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Hey folks, this is all super interesting and touches on a lot of areas. I need to frame a proper reply to it all without it spilling into page after page of me going into vast trenches of community theory and stuff. Very (very) briefly for now : We're certainly seeing the 1% rule in effect here : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) ... so congrats to everyone that interacted in this thread, you are now in The 1% (Occupy Retro Rides is go!)... my aim for RR has always been to avoid Sturgeon's Law : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law and I think for the most part we do avoid it pretty well, that is the tension in user/content that is at the heart of forums. As I say I'll get a more full (but hopefully not sprawling and unreadable) reply sorted.
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GT4ME
Posted a lot
Posts: 1,729
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A lot of what luckseven made sense to me. I've got more posts on here than just about any other forum I use but never really feel 'in'.
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bstardchild
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 14,891
Club RR Member Number: 71
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Everyday is a school day - never heard of that before but I can see how it works from experience with forums
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Everyday is a school day - never heard of that before but I can see how it works from experience with forums Ditto. That is/those are some of the most informative things I've read in some time. So perhaps considering myself low down in the 9%, that's why I don't feel engaged to vote. Maybe I'm pre-empting the Hotwire theorem.
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Well as far as I'm concerned - I just had way too little time to realy follow what's going on here. The stuff I followed got nomed allready - I'll take my active part when it comes to voting.
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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. I'm also guilty of this, but when I posted I hadn't fully understood that it was purely just a nominations thread. Sorry.
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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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1%er 4 lyfe LOOOL!1 Glad to see the return of the like button
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bstardchild
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 14,891
Club RR Member Number: 71
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1%er 4 lyfe LOOOL!1 Glad to see the return of the like button I've already utilised it - funny but it was on one of your threads but I still don't "like" it as I think it stops contributions but then again maybe that will cut down the time it takes to catch up with popular threads........... It's a double edged sword
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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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1%er 4 lyfe LOOOL!1 Glad to see the return of the like button I've already utilised it - funny but it was on one of your threads but I still don't "like" it as I think it stops contributions but then again maybe that will cut down the time it takes to catch up with popular threads........... It's a double edged sword That's what alerted me to it! I see it both ways. It'll cut down on benile 'good work' 'well done' type posts, but will encourage passive participation (may just have made that up) by liking instead of having to go to the effort of making a post.
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bstardchild
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 14,891
Club RR Member Number: 71
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I've already utilised it - funny but it was on one of your threads but I still don't "like" it as I think it stops contributions but then again maybe that will cut down the time it takes to catch up with popular threads........... It's a double edged sword That's what alerted me to it! Well it was there - I hadn't seen it in a while - I'd used it before but I am definately a try it and burger the consequences sort of chap The shoutbox thing has buggered off - my forum normality has been restored I see it both ways. It'll cut down on benile 'good work' 'well done' type posts, but will encourage passive participation (may just have made that up) by liking instead of having to go to the effort of making a post. Yeah maybe - it was missed by some when it went
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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've already utilised it - funny but it was on one of your threads but I still don't "like" it as I think it stops contributions but then again maybe that will cut down the time it takes to catch up with popular threads........... It's a double edged sword That's what alerted me to it! I see it both ways. It'll cut down on benile 'good work' 'well done' type posts, but will encourage passive participation (may just have made that up) by liking instead of having to go to the effort of making a post. Luckyseven likes this.....eerrrrm, I mean if people "like" things at least they'll be having some input. As opposed to now where they already don't go to the effort of making a post but have no fall-back mechanism to express an opinion. See, positive thinkin, lol
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sonus
Europe
Posts: 1,386
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Just nominated someone that I think needs recognition, but someone that doesn't fit in any of the categories.
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Current 1968 TVR VIXEN S1 V8 Prototype 2004 TVR T350C 2017 BMW 340i
Previous BMW 325d E91LCI - sold Alfa Romeo GTV - sold Citroen AX GT - at the breakers Ford Puma 1.7 - sold Volvo V50 2.0d - sold MGB GT - wrecked by fire MG ZT 1.8T - sold VW E-golf Electric - sold Mini Countryman 1.6D -sold Land Rover Discovery TD5 - sold
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bstardchild
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 14,891
Club RR Member Number: 71
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Just nominated someone that I think needs recognition, but someone that doesn't fit in any of the categories. Yes I saw that and I think you are right - it doesn't
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Lucky7 makes many, many worthwhile points on his very, very long post on pg2.
