Site traffic

[michael]

Hope I didn't step on any toes bringing this up? I'm just concerned by the lack of activity, not any of the politics of running a website. This site is like a home away from home for me and I consider it my svx bible. I don't know what I would do without it, certainly not rely on fb for answers. I'm not even going to begin considering letting someone else work on my svx either. Hopefully it's just winter setting in and when the weather gets nice people are doing more with their cars.

[Chucksta]

I've been debating for time about the raised comment that "banning" members contributed to the decline of the traffic here.

I wasn't here for what was probably the most acrimonious, drawn out, pissing contest I've ever seen. "cooling, again and again" I do believe it was called. Damn! I read virtually every single effin word of that thread. To me, it was like a book, I read it in a couple of days. Yet it was a couple of years of huge efforts, and unpaid research into why the SVX cooling system won't properly cool on a long term basis after 5,000 R.P.M.

Trevor, and OAB_Au... at it with tooth and nail.. Trevor's pedantic O.C.D. driven penchant for technically correct nomenclature, procedural technique and methodical interpretation of results up against OAB_AU's real world, result and observational testing and established methodology. Being taken to task by Trevor over the wording of a concept, or the interpretation of a technical term.. OAB_AU owns his own bit of guilt in that for not logically refuting Trevor's assertions. Or for trying to and getting sucked in by Trevor's bashing of his use, or misuse of technical terms. It reminded me of someone dismissing an opinion due to a spelling or syntax error, while not adressing the actual concept put forward. Either get down in the gutter and wrestle, or ignore the digs..

As it is common knowledge that 80% of all communication is non verbal, and as such, non written, I would like to say that I would have paid, like it was a prize on a game show, to fly Trevor down to OZ and have a beer with the two of them. It would have been epic. We'd have left the bar best friends, or with charges pending. Trevor's acerbic sense of humour may well have been much, much more understood when you could see the twinkle in his eye in person. Trevor, as far as I could tell, had a bit of the bully in him, that is, if he found a button that got a reaction, he'd keep pushing it. If you're going to engage with someone like that, fine, but understand that that is who you're dealing with, and be able to deal with it on an appropriate level.

The five hardest words to day to youself in the English language are "But what if I'm wrong" .. Trevor and OAB_AU pushed each other past the point where either could "back down" . As I read the thread in it's entirety, I could see other, equally valid, ideas and points, being dis guarded by the wayside, as the principle posters became more and more entrenched in defending their preferred methodology to address the cooling issue as a personal issue. Both Trevor and OAB_AU had excellent points, but by this time, neither one was able to see or admit to the value of the other's ideas. At that point, effective progress was significantly diminished.

Was there a point at which Trevor should have been banned? Oh yes, absolutely. He crossed the line into a personal attack. But, the unfortunate part of "banning" someone, is that, even if there's a lesson learned, it doesn't matter. They're gone and aren't coming back. I'd like to thinnk that it would be more useful to suspend the account for a period of time.. a day .. a week.. a month. There's no point in "teaching someone a lesson" , and then never benefiting from the lesson learned, is there?

Must there be someone who makes that arbitrary decision? Yes, absolutely! All that's required for it to work is that it's applied fairly. There's a joke about bad drivers.. it goes on about that we should all have dart guns,, and if a cop sees ten darts on the back of the car, the driver can just walk for a week. Maybe that's more kinda the thing that we need here to keep the spirited posting high, and the outright verbal abuse low. IDK,, just throwing that out as an alternative method to banning members.

Understand, I'm not defending them. ( either Trevor or OAB_AU, I'm just using that whole thing as an example) . I just understand that aspect of text based communication. My own sardonic sense of humour, is something I hold hugely in check because of how easy it is to be miss-interpreted. Hell, leaving out a smiley face is the difference between joking, and being an ass##ole

And seriously, there aren't enough SVX's left in the world to keep two SVX sites anywhere near properly active. And, it splits our resources and knowledge in half over a pissing contest that should have been nipped in the bud and laid to rest.

And as far as the "cooling, again and again" thread is concerned,,, There never was a final answer on how to do it, was there? And that's because (IMHO), the answers were there, and got buried in personal infighting. That's sad.

I'm pretty sure, that after having read the thousand plus posts in that thread, that I could keep an SVX running cool, at 7,000 R.P.M. After seeing all the BS that should have been nipped in the bud before people got banned or left, would I ever have posted my thought, observations, ideas on that thread? After I saw the way that anyone who had an idea that deviated from the approach that was being pursued?... Not a chance in hell. Once the box was established, thinking outside it was .. uuummmm not exactly encouraged.

