Ludachris
Founder & Zookeeper
- 8,060
- 3,086
- Nov 12, 2001
-
Newcastle,
California
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If you don't care to read the entire post, here's a quick summary - pay it forward and help automotive enthusiast culture thrive in the long term by posting all tech related Q&A and automotive related content in automotive forums, INSTEAD OF FACEBOOK. The more automotive content you post on FB, the more you are submitting data to a massive abyss where it gets buried, with very little chance of ever being found by others later. Your participation on FB will only have a destructive effect on the automotive community you're passionate about. Here's my rant...
We all know FecesBook is the largest online community in the world. Most everyone uses it these days, some a bit reluctantly. It's great for connecting with friends, family, and business networking. But if you pay close attention you'll notice its insidious, significant negative effects in the automotive enthusiast world. In some ways it's wonderful, in other ways it's a cancer. Sure, it's easy to share photos of your car with your friends quickly and easily and post questions. It's very simple to chat with others in your network and tell everyone all about your opinion on any given subject or ask your network for advice. The events feature is nice, and the Marketplace is invaluable. But with all of that user friendliness comes a very high signal to noise ratio and chaos when it comes to technical information organization. FB was built with one thing in mind - engagement at the expense of everything else, including quality, civility, and the long term health of a given community. It's built in a way to fully absorb your attention, keep you distracted, and to prevent you from participating outside of its sandbox - particularly in other communities like this forum. When it comes to being an information archive or repository, it's horrendous.
Now, it's blatantly obvious that forum software development hasn't kept up with the social network giants. Mobile usage has gone up dramatically for online communities and forum user interfaces haven't always been great on mobile. I have worked hard to make our site very mobile friendly and will continue to work on ways to improve in that regard (the next software update will be a big deal for mobile users BTW) but many forums suck on mobile. And believe me, many independent forum owners know this. The problem is that there hasn't been a consensus when it comes to the vision of forum software design. Some forum owners don't want forums to mimic social media apps, they feel it would result in less than desirable content contributions. The bottom line is, forums need a shot in the arm when it comes to user interface and usability. DSMtuners does have a mobile app to make browsing and participating easier on mobile, so please do take advantage!
Another point to be made here that some might not be aware of is that most automotive forums have been acquired by one of two massive forum networks (AutoGuide/Vertical Scope and Internet Brands). Many of the original founders of those forums sold their websites and assets to one of those two networks. In most cases those networks end up killing the site's spirit and the member participation drops off over time. All technological advancements in the acquired forums usually come to a halt, outside of advertising systems. I've watched it happen to quite a few forums. Unfortunately, this makes it difficult for people to want to log in and participate on a forum owned by one of those networks - some of them look archaic and the modern car enthusiasts don't always understand how to use old forum systems. It's largely because of these companies neglecting the forums they manage that everyone looks at forums as yesterday's technology. And the ones that do use new technology aren't all that user friendly.
Because of that, sadly, more people these days tend to share photos of their cars and progress of their builds on FB when they could/should chronicle their build in forums, where it can be referenced more easily and for a longer period of time by more people in the respective community. The power of the "build thread" is being eroded by the occasional FB update that shows up in between all of the other food, family, and other unrelated updates on that person's "wall". You can't follow a build on FB like you can in a forum. Full immersion into the journey of the build is impossible.
Technical information has become more fragmented than ever before. It used to be that there would be multiple forums for each make/model platform (there were/are a few DSM forums out there in case you didn't know ). Sometimes you didn't know which one contained the thread you were looking for. A quick Google search would usually do the trick. Now there are countless FB groups to go along with those forums. Good luck trying to track down where you read a post from last week, last month, or last year. Was it in your news feed on FB or in one of 20 groups that exist for the topic? Which group? Have fun with that. As more people look to FB to post their questions, the answers are being posted there too. Answers that nobody will ever be able to find later unless you Save the post. Is it really possible to Save all the useful posts though? That means less information will be cataloged for retrieval later. As new trends emerge they will be discussed less in forums, making it more difficult to research those topics on Google in the future. Think about what that means for the future of automotive tech information for a second. Go ahead, think long and hard about where that path eventually leads.
Repetitive tech questions make nearly all automotive groups on FB very difficult to embrace. Most people in those groups completely disregard all of the great tech info that is already archived in forums and post questions that have been answered thousands of times before, daily. This is partly due to the flawed FB conversation design - which is designed to display replies that have a higher reaction rate - not necessarily better information. But it's also due to the instant gratification and laziness that the popular social platform has bred into its user base. It's almost as if people lose all sense of being resourceful and/or self reliant when they open the app. I guess in a way, FB has helped keep forums a little cleaner by attracting the lazy people who don't research their questions first.
The platform is largely unmoderated and filled with misinformation. Not that forums are always that much better, but at least the good ones have a moderating team that makes a sincere attempt to keep things organized and clean, discouraging the trolls and creating a positive community atmosphere. Some also tend to have features meant to limit repetitive questions - sticky threads, FAQ sections, and search features that work far better than the FB search. And you can always rely on Google to help if all of that fails to meet expectations.