I still feel like an outsider. I've met loads of people on here and have some good friends from it but I still don't quite feel right in to it. Thankfully it's not important to me whether I am or not, but the fact that I'm around this long and still don't would be worrying if it was. The RRG did start out as a great barrier-breaker in that regard and that's where I met a good few in the early ones, but now the shows (last one I was at was 2014) are too short on time and too busy in personage to change this prevailing aspect. I do try to say hello to people I don't know over the camping days but Sunday is a no-hoper and if you stop to converse with an owner, should you be lucky enough to find one near their car, you can write off a whole section of the show you'll not have time for. This is no fault of the show-makers though. Having been previously rudely told where to go by one admin, I've then had a break from the site for 6 months before returning to much (no!) aplomb, [ages ago] and since only visit more occasionally, as and when I have 10 minutes or need a inspirational fix before looking at the Cadillac again. In such regard I would not post a comment but I do "lurk". I guess I'm trying to say that interaction levels are down. I have to search for the best content, which I don't mind, although I may be so bold as to suggest some kind of "build of the month" or something that gets tagged or put in a sticky thread? Could be useful for linking back come nomination time? How about a general section sticky topic for "threads we don't want to lose" or "threads that embody the RR ethos" and those very best threads that might be nomination-friendly are held for reference and for the easy findings of people who browse less frequently? Just some musings. Not as well put as those before me. I nominated and posted in the "why didn't you" thread because I'm awkward.
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*Deep breath*
As I hinted before I could talk for HOURS on this subject and probably will in one of the future podcasts (mic and sound quality problems are holding back that at the moment :/ I'm hoping I can tidy it up a bit before I stick out the first one), so I'll try and be a bit brief here.
Participation levels This is really the big thing that is coming out of the thread. As shown by the 1% wiki entry I posted it is endemic on the internet, in fact I suspect it is how a lot of wider society works but it is easier to measure on the internet. I did some analysis of our user base and we're actually closer to 2% of people contributing at a certain level, which is interesting. The reason things don't seem to be "as good as they used to be" as is often levelled at maturing communities is because the first few waves of people are mainly made up of those more likely to contribute, you'll have a 50-60% contribution rate (or even higher depending on how niche you are), over time the community will grow, those people will carry on contributing but their percentage of the community will go down, followed by some of them moving on, losing interest, etc. etc. Ultimately the destination for the majority of communities is this ~1% level.
What that transforms into is posting up threads and occasionally getting no response. I've had this a number of times, putting up threads I thought were well thought out or full of awesome cars and getting almost zero response. The reason I removed the Like's button was to encourage replies (even if they were just "nice one") but it seems that hasn't been the case, so I've reintroduced it. I plan to do some styling in order to make the like a more rewarding thing (visually).
Recognition Ultimately what I'd like is a way to recognise the hard work and effort people put into the forum, from their own build threads to events pictures to thinking up interesting topics for discussion, and for those that reply and help and do all the things that make a community a community. There is a world in which people reply to threads (or now like them) just to show some recognition, or even better further the discussion. We've tried a few ways of doing this, obviously the awards is one, we tried the a build of the month to recognise some of the awesome builds, but people decided to ruin that. We've tried the little badges in the profile, however the mechanisms for adding those is actually really troublesome. This is something I clearly need to give some more thought to.
Cliques This has come through on a number of posts here, by definition a clique is a group of people who interact with each other more regularly and intensely than others in the same setting, which is surely just sub grouping? Here you'll find people will sub group by location, or interest, or cars, or just by who they happen to know, when I see the people that came to this year's Summer Holiday I'll go over and say hi for sure, that was a tight group and we had fun. I think the complaint is less that there are groups (after all the Dunbar Number would dictate that any time we grow over 150 active people there will be sub groups formed by necessity), more that the groups feel exclusive to new people.
