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Interesting stuff.
What is most interesting because the main reason I still do the awards stuff is recognise the people and threads that may not always be recognised, to bring to people's attention stuff they may not have seen, I know for a fact I've not seen a LOT of the cool builds in Readers Rides for example.
The weighting towards more recent stuff is always a problem, for all awards things, it is why there is a "Oscars Window" for releases of movies (and why Gravity's release got pushed back nearly 10 months so they could hit it). Perhaps I need to have a re-think. I'd hoped to start the year by bringing back the badges for cool contributions etc., which I know is also a little controversial, I'm just trying to find a way to give some recognition to people who give to the forum, which is really everyone that posts I guess... it is hard to judge.
One thing I've tried to avoid with the forum is becoming a clique, and to avoid the incestuousness that has been cited as an issue with the awards which is a bit vexing. It is inevitable within large groups that sub groups will form, this is how society works after all, but I'd like to avoid it at a high level.
I keep entertaining the idea of bringing back the Newsletter... Maybe a thread of the week, readers ride of the week + occasional bits from other areas of the forum in each weekly newsletter. Then at the end of the year we can pick our favourite? Maybe then we can also do a 'community champion' of the year which we'll select rather than vote on, for someone that has gone above and beyond?? ... the newsletter also works as a handy thing for those that don't have a whole load of time to browse the forum every day.
Happy to hear more thoughts.
Obviously we'll still do this year's awards, although I do need to call Ace Cafe to see if we can get the stage and mic for the 'awards night' (or maybe I'll do it with the loud hailer again...)
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ToolsnTrack
Posted a lot
Homebrew Raconteur
Posts: 4,117
Club RR Member Number: 134
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I keep entertaining the idea of bringing back the Newsletter... Maybe a thread of the week, readers ride of the week + occasional bits from other areas of the forum in each weekly newsletter. This idea rocks. I think highlighting diverse threads many wouldn't normally find throughout the year would work wonders for the nominations.
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Foxy
Posted a lot
Making pink manly in the north!
Posts: 1,913
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It can seem a bit contrite and dick measurey. There are so many forum members doing great work amongst this scene that it is difficult to single out a certain someone. I know a few vote for mates and have a jolly good back slap but that isn't representative of what we're about. I have daily contact with 50+ members of this here parish on fb and see their car habits first hand. This means I rarely go to the build threads etc because I see it in real time as it were. When I do get free time, I often find myself immersed for an hour or two but the shear volume means I'm likely to forget something I saw 3 - 6 months ago. Not that I'm saying recognition is a bad thing, Simon and David know I will always advocate and promote this place. Just my 21 pence worth.
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I'm the handsome fella with the cheesy white specs or is that the cheesy fella with the handsome white specs?
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VIP
South East
Posts: 8,293
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Why isn't there an option on the poll for 'The person/car/thing I would have nominated has already been put forward'
The amount of duplicates and repitition of the nominations is staggering, once something is nominated once there's no need to nominate it again, it's how many votes it gets when the polls are open that counts.
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Last Edit: Dec 1, 2015 16:41:15 GMT by VIP
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You're right VIP in the repetition...guilty. bstardchild you spurred me to make some nominations but I am wondering HoTWire if there is a way to 'recognise' things throughout the year? I am loathed to suggest a 'like' button if such a thing exists but it might have more consistency? I'm sure I'm not alone in being someone who only checks RR 'periodically' in a fits and starts like manner.
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wodge
Part of things
Posts: 455
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My two pennies worth - it needs to be more autonomous and spread over the year.
Rough concept but needs refinement...
Put the 'like' (which I liked anyway - you get feedback that encourages posters to continue without thread clutter) button back and judge it on likes on posts added by the thread creator for thread awards and likes on posts by individuals for forum member awards. You could add some factoring for likes vs thread age etc.
How you categorise threads is another problem I would suggest threads can be nominated for a category throughout the year.
The less scientific approach is to establish afew threads/people for awards and announce at the gathering and judge it on cheer volume. You are guaranteed a level of participation then.
If you want to stick with the current method I think it would work if you ditched the annual and made it a different category each week/month. That way members only have to consider one award at a time and it's a two minute job to post without having to dilly dally about multiple decisions. You could have all the winners attend the annual award ceremony still.
