The kind of posts you mention are part of the reason that this thread got started. There has been some pent up anger that needed to be vented and the site changed in a way that improves the social interaction.

While I don't expect everyone to be a member of the mutual admiration society the least we can ask of people is some common courtesy.

I appreciate the comments on the mix and navigation aspects of the site. I feel that they are pretty good but I want to see how much better we can make it. That's what gets me up in the morning and jazzed about working on it all day long

Mark

 

Or got chocolate in NAM's peanut butter.

 

but I've been busy....

There are a lot of things at play here.

1. A lot of early adopters have adopted something else...... So many of the pioneers have moved on.
2. With the time that the car has been out, what used to be a somewhat rare question is now an all to often heard re-run. I think that Forums self cleanse themselves, as no one really digs back to find out what happened earlier. Some of this is the search function, some is the fact that no one really digs back more than a couple of pages of listings. But for old timers, there are more re-run questions compared to new information, and that's just the nature of the beast, as new owners come on board faster than old-timers mature.
3. As far as the civility, I think it comes and goes. The intro of the R56 sure got people all worked up, and on the net it's an all too often tendancy to take it personal when someone points out the flaw in your brand new $25k-$35k purchase. But that just sucks. Too many people respond with emotion, instead of thought. But I fear this is the case of society in general. Seems data driven decisions are a thing of the past... (personal view there).
4. For the Vendors, if they stopped spouting BS marking hype, they wouldn't get cought in their own noose. Two recent examples come to mind: Peters claim that the new IC baffle for the R56 had great results while simultaneously claiming that there was no time to test it was a major oops (and M7 has many products I like), but some of the stuff I read from Carole at Palo Uber just make me ill. (Go read about the 96.78% or whatever smooth air flow from the hood scoop to see what I mean. I really doubt that they did testing that got a 1 part in 10,000 accuracy to measure, I also doubt that manufacturing tolerances can hold that degree of accuracy, and I really didn't understand the claim at all.) So lots of the backlash to vendors is of thier own doing, independant of support and warranty issues. I used to be a marketing manager for a semiconductor product line, and while it's easy to spout good sounding hype, the key to successful marketing is to allign customer expectations with delivered reality. Many vendors neat to either learn or remember that.
5. Memebers with adjendas. There are a few that feel wronged, and bring that into lots of conversations/threads. While I think some of the moderation used to be a bit heavy handed, it's getting better, and really, most that are bothered by it haven't learned to use the "ignore" feature. But like posted by others, it's the persons right to say that they think they were screwed, and let the community know about thier experiences. And since it's so subjective, it's hard to have a firm line between communicating dissatisfaction and stirring up trouble. That's a subjective call.
6. human nature. I've found that butt dyno calibrations are proportional to credit card hits, more than anything else, as we all want to believe that the money was well spent. But the general level of understanding of how are automotive systems work is pretty low, and in all the times I've suggested that people start thier modding path with the purchase of a book or two, I think I've actually had people respond positivly to that three times that I can remember. Nothing I or anyone else can do about that. But since most of the information here is passed from one member to another in the absence of firm understanding of system interactions, it's not surprising that a lot of information has a life of it's own, independant of validity. As the percentages of newer owners grows to overall site participants, this can get nothing but worse. Sad but true. I write what I do here, other forums, and in MC2 to try to give at least a basic understanding of what goes on under the hood (or whatever system is under discussion) to try to not help the experts, but to help the new car enthusiast understand the basic principles of operation of our cars, and cars in general. And let me tell you, for those that think it's just for the money, they've never written articles on a per page bases. What I earn doesn't even fill my gas tank, much less pay for my parts habit!
7. Nature of Mini owners. I may be wrong here, but it seems that the Mini is, for many, the first car that owners have had passion about. While there are many here that have been into modding for a long time, over lots of brands, I think the market niche that the Mini has hit has exposed a higher percentage of owners to the fun or exiting world of automotive performance or lifestyle or whatever, and this feeds back into the level of understanding of how cars work, and what to do to them to make the perform better vs changing "you-ification" or looks. I don't get too many positive responses when I point out that slamming a car will degrade, not improve, handling, despite the fact that a) it's true, and b) it's what every car handling expert (and I'm not really an expert here, just more knowledgable than most) will say as well. Sure, it's fine to "go for a look", but if one knew more about what one was changing, then one wouldnt' be surprised at the negative impact of some of the changes that people do to thier cars. If my assumption about the distribution of owners who are "first time car nuts" with the Mini is true, this feeds into the vendor hype issue as well, as many don't have the knowledge base to fairly judge vendor claims, and this can lead back to the mis-allignement of expectation and reality. My comments above about what I write and why I write it apply here too.
8. Vendor pissing contests. For the life of me, I can't understand this stuff. The Mini world is a small one, and the amount of friction I see between different vendors (not just the vendor fan camps) is really disturbing and counterproductive. I just don't get it at all, and I'm on decent, if not good, terms with most, and I'm just baffled at the degree of animosity here. It's not good for the vendors, nor is it good for the marketplace.