I've got a couple of thoughts on this. Firstly, there was some recent study done on group forming in the age of anonymity and that it doesn't lend itself to strong group forming. I can see on the forum the subgroups tend to refer to each other by their proper names, which can make it feel a bit exclusive, if you don't know who Simon or Darren or Andy is then it can look like someone is simply talking to their friends and you are being excluded. I'm not sure this is the case, more a need to show a more concrete connection than the use of a pseudoanonymous handle would give. So perhaps the reaction when seeing someone refer to someone by their proper name shouldn't be one of exclusion, but of an invitation, you are in a space where their given names are used, you are already part of that clique.
The second thing is at shows and events. I am not a man lacking in confidence, but even I have been to big events where I've arrived, spent a few hours at the event and literally spoken to no one. It is a hard thing to just walk up to someone and speak to them almost no matter how old you are or who you are. When it comes to The Gathering a lot of people are camping with people that are their mates they came with or meeting people they don't see from one end of the year to the next, so naturally the groups are going to fall into place there. On the camp site at least you can probably go and chill with some people, introduce yourself, see if they are cool with you hanging out, watch some cars come in, maybe chat a bit, maybe just relax, take in the vibe.
Ultimately small groups and sub groups will form in any large group, this is a fact of society, it is what allows it to work. I would hope that most of the sub groups here are non-exclusive and welcome more people to get involved, if you feel left out, maybe seek a geographical group near to you, or bring some of your pre-existing car mates (if you have them) into the RR fold.
Content There is a lot of content on a couple of boards, the Readers Rides section moves pretty quickly (particularly after the weekend), the general section a little slower. I could sub divide boards down further and further like a lot of forums do, but that isn't really a good way to keep a vibrant board, you just end up with more and more part used ghettos and ultimately a long slow death of conversation. We've tried a few experiments with sub boards and separating things out, we've had a few stickies, but all they do is make the front page look like it moves even faster.
John Battelle has a principle he calls 'Signal, Curation, Discovery', it is (put simply) to do with the three phases of content growth. At first there is nothing but Signal, a hand full of pieces of content around a given subject. As the subject area grows then people start to Curate that content, lists of links to interesting stuff for example. The final stage is when there is too much to process for those curating it is Discovery, or search as an easier term. There is a kind of cyclical relationship with these three, or at least elements in play at all times in all content. Retro Rides is VERY strongly Signal, there is little to no curation (other than these here awards) and Discovery is at the mercy of the internal search engine, or prefixing your google searches with site:retrorides.proboards.com . So maybe there is a place for some curated content, a Best of Readers Rides, or best of General... Anyone can start one of those as long as you are happy to maintain it. For tech stuff I've been giving some thought to bubbling up a how-to e-book out of the collective knowledge in this forum, or maybe some videos would be nice.
As for the type of content, that is up to the users. I LOVE picture threads, I love it more when people pull out a car from a picture thread and either ask for, or seek more information about it, that is what RR has done from the start. It is why we know about Rebaxiados cars. It is why we know there is a strong drag racing scene in Costa Rica. It is why _the world_ calls Grachan cars Garuchan. It is why a chap in New Zealand built a silver V8 Cedric on air ride. We go and we find the cars, we search them out, we look for the scenes and track down stuff in languages we don't understand in places we'll never go to, to find like minded folk the world around, it is a touch beyond googling "cool Volvo". That is what we do. Then again we also go to our local meets and share some photos from those. We ask each other for tech help. We ask each other for inspiration. We look for exciting things happening in our world to share (big and small). Our content is varied, if you don't like one thing, move on to something else.
There are plenty more points in here I could address individually, but I'm not going to. Have a nice evening.
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bstardchild
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 14,891
Club RR Member Number: 71
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Well there was a lot of stuff in there Thanks for taking the time to write it So maybe there is a place for some curated content, a Best of Readers Rides, or best of General... Anyone can start one of those as long as you are happy to maintain it. I've long harbored an idea for a thread along those lines - mainly because I had high hopes for another thread This markbognor thread The cars of Retro-RidesIt didn't do what I hoped although it's a good thread not enough members paid attention to the first post and whilst it's got pictures of peoples cars acting as links to build threads in the early stages in the later sections it's degenerated into here's several pictures of my car and nothing else..... OK so we have new members who feel it's an opportunity to introduce themselves and they don't have a build thread yet but it's not what the thread was started for IMO So I'll throw my hat in the ring and start a new thread see if I can start something - it'll either fly or crash and burn - but I'm firmly of a view that you should try stuff and risk failure because it's how we learn in life
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MonzaPhil
Posted a lot
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought
Posts: 2,456
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I still find this place the best on a whole Internet. Having lost sensible computer use and confined to a phone that doesn't always play, it can be a bit more difficult to scan through the threads and pick out the interesting ones.