Okay it was 20 pence worth sorry to ramble.
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Clement
Europe
ambitious but rubbish
Posts: 2,095
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A newsletter with a weekly selection of thread might be quite a lot of work for those who do it and they might find it difficult/annoying after a while... How about some sort of 'like' button for threads, which doesn't display a number of likes on said thread but instead votes for it as 'thread of the week'? Once in place (easier said than done, I know) it would require less work to maintain and at a glance you'd know this week's good stuff. Maybe then choose the awards nominations based on the year's 'hot' threads? I'm thinking aloud here, I have zero knowledge of programming and whether what I suggest is even remotely viable. If it's stupid please ignore this post haha! edit : I seem to have pretty much the same ideas as wodge, didn't see your post before writing mine! Sorry for that
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Last Edit: Dec 1, 2015 17:53:08 GMT by Clement
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luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
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I have rather mixed feelings about this... and in no especial order of significance, the random thorts what passes through my "brain" run something like; The whole RR ethos I find tends to dissuade actual interaction... because of the "positivity or nothing" mantra, a thread with two pictures of a cool car tends to end up with two pages of identikit replies saying "cool car". Which anyone looking at it probably already knew. I find it really hard to motivate myself to join in with these threads because there's no real point repeating what twenty other people have just said, not because I don't like the subject matter or think it's a cool car myself... whereas someone who dares say "I don't think the wheels suit" is shouted down when an interesting discussion of what would work better might provide better interaction and give more of a ... well... a "forum" feel. That's probably not the main point, however, the main point is that "people" tend to get blurred into endless identical replies and it's hard sometimes to identify who they are and what they've actually contributed. They're not a person or a forum mate, they're just an avatar next to "great car". The problem is exacerbated by the sheer size of the place; it's impossible to keep up with everything. Especially for people like me whose work/life pattern means I can only get on here sporadically and miss weeks at a time - by which time there's simply too much volume to catch up on. I tend to find that only people who really bash out the posts tend to stick in the memory, which is a shame and misses some great contributions. For me I find that the threads that give me most entertainment are the ones that actually promote interaction, because after all that is the entire point of a forum. If I wanted to look at random photos of lowered cars, I have a search engine of my own same as you guys... what I want from a forum is to have a "conversation" with like-minded individuals. Thus threads like grizz 's road trip and georgeb 's almost blog-like Letter from Manila draw me in again and again whereas I won't even bother checking more mundane threads after a day or so because I figure it'll just be a couple more pages of the same stuff that's already been written. Also, there's nothing more tragic than seeing a potentially interesting build thread vanish without trace. For whatever reason, maybe the car isn't "scene" enough (although this is by far the most welcoming and all-encompassing place on the Web), maybe people turn off because it isn't the kind of weapons-grade fabrication we grow to expect, whatever. It's very sad though seeing someone start of posting about what they've done to their car all full of pride and gradually get disheartened as it gets no response whatever, until they clearly feel "what's the point" and give up. I have to confess to feeling this myself on occasion. It's not just build threads... even to post up a series of photobucket links takes time and if someone does this and gets no replies they're not going to bother again. This discussion has been had several times and the answer "I never know what to say" doesn't really wash... you don't need to put up something banal like "thanks for posting" and leave it at that... say "I liked the yellow one because blah blah" and then a discussion will happen! So in a roundabout way, that's why I feel the Nominations are important because they do tend to in an ephemeral way at least acknowledge the efforts of those who put the most into the forum. Because without these efforts, it's not really a forum, it's just a pintrest board. Also, the only two real sections on the board are the "Readers Rides" and the "General Threads" and they are both utterly gargantuan with almost no stickies or means of finding stuff when you need it. Threads get buried so fast and the search is as useless as all forum search engines. More differentiation is desperately needed to make it possible to find your way around. But also in that there's a negative. The RR scene seems to be several cliques of people who know each other and a lot of peripheral individuals. It's very hard to break into this, and even after all my time here I still feel as an outsider who posts here every so often rather than "part of something". I find the Gathering increases this rather than breaks down barriers; maybe if you can afford the time to camp then you magically get subsumed into the giant RR family (although reading year after year of "knobs in the campsite" threads, I kinda doubt it) but wandering around the field it's just clumps of people who've come with their mates, stay with their mates and go home with their mates and have no