What is happening with SVXWN?

[sowise]

I have been coming on this forum for almost 3 years I believe (wow time flies) but the saddest thing about it is I have only driven my SVX for maybe 1 month out of that whole time. I bought it with a blown HG felt a bit ripped off on that but nothing I could do it was a buy as/is where is thing and so I just bent over and took it.
After finding out on this forum what was needed I sat down and thought about what I would be wanting to do with it. Since that time I have purchased a second rolling chassis SVX torn apart the original, greatly expanded my tools and equipment to support a full SVX make over. Money and time have been the biggest problem. I have lost full summers of ability to work on the car due to travel obligations with work. Hell I even checked the SVXWN while I was in South America stuck out in BFE Amazon Jungle! I have logged on while in Germany as well.

I have noticed a decline in the type of posts or quality or whatever you want to call it. Yes, the search function is lacking but I also noticed that sometimes ideas get shot down pretty quick. Yes, there are things that others have thought of and tried that didn't fit or wouldn't work etc. The jaded whole been there done that. But seems like responses sometimes crush the ingenuity and creativity that MAY be able to make something new or different work.

On the flip side there are a lot of things promised such as a mod or attempt and then the post or thread dies and people wonder what happened? So, lack of follow through sucks too. Sometimes even a post to say they haven’t had time to work on something or no new results is enough the idea alive or maybe allow someone else to continue that effort.

Not every mod will be liked there are some things I can’t stand but I try to be tactful about it rather than flame. However, sometimes the newer guys and younger guys do miss the whole point of the SVX and are still too Fast and Furiously driven.

A two part pet peeve of mine is people who post with a problem (no issue with that) but they either don’t consider the advice that is given to them and go off in left field or there uncles brothers cousin who had a Honda said it could be such and such so they will try that first. Etc. OR let me give some basic advice to new owners that want to work on their own cars. Get a small tool box …Basic set of sockets metric and standard, wrenches, pliers, screw drivers. It will save you time, it will save you money, it will get in your car to learn something new. If you don’t know what size socket you will need for such and such bolt you can figure it out you won’t need to post. If it is larger or different or special that is a different story and no problems but something basic drives me nuts. How to’s and such are helpful, request those or links to them AFTER searching if possible.

Lastly this network has huge potential as a resource. On the main page is says there is about 1,000 active members. If each member donated $5 dollars, to go towards funding a new mod or upgrade decided by vote or other agreed method. That $5000 could be used to fund R&D (research and development). Say the forum says we want a stand alone engine management for our cars. People throw out ideas a short list of the ones that will work is made. The cost of one of the units is pulled from the $5000, a volunteer or donor car (usually nearest best support or maintenance etc) installs it reports on it and for engine management can even get it professionally tuned for base map depending on cost of the tuner shop.
Suspension, group decides #1 we want a specific coil over option then group says here are 3 companies to consider…. Group vote then the money for that year is used to have TIEN or Bilstein or Koni do a full set up, once they do the initial it is available to any of us.
The same could go with brakes, or body etc. Ok so who gets the parts? You decide does the person who test it get to keep or does it get pulled and raffled off at a Reading meet? This forum has a lot of untapped potential still and a lot of good experts on the SVX but it has and is slowing down, it doesn’t have to though…

[svxistentialist]

Old age

The forum is a long time in existence, and for many there are other things diverting their attention, other social forums, other motoring interests, new family additions, new interests. Life, in other words.

Some of the responses in this thread are interesting. As Earl mentions we are planning to add new functionality to what we have here shortly. Getting the technical information properly categorised and the search engine improved would seem to be two high priority changes that are needed. Needed yesterday.

To me it appears that long time knowledgeable members giving curt "Use the search function" responses is not really promoting the helpful ethos of the site all that much.

On the other side of that coin there are many, many squeaky wheel type new members who get under the skin because they seem unable to help themselves on any level. And many more are ungracious, never uttering even a word of thanks if somebody helps them or looks up information for them.

Probably as time goes on and the owner profile keeps heading towards kindergarten levels, these are the challenges we face. As more cars are scrapped year on year shrinkage is inevitable. Lack of spirit however should not be.

Joe

[immortal_suby]

Originally Posted by Bonestock

2) Why is it for that reason? Well This forum has "that guy". There is one on every forum. That guy is rude, self-righteous and wants everyone to accept that he knows more than they do (even if he doesn't). Honestly its a disservice more to this site than you can imagine. I have been through tons of old threads researching information only to see him beat a subject to death trying to prove someone wrong and then just go on and on hoping for someone to acknowledge he is right. Its pretty pathetic. I got jumped on my very first thread by this person. How do you think that makes new members feel about this site?