I love the variety here and it's so difficult to narrow down the omnomnomnominations, especially when you read the other ones and a reminded about what you've forgotten.
While I'm here I'll apologise for being really antisocial at The Gathering. No good at talking to people, definitely no good at talking to new people even if I know you off The Facebook or some such. Sorry .
The mad dash to get nominations done in time catches me out every time.
I have my hands full too. Internet time or car production time.... plus hiding from the wife or hiding cars from the wife. It's time consuming.
Higher voting turnout .... no idea. Everyone who participates should tell everyone they know to get involved. The lure of awards should be incentive enough.
Lost my train of thought now as wifey just phoned to say she was lost.....
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This is now a clicky linky!
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Clement
Europe
ambitious but rubbish
Posts: 2,095
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I also belong to another forum (biggest music-based French forum) and I have around 25,000 posts there, I've been a member for more than ten years and I've met and known around twenty people from that forum. Some of them are really, really good friends and weirdly enough, these are the people I do car stuff with. Indeed we do form a clique, and are often perceived as such by newcomers, but the reality is much more contrasted. Newcomers tend to divide members along the lines of 'other newbies' and 'clique members', whereas it's simply some people getting along well and newbies becoming integrated in the 'clique' after it forms from a core of few people. If you feel excluded from the forum because you don't feel like you belong in an RR clique, please have a rethink. It's just as normal belonging to a clique as it is not to, the longer you'll stay the more integrated you will be. I don't think I'm the only one who has been a member here for a few years now, I've mostly been lurking but try to participate and encourage people, I don't belong to an RR clique but that's to be expected. I can think of quite a few other members in this situation, it's not a question of age or skill or cars, it's mostly due to random life situations. If you lived near Bristol, and you had time to go and check out Area 52, chances are after a few weekends you'd have a few RR mates and bam! you're in the clique. In my case it's simply not feasible, so I just stand back a little, appreciate the content, try to bring in some interesting stuff and strive to achieve something I can be proud of. Who knows, I'm really hoping if I drive the 222 to RRG16 someone will walk up to it and say hi. I know I tried to locate luckyseven at RRG14, you weren't there and there were too many cars to see (try driving 2000 miles over a weekend, with three mates in an RX8 just to attend to a show for 5hrs and you'll want to see EVERYTHING too). I'm sure this happens all the time, no one should feel bad for it.
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This whole thread has shot off in several directions from bstardchild's original missive, but it's been educational. The clique thing seems to have taken some hold. It's odd 'cos when I joined RR about 5 years ago, I viewed anyone with about 1500 posts as a bit of a regular and 'in'. Here I am with the same-ish number of posts and I don't consider myself close to being 'in'. In that time I have met one other RR member in the flesh, and only associate directly here with maybe 5 or 6 peeps. Higher in this thread, others with more numerous posts have posted the same. I guess it's not unexpected in a global forum with such a diversity of car tastes. It's rather thought-provoking of forums and society in general. I'm not saying it's a good or a bad thing, but I guess it is what it is. I guess the message is if you don't think you're 'in', jump right in and contribute. Sorry, it's Friday night and I have a bottle of wine in me, so excuse the ramblings that have no retro car content whatsoever
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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 To me this really hits it on the head . Different people want different things from a forum . I'm quite content to just chip in with a bit of advice here and there with something i know for sure . What does detract from my experience on here is as mentioned above , cliques and overbearing behaviour . No names no pack drill but there are certain people on here who act like they know everything and they word is gold . It would be nice for people not to be up so high in the trees some time and not treat or post others with disdain - something i feel some well known faces seem to be exempt from repercussions that others would face . It would be nice to actually be able to say ' i don't thing that works , what about @@@@? ' for example , as long as it was constructive , to full debate so to speak . Great forum anyway , keep up the good work .
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