interest in anyone else in between. In all the RR meets I've been to, I've only had two people come up and say "Are you such-and-such? Good to meet you". I'll talk to anyone, me, lol, and tend to like asking stupid questions about people's cars but this doesn't seem the case for many. It all kinda adds to the cliquey, exclusive feel that surrounds RR. We took the biggest collection of rotary cars in Europe to the Gathering this year and not one photo appeared on any one thread. Way to feel unappreciated! even if rotary cars aren't your thing, it surely makes for an unusual sight to see ten of them ranked up together. Yet the archetypal "#crappybeigemetro" will figure every time. So, no, clearly you can't force people to like your car or your thread or anything like that but then don't act surprised when they feel disenfranchised and don't bother trying to input any more. I know so many people on other forums who "don't bother with RR cos they only like XXX cars on there". Which we all know isn't true at all, but I can certainly understand why people feel that way. Equally, if this feeling is allowed to pervade the entire RR forum then it's no surprise that people don't feel like there's any point in them trying to contribute And as for the Nominations, it's a lovely feeling to be nominated, it does feel that all your efforts have been vindicated somehow and makes it a bit worthwhile. Not in a luvvy Oscars kind of way, but just because it's part of human nature to want to feel appreciated. If you helped your elderly neighbour up the stairs with her heavy shopping bags, you wouldn't do it again if she slammed the door in your face without so much as a "ta, love". But it doesn't really matter because the same people win the same categories every year anyway. If all this sounds incredibly negative, it's not meant to. I love the RR pantheon of cool cars and I learn a massive amount form the time I get to spend here. I always vote in the yearly awards thing and try if I read a thread to at least offer some meaningful reply to show that I have. I still put my own threads up here (which seem at least baseline popular, fortunately) but I only do it when I can write it up on another forum or in word and cut'n'paste it across because it just doesn't seem worth the effort otherwise. I consistently get more repsonses and more positivity from a rotary forum with one hundredth the membership of here and with threads that are 100% non-rotary cars. And that ain't right. I feel the awards should encourage interaction and participation all years round, not just as a one-off. I've seen forums wither and die because everyone feels "someone else'll say it, I can't be bothered" and it's a sad sight when it happens. Wow, that ended up rather longer than I expected, and more critical-sounding than it perhaps ought. I'd like to stress this is all just my humble IMHO and not intended to cause offence or upset. If you don't agree then that's fine. We can't all get on all the time, no matter what the MO might say, lol
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bstardchild
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 14,891
Club RR Member Number: 71
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Why isn't there an option on the poll for 'The person/car/thing I would have nominated has already been put forward' Because I hadn't thought of that as a reason and when I did I wasn't able to edit the poll Same as another reason given earlier..... Hey ho and sorry! The amount of duplicates and repitition of the nominations is staggering, once something is nominated once there's no need to nominate it again, it's how many votes it gets when the polls are open that counts. Good point - maybe a "if "it's" already been nominated - chose something else" rule might get a few more different nominations out there.....
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bstardchild
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 14,891
Club RR Member Number: 71
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Oh and thanks everyone for the constructive comments and suggestions having semi derailed the nominations thread last year with some discussion I was keen to keep it separate this year.
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Well done for bravery in asking the question, and accepting of the answers, many well-put opinions that there are. For me : 'cos my automotive interests only slightly overlap with RR, I haven't checked out enough build threads and new threads to pick; I don't do the media, or social media; I don't do the big car shows, I don't do car clubs; there is an element of clique in some areas. As said, that is society, so I'm not throwing that at RR as a criticism. It's just that in life in general, I give that a wide berth. To summarise, I think I've just realised I'm an unsociable git
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bstardchild
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 14,891
Club RR Member Number: 71
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Reasons For: - I find new great threads I have missed via the nominations/awards
- It gives the winners (and nominees) recognition for their forum input, making them likely to keep on contributing.
On balance I think its good to have a yearly round up so I have cast my nominations. -Steve- This is closely aligned to what I think too But I still think we could improve the process - My suggestion was a single thread for each of the categories - that way members wouldn't be put off by having to put something down for all the categories.
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I sort of agree with Luckyseven ..... Not being in a position to own and run a 'retro' for reasons that are to many to go into here, i 'live out' my car spannering dreams through the various builds on here, of which there are to many for me to keep track of!