Banning has it's place, some people just don't "get it" that there are rules to civilization, and that manners, common decency, discretion, and above all forgiveness for an unintended or unintentional transgression, are part of the social lubrication that let us get along with each other.

Or.. just let it go with... If ten people say TIME OUT.. someone gets a month off to reflect on their social skills.

[Tapani]

I fully agree.

Let's welcome Trevor back to the forum. What's there to loose?

Also, let's encourage Harvey, Tony and Barry - and all others - to rejoin the discussions. They all are fountains of knowledge.

We also need to find someone who wants to rev the EG33 hard enough so that we are all - together - able to solve the cooling issues in real life. An engine dyno would be so COOL

For now, I'm quite happy to enjoy the midrange grunt of my mild setup.

Waiting for the salt season to pass.....

Kind regards from Finland,

/Tapani

PS I just read a great book by George Kohlriser: Care to Dare. !

[EdWindows]

I've skimmed through that cooling thread multiple times and still don't know what all helps besides a crossflow radiator and moving the thermostat to the top hose.
Also Bazza and Dessertrunner butted heads in a similar fashion as Trevor and OAB_AU to the point that Dessertrunner raegquit (sic) the forum.
As for the other forum, I've maybe only seen 1 or 2 threads of actually useful information.

[Huskymaniac]

I like the dart suggestion.

As for Trevor, I found him to be one of the more logical people here in terms of solving problems. He was one of the few people that didn't act like an miserable prick when I came to the forum with my first issue. He didn't jump to conclusions, provided useful suggestions and supported a logical troubleshooting methodology. While SOME people here insisted to me that a temp gauge that reads low means I had a blown head gasket, Trevor said I was doing the right thing by ignoring them and taking a more logical approach. Over FOUR YEARS later I still have no signs of actual HG issues!!! Bring Trevor back!

[dannmarr]

I'm sorry for disagreeing, but I don't like people bashing others. Harvey has helped me many times without criticism. I prefer someone who wants to help over someone who wants to show off his expertise. Good manners go a long way. Of course this is my experience with both of them.

[bwb3]

I agree with pro and con arguments being made here, just do not believe there should be a permanent ban. If they come back unreformed, another time out.

[Chris]

I barely have enough time to deal with issues that arise from the server requiring attention. I would suggest this as a new topic of discussion. Understanding that its the moderators and forum officers that have to deal with the fires when name calling becomes personal. NOTHING good ever comes from it. No productive resolutions, no further advancements in technology or even shared experience. Regardless of what the opinions of others might be, I try not to rule this place as a dictator. I have never banned anyone without consulting the moderators and forum officers, and in many cases I remove myself from the process. Especially so if I am the one taking offence to what has transpired.

[NikFu S.]

I can tell you why I personally don't come around much anymore, it's because I have not driven the SVX in a long time. I am selling my daily driver though and pushing hard these next couple weeks to get it road worthy. Very exciting/stressful.

The Facebook format is awful, useful information is quickly buried under asinine crap, it's unsearchable, and people waste enough time on Facebook as it is.

As for increasing traffic... you're going to have to make some compromise on appealing to a new generation, either expand the forum or relax the rules.

[gearheadE30]

As a new member, I think it comes down to more than just rules or anything else - it's the subject we're dealing with. As much as everyone here loves the SVX, there aren't very many of them, they haven't reached (and may never reach) classic status, people my age don't even know what they are and so never develop an interest or buy them, and most of the cars on the market have gone to crap. I think many will agree that the transmission's inherent unreliability was responsible for killing a lot of these cars and giving them a bad reputation, so people just don't buy them. Combine that with a very limited bolt-on aftermarket that requires people to do things somewhat by trial and error, or requires them to have some custom fabrication skills, and you further limit the population, plus parts availability is only mediocre. What is out there is fairly expensive. It's a major recipe for having a small audience, and even having the perfect website may never fix that.

As another aside, when I searched for SVX info online when I got mine, this site hardly ever showed up in searches, even though I've since found a lot of relevant information here. Any idea why that might be?

edit: erm, not sure what the auto-emoticon search engine advert is about haha.

[Chris]

The reason Google searches were not successful is that we had settings turned on to disable web crawlers. The reason was that when we ran on a T1 connection to the server, web crawlers would bring the connection to its knees and make the experience extremely slow and horrible for anyone trying to use the site. This has since been remedied as of a couple weeks ago.

[gearheadE30]

Interesting; never would have guessed that.