Now, I'm glad to see that this thread was started, and I'm glat that it's a pretty thoughtfull discussion. I hope that the NAM community will continue to grow and thrive. But growing pains are unavoidable. Some I don't think have answers, some do. But I think most of the answers have to do with how the participants act, rather than how the site is run.

Matt

 

Excellent points and very well said, Matt! I totally agree on your point about the level of emotion in certain threads. It is a physiological fact that as emotions go up, intelligence (reason) goes down (the "fight or flight" syndrome). This is often all too apparent on this site.

 

Excellent points, Matt. I think you get the idea after being around for a while.

 

The only problem I have is people telling others to use the search. This should be made a criminal offense, punishable by the loss of 15 cool points.

 

To some extent......but at some points it needs to be said. People put up threads asking questions that were answered five threads down in the same section......it's really not that hard to search for your answer before asking the question. It helps everyone....you get your answer quickly and people don't have to go through the trouble of answering the same question again.

 

All excellent points, but this one really hits home. While looking into the costs (not monetary ones) of lowering my car I was surprised how few people had any idea of the limited free travel the R56 has (0.2" free uptravel before hitting bumpstops).

Posters often feed on one another and create an untrue evaluation of certain products. Case in point is a recently released ECU tuner that was dynoed on a car with changed intercooler, intake, and turboback exhaust, that in order to get close to published HP increases required > 4 times the cost of the ECU tuner alone.

Now that I've been on NAM for awhile, I'm learning more of whose comments to be wary of, and who can back up their statements with facts.

But it is the internet, so anyone can be whoever they want to be, and often get away with it...

Thanks for the well thought out post,

 

I dont know.....this is kinda the opposite side of one of the issues i have. I'm not new to modifying cars, and I'm not new to performance driving/racing. But it gets boring when someone jumps into a thread about slamming a car (for looks) to point out that it might not handle as well as some other car. Many people are fully aware that it might not get the fastest lap time....but some people mod for looks, not performance.

People just feel the need to enforce their personal ideas of what the purpose of modding is on other people.

It all boils down to respect. Respect the different view points of others....Respect that others might not be aiming for the best track time and might be lowering their cars to achieve a look they want. If someone slams their car and says "this is the best handling thing ever"....then you can point it out.

 

Thanks Doc, that was a reasoned, well written post. I even agree with a lot of it.

For those that are against asking others to use the search its not what you ask but how you ask.

If when stating use the search you then back it up with I did and using these terms I found these posts. URL URL URL... I also noticed there was more, so try the search to dig deeper on the issue.

This discussion on slamming and pointing out that it may hinder performance makes sense, but should be moved to discuss in depth sometime. My personal take is fine to go for looks but keep safety in mind too.

 

I totally agree... even people who are doing it for looks should research the limits (and safety) and be aware of the changes it will cause. It doesn't mean they should worry about the fact that it might not handle as well as the MINI next to them....but they should be aware and not attempt to claim otherwise.

I didn't mean to refer to just slamming topics......in all sorts of threads people come in and throw the performance card. Someone asked about lambo doors and some guy came in and suggested that the money would be better spent on driving courses .Things like that just seem unnecessary....

 

You do have a point. I saw that advice and rolled my eyes just as much as I did at the thought of Lambo door. However since I was able to give first hand information even though the thought goes against ever fiber of my being, advice was still proffered. We can all do that instead of damning the OP for something we don't like.

 

I think just using the term 'slamming' already infers a negative connotation to lowering a car for anything but looks. I give more credence when someone refers to 'lowering' and usually dismiss posts (or posters) that ask about 'slamming'

 

heheh i dunno....my car is slammed, not lowered

 

I don't believe in slamming a car (unless it's a 'lowrider'). Just doors and trolls. But we're starting to stray a little far OT at this point. Back to the thread...

If you'd like we can continue to debate this issue on one of the many suspension threads on the subject.

 

this was just one example, and yes, you have to take context into consideration. But one of the myths out there is that the best thing you can do to make a car handle better is to lower, and this is really car suspension geometry dependant. So of course you have to look at the thread and what the goal is before one offers words of wisdom.