I tend to just follow a few threads and stick with them, and i know i'm probably going to miss loads of other great builds!
Just to pick a couple of quick names out the hat so to speak, Frankehealey,Dez,Glenanderson,Johnnybravo,edk's allegro,George and Grizz are the first threads i check up on,and all for differing reasons.
Frankenhealy for his ideas ... I mean a jet car! Dez , far to much talent,not fair! Glenanderson, A big old commercial? Whats not to like?! Jhonnybravo, serious machining skills. Edk, a quick Allegro? Superb. George, letter from Manila,always good for a chuckle,and different from just spannering. Grizz, the only person on here i've had dealings with,even if its just bunging stuff in the post to him, but his Making stuff' threads are always a good read.
And i know there are other equally talented posters on here, sometimes its too much to take in!
For me its just to much to choose from,and with no disrespect meant to the named above,they seem to obvious to nominate,if you see what i mean? Probably not making myself make sense ......
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Dez
Club Retro Rides Member
And I won't sit down. And I won't shut up. And most of all I will not grow up.
Posts: 11,712
Club RR Member Number: 34
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I have daily contact with 50+ members of this here parish on fb and see their car habits first hand. This means I rarely go to the build threads etc because I see it in real time as it were. When I do get free time, I often find myself immersed for an hour or two but the shear volume means I'm likely to forget something I saw 3 - 6 months ago. agreed. pretty much everyone on here ive known for a long time i have on FB as well. i notice a lot of them don't actually do build threads on here anymore, for what ever reason. i find it weird voting for 'community person' type things, when all the people who are always up for them I'm genuinely very good friends with. theyve stopped at my house, ive stopped at theirs, i actually know them as real people so nominating them for an award for being my mate is just a bit- incestuous i guess? i also don't like the whole 'its a clique' thing. tbh its bullsh1t. i think when i joined RR i knew 1 or 2 other people on here. in the 10years ive been using the place, ive made some strong friendships, through nothing more than a shared love of curse word old cars. if that makes us a clique, the problem is with you, not with us. not all these people where 'in' at the same time, theres always new people turning up, and some of the older ones drifting away i guess, through their own choice. if you want to be a part of things, join in. thats what the gathering is all about, turning interwebs friends into real people. also, the demographic on here has changed hugely over the years. back when RR started, it was the online home for people who had nowhere else to go. vw owners tended to stick to vw forums, land rover owners the same, mini owners the same 'proper' classic car owners the same. the stuff on here was all the oddball cars with no owners club forums, or that were too new to be proper classics. or, were getting bastardised so the classic car buffers wouldnt have us, but they're werent radical enough to be adopted by the hot rod scene. but as RR has become more and more popular, dare i say fashionable, a lot of people have migrated from the more traditional one marque forums, as well as come in from other sources and diluted the content a lot, and certainly changed it away from what it was. add into that the cars on here getting newer and newer (a lot of the stuff thats in readers rides was still on the forecourt when RR started!), and its either driven the interesting oddball stuff out, or diluted it so much its hard to find, and is easy to overlook when all youre have to go on are thread titles. add into that tastes changing and maturing over time, and i will honestly look through the first 3 pages or so of readers rides, and only look at half a dozen threads, as the rest simply don't interest me at all. all the ones I'm into have already been mentioned i think. also forums have changed as a format since RR began. social media barely existed when RR started, now it a standard way of life. thing is it makes people fickle and trite, why bother going to the effort of writing a detailed build thread and uploading all them photos when you can get just as much attention from a load of likes and shares on facebook? why else would people get the huff on when no one replies to their build thread? personally, i do build threads for little more than keeping track of what the f-k ive done on the project god knows how many years ago, but then i tend to embark on rather long winded projects for my own personal satisfaction and improvement rather than wham-bam-thank-you-mam now look at this and tell me how cool i am type threads.... I'm not quite sure if i was planning to make a point , other than to say that some kind of upvoting/downvoting system to grade a threads 'worth' isnt necessarily a bad idea, as it stops real gems getting hidden in the mire.
