAM screen name from back in 2003 but due to years of disuse I could not recover it when I return in 2017.

I agree being a good moderator is very difficult and often a thankless job not to mention the valuable time they spend, and most are just doing it for the love including Whine Not Walnuts (AKA ThumpR52). I observed very dramatic drop in quality posts here compared to two years ago. Other Mini forums are much worst like Motoring Alliance and Mini2. I like reading MiniTorque. Most unfortunate, it evidently suffered a massive forum data loss and decades worth of past threads are gone forever like vanished Bitcoins.

 

LOL
'vanished Bitcoins"

That phrase made me chuckle, thanks.

What about punning it up into vanished Britcoins?


Shame that such vital info is ephemeral here on the everchanging innernetz.

Sometime the Wayback Machine can retrieve such the good stuff, but it is lacking at restoring old content from forums...

https://web.archive.org/web/20120308...orum/forum.php

...I love MiniTorque too --- especially the banter and general use of language, like can I say "****" here?
Perhaps I'll modify it and go archaic with "mewling quim".


Strange how language is such a supervised thing on most forums, I mean it's a natural flow to have common usage and colloquialisms and such like how real normal everyday people actually articulate and communicate, but it seems to be de facto on most boards to filter out what is culturally deemed as "profane"...

...what in the bloody hell is profanity anyways?


"Profanity is the linguistic crutch of an inarticulate motherf***er."

The reaction to curses/swears/profanity is largely based on the individual. Some believe that they should never be uttered, while others think they are acceptable under certain circumstances. There are also those that believe that they're nothing more than phonemes and that selecting some combinations as offensive and others as inoffensive is completely ridiculous.

A fine example of cursing being used as a means of discouraging elitism, former Australian prime minister Paul Keating yelled at late Labor politician Jim McClelland: ''Just because you swallowed a f***ing dictionary when you were about 15 doesn't give you the right to pour a bucket of s**t over the rest of us.''

Profanity is our first lesson in linguistic transgression, which we master even before we understand what it means to lie.

So the prudes and the profaners are locked into an eternal co-dependence. Swearing has always flourished most luxuriantly in ages when it could count on a strain of middle-class delicacy to work against. In Henry IV Part I, Hotspur rebukes his wife for using the dainty shop-keeper's oath "in sooth" -- "You swear like a conmfit-maker's wife… Swear me, Kate, like a lady as thou art, a good mouth-filling oath."

I dunno how I got sidetracked spiral rabbithole of discussing language and how it seems to be overregulated on most forums,
but anyways and for no other reason than that I find it interesting,
here's Steven Pinker on about it:

 

I have to admit, it took me a few minutes to realize you are replying to the wrong thread. But I am with you wholeheartedly about most US forums are too over-restrictive the use of foul languages. If you censor profanity you censor everyday reality and humanity. I like MiniTorque allowing their use and yet the Brits manage to have very cordial intercourse. Try use "intercourse" in US forum or media comment section, I dare you.

For full disclosure, I am big fan of gangster and crime TV/film, for immersed in them I can live out my oversized dreams that I can never achieve in my lifetime.

Don't get me started with the vanishing Britcoins . No deal or deal with your Britcoins are very bad things. We like to complain that there are so many Mini goodies that we cannot get as they do across the pond, but you should read the high prices they pay for the stuff that we take for granted here.

 

[size=3]I watched the thread and had a few posts. Maybe because I have a Thumper head some thought I was Mike Schultz and then at the end one guy thought I was the guy that started the thread. [/size]

[size=3]Seen this happen over and over. Guy makes a post about a Thumperhead and Jan and Jan wanntabees start attacking. On this one, the guy started out nice but each time they attacked he smacked them back, At the end somebody deleted maybe 3 weeks of his posts and left all the attacking ones.[/size]

[size=3]Now poof and its all gone. It sucks as the posts on bytetronik with the log graphs were really good. But say anything bad about Jan and your gone baby.[/size]

 

 

Yep! That same most vocal troll (aka Mr. ... ) has been very active giving n00b expert advices on how to mod the engine as he feels he won the war.

I too am saddened by the loss of countless good posts in the thread for someone took time to write properly and posted with plenty of photos. I have observed similar threads starting out with Thumper/Bytetronix that ended badly in other forums. One of which was at MA.

 

I've been a member of a couple of "enthusiasts" sites, one of the best being the TDI forum for Volkswagen TDI's. I even ran a site for coin collecting a decade ago.