3) For as long as the above situation in reason #3 has been going on, its fairly apparent no one cares to do a damn thing about it. So why would this encourage people to be more active? It doesn't.

Anyway, that's my take. Like it or not, act on it or not... its not my place to dictate these things.

I agree. But alot of people would like to do something about it, but what can you actually do? How do you tell someone something time and time again that they will just not listen to. How can you change someone's personality. If no forum rules are broken the mods hands are tied. It's a tough situation. It certainly causes people to post less or watch very closely how they word things. It certainly detracts from the community feel of the forum.
I'm open to suggestions on this.

[svxcess]

.

Sometimes here I feel like I am in the midst of technical genius and marvelous insight and enthusiasm.


and at other times I feel like either a referee or a Den Mother.

.

[NiftySVX]

Originally Posted by svxcess

How would you feel if you only came to Reading because we said the Pace Car was supposed to be there and it didn't show up at the last minute?

I guess fraternizing with the other members, who come year after year without any expectations, would have to be a poor substitute.


Thats why people go to family reunions... to reconnect and enjoy each other's company. The reunion IS the event.


.

I addressed this specifically. If you read my post. Also, I don't really care at this point. I can almost promise you your situation is different and you wouldn't understand unless I explained it to you personally. I asked for the time off for the meet and it was not approved. I don't really care who is on a first name basis with who and what not. The way that should have been handled was full disclosure at all steps of the process. Those involved who did not choose to discuss the matter openly in the forum were in error, and it was a disservice to the community. Period. I won't bring it up again.

At some point there will only be a few of us left with these cars that run, I've had mine for 10 years and should have scrapped it at least 3 times already, I'm not going anywhere. And I will be at the 20th anniversary meet. My financial situation has improved from last year and I have already requested the time off for the meet, and have been promised that I will be given the time off. The GS450h fund includes provisions for the event.

Further, the thing that needs more attention paid is the other part I said about the organizing of the information. I could spear head this, if the powers would be could GET SERIOUS and at least acknowledge that this change would be allowed to happen and the people that could actually implement it would be willing. I'm not going to waste my time If i think i'm alone in this. I have no problem with putting my time into it and putting it in a thread for collaborative work. I will be doing this anyway, It has been underway for quite some time. F it, i'm gonna do it anyway. I'll pull up the file and post it this week.

[newsvx]

Originally Posted by NiftySVX

It has been my feeling for quite some time that the forum has outlived its usefulness to many of the senior members. At this point, it has been in need of an overhaul for years. I said something to this effect awhile back, and I have some ideas about how we could change it, mainly with the technical section in the orginization of subcategories with background information and certain "experts" in each area could get their minds together in a thread that would outline the information to be in that subcategory, as some of us have been working on these cars a long time now and are actually professional technicians or might as well be. For example: I get alot of questions to my personal email about the air conditioner and the transmission. These should be organized into sections like A/C questions, Transmission questions, etc. Clicking on these links would have all the background info in a sticky for pulling codes and that sort of thing, and some of us could answer specific questions that are beyond the descriptions of the common problems of the car, if we had experience in that area or with that system. Some, like me, have had SVXs for so long now that we are experiencing repeat failures and have tried different fixes and know what will work and what won't, not to mention owning one of these for 10+years will give you a good idea of what problems are likely to show up.

We also need to do something about the arguing on this site, I mean in some places it is appropriate, in others it is not.

I find myself posting less and even visiting less because I still think it was pretty absurd with what happened at reading, that was a major slap in the face, because some of the people did all this work to have that pace car there and simply said "oh well you won't want to miss reading this year" Which is subjective, considering I live across the country and work a job where I will loose about $250 per day I am not at work, and I do not get paid time off. It should have been put out there that this was a possibility, no matter what, It could have been announced months before that this was a possibility and I could have come. Had it been stated that it was a 30% possibility, I would have come. It would have put me in a bind, but i would have come. The witholding of this information baffles me and I can not understand why it was done that way, unless there is some sort of "elite" group of network members that are privy to that information and the other "lesser" members don't get to be in the circle.

Furthermore, It is at the point now where someone asks a question, and someone knowledgeable gives an answer, and either they don't like it or someone else tells them they are wrong. So what is the point in posting?