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Last Edit: Dec 1, 2015 23:34:32 GMT by Dez
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bstardchild
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 14,891
Club RR Member Number: 71
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Well I'm glad I started this thread - I'm glad the contributions have been constructive and very interesting So 25 participants for the nominations 15 votes in the poll above The other 37,960 members really don't have an opinion at all As an aside Pistonheads is another forum I frequent (apparently it's one of the largest forums - male mumsnet it's been called) and most polls (if they are really popular) just about crack 500 votes so I guess another choice should have been "I don't do polls" but then the number of voters for that would still have been 0 because if you don't do polls............
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I have nominated, but this was the first time doing so. But in previous years I didn't for similar reasons what most have already said. I don't like awards to be sycophantic, I don't have any proper attachment to anyone here and events/shows don't mean much when you're on the other side of the world.
When I first looked on this forum is was from Build-Threads link to Area 52. Now, most mornings I check RR as soon as I get to work. I don't tend to subscribe to threads, but there are certain threads I gravitate to more than others. As mentioned in my nominations, it tends to be threads that either have good fabrication/repair/technical aspects or good story telling.
Generally, threads in the vein of "Here's my 80's econobox that I hit with the stick and threw some mags on" don't hold my attention for very long.
I suppose it's the reason why a lot of "reality" TV shows (American Restoration comes to mind) have a limited shelf life. Once people have seen a few techniques, there's only so much "drama" you can make up, before you think "There's no substance here anymore" and stop watching.
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sb
Part of things
Posts: 725
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I totally agree with luckyseven, as a lurker this place is great, as a poster it feels dead. The most replied threads are the ones started by those members that are long term friends. Theres this feeling of oh these guys know each other/know this poster and just want to discuss between them and it feel very exclusionary.
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taurus
Posted a lot
Posts: 1,084
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Like others I agree with what mikeymk wrote (so very well put).
Personally I don't have much free time so getting to know the vast range of material on here is impossible, I enjoy dipping in when I can and appreciate the range of information and comments. But giving out awards would make me feel less likely to be part of things because I'll never be in that league. Whilst I can appreciate those close to the heart of things want to encourage members and promote good threads the downside is that for guys like me it just ain't ever going to happen and that would make me feel more of an outsider.
I like the atmosphere of all muddling along together and everyone is equal. What I really like is when people feel they can ask anything without the feeling you get elsewhere that it's a lot of experts all showing off to each other. I also like that each to their own is valued.
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I really enjoy this forum for the variety of content and Readers Rides is by far my most viewed section. I used to frequent things like Volkszone in it's early days but got a little bit tired of it as it went on. I agree with some of the above posts about the build threads being fascinating reads and I really appreciate that people take the time to write them. I often fell that I can't contribute much other than 'nice car' because I am usually out of my depth technically and haven't got much useful advice to offer.
I also would not not be comfortable nominating a 'person of the year' as I don't actually know any of you. This is nobody else's fault, it is more down to my stage of life and priorities at the moment (39, married, 3 kids under 10, full time job, etc, etc) so I can't really commit to clubs, shows, meets, all that. As I said, I used to, 10 - 15 years ago but life moved on.
I don't often contribute to the general board threads because I seem to be out of step, in terms of taste, with a lot of frequent posters (sorry but Japanese saloons running massive negative camber just don't do anything for me!). I do think that the positive ethos of the site is a good thing, when I used to be more involved in other scenes there always seemed to be unnecessary infighting.
So, in summary, please keep up the good work in the build threads, it is appreciated and people are watching and reading.
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Last Edit: Dec 2, 2015 9:25:56 GMT by discostew
67 VW Split bus 69 Beetle Cab 96 Jeep Cherokee XJ Sport
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Threads get buried so fast and the search is as useless as all forum search engines. More differentiation is desperately needed to make it possible to find your way around. We took the biggest collection of rotary cars in Europe to the Gathering this year and not one photo appeared on any one thread. Way to feel unappreciated! even if rotary cars aren't your thing, clearly you can't force people to like your car or your thread or anything like that but then don't act surprised when they feel disenfranchised and don't bother trying to input any more. two points very well made, i thought it was just me being curse word at using the forums "search" button, I also found myself in that same boat at the gathering, 6 of us in 25 year old j-tin, and i never saw 1 photo apart from the ones we took.
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Last Edit: Dec 2, 2015 13:30:15 GMT by shagracer
Please don't throw litter, take it home.
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