I've experienced first hand how censoring members can effect board participation (in a negative way) and what a few bad apples can do to harm the larger group.

By deleting a thread the moderators don't take sides, even when it is obvious who the bad guys were, the offenders rarely see themselves that way.

That said, my advise to the moderators would be to lighten up a bit. I may be wrong, but some here seem annoyed with the foibles of new members.

 

Annoyed? Annoyed? Who's annoyed? And what the heck is a foible? I didn't see that as an option when I ordered my car! Now, Get OFF My Lawn!

Kidding aside, all the mods I'm familiar with are encouraging to new members. I know I try to welcome them and encourage them to stick around and contribute to the forum.
The main problems I've seen with new members is when they bypass 1st Gear when joining the forum and start asking technical question with their first post. I helps if a new member gets to know the basics of how the forum works first. It's also helpful, but not required, if you list where you live and what kind (year/model) of car you have. Location doesn't need to be specific, for example my location is listed a South Central Virginia. I know when I joined I didn't know a N14 from a N18 and sure didn't know what a MCS was. This is only my opinion and YMMV.

 

Yep, that's precisely why we don't say much on any forums anymore. So much time invested in writing up posts only to be deleted due to flame wars incited by professional trolls.

 

Not a real friendly place here, ask a simple question and you get accused and then what you ask is removed.

Anybody following that thread could see that Mr RMW did not like what was being said so he went running to the owner after all his badgering did not work. Mr Owner liking that RMW money shut the other guy up. Way back in the beginning of that thread the guy said something about a vendor being a troll. The guy even asked for somebody to explain why he went from kissing RMW's butt to kicking it. My momma didnt raise no dummy so it was pretty easy for me to figure out the answer.

Found this Modmini guy on Youtube that answers questions even for noobs so enjoy yourself here fellas.

 

 

Well, it seems that the actions squawSkiBum and I took as explained in post #3 was a waste of time.

 

I know moderating a forum is a thankless job, especially now that a lot of newbies don't bother to post at the right places. On excellent thread like My bigger valve head, TPR2, journey we certainly understand that some of the offensive post should be censored and/or deleted. It would be more constructive to give warnings and utilize penal system MiniTorque uses. Offending member get to sit out for a week, for example. IMHO SquawSkiBum acted heavy handedly by burying the entire thread. It was bad enough to even locking it.

 

It was a good effort, and hopefully he'll come back again later once time has passed, and give us a second look.

Quite honestly, this kind of thing is what discourages many of us that have been through it before. It's easy for us long time members to see what is really happening, but completely understandable how a new member would feel in this situation.
​​​​​​
I for one know that the diplomacy you guys have to adhere to and work with can be frustrating, but it really is a shame that the results usually end up the same, good info gets washed away with the tide of the aftermath.
And the truth or not, it appears to many of us, to be the desired result all along.

 

Speaking as a newbie, who posted in the wrong place I can tell you that it is an easy mistake to make. One not done to annoy anyone, or because we just like to break rules. In my case the post's were just deleted, without explanation and when I tried to write and ask what was going on my emails were not replied to. Who knows, maybe I didn't email the right way either. In any event with a little digging ( something not everyone might be willing to do) I figured it out.

When your in a system, or you create one. Everything seems obvious, and people that can't figure it out look like idiots.

Fortunately I don't mind being an idiot while I figure things out. As for trolls, and ad hominem attacks. No site can or should tolerate them, but innocent and helpful posts should not be deleted to try and counter them.

 

I saw a fight between 2 intelligent people as to what was right and wrong. Each coming from a different perspective and each being very set in their ways. AND, a lot of good information was lost. But, the real loss was Bytetronic shying away from posting on here. They posted in a way that even I understood what they were talking about, and I'm a tuning dummy. That is a BIG loss.

 

 

They are still here:

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...0-r52-r53.html

They were never involved in any of the actual problem posts.
But, some of the information they shared in the offending thread was quite good and more in depth than what is normally shared with the general public as to how their tuning works.
This is one of the real losses, being a long time customer I understand all the time, effort and money that has gone into what they offer, and to be privy to some of this info by them or any BMW/Siemens tuner in an open forum is rare for us.

You can still contact them by PM or ask questions at the above thread.

 

So why did ThumpeR52 (previously Whine Not Walnuts) get banned??