That's some thoughts I have on the run of things. Probably sounds harsher than it is. But "it is what it is"

You know, I was not going to respond to this post, but the more I think about it, I must.
Nifty,
You make some good points, but I just have to call you on your jab at the organizers of the last year's READING. You obviously don't know or don't care how much work a number of folks put into getting the pace car there (or what it cost either) and organizing the meet in general. It was a judgment call to not tell the group as a whole that the pace car "could be there. You say you would have come (I know. It's a long drive for you and you would have to take off work like most that attended) even if there had been only a 30% chance of the pace car being there. But I bet you you would have been the first in line to complain bitterly that you were duped into coming if for some reason the car was not there. Over the years I have been a member of many, many organizations, and the one constant is people that don't do anything to help (for an event or whatever) but are the first to complain. I see it almost every day in a current car club I belong to and certainly with my community's HOA.
I ask that if you are serious about doing something positive for this network and this car, organize a good meet in your area and grow it to what READING has become. I'll tell you now: be prepared to put in a lot of time and effort! It has been said before, but I'll say it again: it's about the people! If you would go to READING only to see the pace car and not meet the people that love this car, the SVX, then you are (and have) missed out on something very special.
I could go on, but I won't. Just try to appreciate what people last year tried to do rather than complain about it.

[newsvx]

Originally Posted by NiftySVX

I addressed this specifically. If you read my post. Also, I don't really care at this point. I can almost promise you your situation is different and you wouldn't understand unless I explained it to you personally. I asked for the time off for the meet and it was not approved. I don't really care who is on a first name basis with who and what not. The way that should have been handled was full disclosure at all steps of the process. Those involved who did not choose to discuss the matter openly in the forum were in error, and it was a disservice to the community. Period. I won't bring it up again.

At some point there will only be a few of us left with these cars that run, I've had mine for 10 years and should have scrapped it at least 3 times already, I'm not going anywhere. And I will be at the 20th anniversary meet. My financial situation has improved from last year and I have already requested the time off for the meet, and have been promised that I will be given the time off. The GS450h fund includes provisions for the event.

Further, the thing that needs more attention paid is the other part I said about the organizing of the information. I could spear head this, if the powers would be could GET SERIOUS and at least acknowledge that this change would be allowed to happen and the people that could actually implement it would be willing. I'm not going to waste my time If i think i'm alone in this. I have no problem with putting my time into it and putting it in a thread for collaborative work. I will be doing this anyway, It has been underway for quite some time. F it, i'm gonna do it anyway. I'll pull up the file and post it this week.

Nifty,
Just do something positive.

[ensteele]

Many of the members here have always been helpful by posting or sending me their write ups of the How-Tos that they have done. I have posted them in the How-To Documents. Our software that we have now doesn't allow us to use the old lockers, but when we update it in the near future, we will be able to move all of the How-To to it. I have many more that are not posted because of this problem. The donation that we have gotten this year has gone a long way to helping us get the memory and hardware that we need to make this a better and up to date site. It takes a lot of effort to do this and our uptime is better than most. We have not had an outage or disruption of service for more than 2 years.

So, if you want to write up some instructions, we can post them when we get the new software. Thanks

[TomsSVX]

Appreciation is not in the SVXWN member vocab...

I have introduced and run the raffle at reading for 3 years... Put a couple thousand dollar worth of parts and even an entire car into the raffle as a fundraiser for the network... Granted it was also a networking and advertising probe for my shop as well... Guess what, I got maybe a handful of thank you's and zero response in regards to increase in revenue for the shop...

Always been hopeful but now realize until there is a major shift in ownership, nothing is going the change... People will continue to complain about what they didn't get rather than grateful for what they did

Tom

[svxistentialist]

Interesting Tom.

The other Tom sent me a PM with similar sentiments. I feel the same way myself, one of the reasons I post less now, and respond less to problems.

There is a heck of a lot of taking for granted going on round here, probably a younger new generation thing.

[ensteele]

Originally Posted by svxistentialist

Interesting Tom.

The other Tom sent me a PM with similar sentiments. I feel the same way myself, one of the reasons I post less now, and respond less to problems.

There is a heck of a lot of taking for granted going on round here, probably a younger new generation thing.

I agree with you on that and could go into many other examples of the same thing, but don't want to dwell on the negatives.

[RSVX]

Originally Posted by svxistentialist

Interesting Tom.

The other Tom sent me a PM with similar sentiments. I feel the same way myself, one of the reasons I post less now, and respond less to problems.

There is a heck of a lot of taking for granted going on round here, probably a younger new generation thing.

Or it could be the older crowd, stagnating...

[svxistentialist]

Mmmmmmm, yeah.

You are saying this from which side, exactly?

[SomethingElse]

Originally Posted by RSVX

Or it could be the older crowd, stagnating...

Did I miss something...did u get another SVX? I see you have registered classic banners???

[ensteele]

Originally Posted by SomethingElse

Did I miss something...did u get another SVX? I see you have registered classic banners???

No, he was working on the badges and did not take them off yet. They are off now and everything is back to normal.