I didn't mean to start a debate about the pros and cons of lowering cars, but more to point out that it's often the case that many don't want to hear something counter to the already decided upon course of action, even if that course is counter to the goals of the change. You can find many examples of this.

Matt

 

Um, because nobody should put forth any effort other than asking a question??
Because we should have 10 threads asking the exact same question in the space of two days?
As RallyMINI said, it's a matter of degrees.
I'm all for helping people out and clarifying any points of confusion, but there IS a reason that the search button exists.
The phrase 'reinventing the wheel' comes to mind.

 

these are rules I wrote for another car forum....they seem to be appropriate here, given the 'search n00b!' and how it's helpful and hurtful:

 

Normally, I'm a big fan of search engines, but the one here on NAM is so borked that I would *never* blame anyone for not using it, under any circumstances.

First off, it rejects some search terms for being too short, even if they're not too common. I can understand it ignoring "the" and "of", but it also ignores "M7" and "IE", just based on their length, along with almost all of the common colour abbreviations (CR, PW, AB, etc).

But the big problem with the NAM search engine is that it's not granular enough. If you're looking for information about an air box, and you use "air" and "box" for your search terms, it returns every thread that has both "air" and "box" *anywhere* in the thread, even if those two words never appear together in any one post within the thread. Putting the terms in quotes (i.e. "air box") doesn't help, because the search feature ignores the quotes and returns the exact same hits. Selecting "Show Threads" or "Show Posts" in the search dialog doesn't help, because that doesn't change the results - it only changes how they're displayed.

When you can enter in a search phrase like "blue apple" (even with the quotes) and get 27 results, there's something wrong.

This lack of granularity also means that the threads with thousands of posts - ("How Many Posts", "A Big Thanks", etcetera) show up as results in virtually every search, just because any words you're likely to ever search for probably appear *somewhere* in those threads, even if they're separated within the thread by hundreds (or thousands) of posts.

We really need one of two things - either the ability to only return individual posts that contain ALL of the requested search terms, or the ability to enter a phrase in quotes and only get posts/threads that contain that exact string.

Also, the search feature doesn't support partial-word matches. Searching for "tire" should also return posts/threads with the word "tires", but it doesn't. So the net result is that the search engine returns hundreds of hits that we couldn't care less about, while skipping results that would probably be a lot more relevant.

Is NAM tied to the search engine that's included with the software, or is there a possibility of using the Google search engine on the local content in the board? I've seen blogs and review sites that use the Google engine to search their content, but I can't recall seeing an online forum that does.

EDIT - For my own search purposes, I realize that it's possible to go to Google, enter my search terms there, and limit the results to only the hits that come from NAM, but that's not going to help the newbies/casual users.

 

besides the search funcion, let's say I know I've given a long winded (as mine tend to be) answer to something, and I go to my profile, and look for all my posts. Afterall, it's got to be there somewhere. But only the last 500 come up. Since I'm well on my way to 8k of posts, I'm hosed.

I guess I could try the advanced search, limiting it to just my posts as well, but the limit issue may still come in, for many subjects. So I'd vote for a much improved search engine.

This would also help with the automatic memory loss of the older threads that have tons of good info, but don't turn up because of limits on the utility of the search function now.

Matt

 

nasioc.com uses google to search

the other issue with search is min. 3 letters. Even a wildcard like 'M7*' would be nice

 

The current limitations of search are due to the way that vBulletin handles search indexing. I've briefly looked at some other options, such as Sphinx, but the complexity of implementing these solutions makes my eyes glaze over. That said I'd like to improve the search functionality but need to create some time so I can research possible solutions more fully.

Mark

 

If you Google your username and limit the results to hits from NAM, that will help. I put "obnxs site:www.northamericanmotoring.com" in Google (without the quotes), and got 5,280 hits. That's not all of your posts, and not all of the results are posts BY you, but it's worlds better than what you'll get from the NAM search.

 

Another answer is to just avoid responding and keep your comments to yourself. I've written many a post, asked myself if it really needs to be said and decided not to post it.

 

It's when people come across in a sarcastic and condescending tone that it is annoying, and a HUGE turn-off to the site. 98% of the time the "suggestion" comes with a holier-than-though attitude. If it really bothers you that someone asks a question that you may have read before, block the user or don't read or reply to it. Not everyone's life revolves around memorizing what has and has not been posted on NAM.

On a related note, the search function of this site is one of the worst I have ever used. I believe that's a big reason people tend to avoid it.