All of these issues have resulted in an environment where the people who have great insights and experience wall themselves off from their respective communities and have little patience when it comes to helping others. They simply don't care to participate and contribute in the wild west of trolls, tactless loud mouths, and spoon fed "takers". Again, not to say that forums don't also suffer from most of these issues, but some of the good forums tend to encourage "elder" participation and member education to reduce some of these problems, they also moderate it better. You used to see more mentors stepping up in the community to help teach others, even though they might get frustrated at times. On FB you're seeing a growing trend of people replying with "part it out" or other snarky comments, as the fatigue of common questions wears on those who have grown tired of answering a few questions hundreds of times.
FB is now just another Marketing Platform
FB was quickly adopted by business owners who loved the idea of free and wide ranging self promotion to push their products and services all in one place, with the ability to reach a wider audience than they could on forums. Who doesn't love free/low cost advertising and a better sense of control over the messaging? As a result, you see business owners participating less in forums too - makes sense, as it's just easier for them. Marketing messages started flooding news feeds. How much of your news feed is made up of companies trying to keep your attention? Probably most of it. Unfortunately for the business owners, FB changed things up with their algorithm and started hiding "page" posts to force businesses to pay to advertise on the platform. That means their posts started showing up less in your news feed unless they paid to boost it. You still see businesses promoting themselves heavily on their business pages, they're just paying to do it now. FB feeds continue to be flooded with marketing messages.
And then there are FB groups, which are a chaotic mess. A large percentage of the more active FB groups for automotive enthusiasts are created and managed by the businesses operating in those markets - usually so they can market to the group members. How unbiased are they? You're constantly being targeted by marketers and spammers. Besides that, have you ever tried following a tech discussion in a group? Don't bother, unless you enjoy pain. That tech info just gets buried in the bowels of the group forever. Good luck finding it later to try and reference it. Also, did you know that any FB group can be shut down at any moment for any or no reason by FB - all those tech discussions lost forever. All it takes is some complaints to FB about the group. FB is also self-moderating groups and banning members they feel are violating FB policies, overriding group admins. Remember, those groups are owned by FB, not the group admin.
Some FB groups have admins with great intentions, but most of them fail to acknowledge and/or understand how the platform damages the communities they're trying to serve. Some of them simply don't care and want to create their own "empire" with a FB group, regardless of how that may hurt the community they're serving in the long run. And they are naïve enough to trust FB not to shut their group down in the future, or make moderating decisions that the admin doesn't agree with. They're playing right into FB's manipulation.
It would be easy for someone to point out that I'm a bit biased. And that isn't necessarily an unfair statement to make. I obviously have invested a great deal of time and energy into forums over the past two plus decades. But I'd like to think I'm looking beyond what I've worked so hard to build with this website and others, and the positive impact I've tried to make on the auto enthusiast culture, and am looking at the bigger picture in the automotive world - a community I have always been very passionate about. DSMtuners is focused on a 20+ year old platform whose community will dwindle as time goes on, regardless of how much effort I put into it, which is a fate shared by various other communities focused on specific vehicle platforms. I'm not on this soapbox in an effort to try and prolong the lifespan of this website, that's mostly out of my control. I'm posting this to get people to think critically and objectively about the long term health of the automotive enthusiast industry in general and the importance of cataloging technical information and keeping niche communities going strong outside of FB so more data isn't lost forever.
So, before you answer someone's automotive tech question on FB, think about all of this. Answering questions posted by others on FB only exacerbates the problem. Consider pointing that person to a forum to search for the answer or share a link to the thread on a forum where the answer can be found. Give them your username on the forum and have them reach out to you there, extending the interaction to the forum, instead of FB. Educate them on how they can find answers easier in forums and how they can pay it forward by sharing their experiences in forums for others to benefit from later, where that information can be retrieved easier in the future and referenced by others. Become an ambassador in your automotive community. Let them know that forums like DSMtuners are like a "mom and pop shop" where FB is like Walmart and Amazon. Their participation here will be appreciated far more than it is on FB.
Before you go posting a tech question on FB, ask yourself if your question is likely to be something others are asking. If so, consider posting that question in a forum where others can benefit from the answers years down the road. Share your builds in forums (not just here, but in other relevant forums), post how-to write ups, discuss non-tech topics, and help strengthen the community in that forum. And before you create a new FB group or offer to help moderate a group, consider volunteering to help moderate and keep things clean and organized in a forum instead. If you're tired of finding dead end or irrelevant threads in search results, consider offering to help moderate and clean up those search results. Forums need passionate people to take an active role in shaping the community and encouraging a positive, helpful environment to offset the negative effects of FB in our beloved car culture.
And before you spout out that forums are just another form of social media, keep in mind a very important difference - forums are community focused, centered around a specific subject matter that connects its members, and are nearly always built to foster learning and strengthen a given community; they are not engineered and designed explicitly to create an addiction to a platform, with the intent to keep you glued to an app for as many hours of the day as possible, like every major social media platform is. Social media is addictively destructive, purposely designed to steal your attention, hack your dopamine system, and keep you enslaved to the platform. You are being manipulated, and you are adding to the destruction of online communities like DSMtuners, that have a far greater positive impact on the communities they serve, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.
/rant.
These are just the ramblings of an old car enthusiast who's worked behind the scenes in online communities for far too long. I'm sure some will think I'm way off base, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. And sadly, some won't care about any of this. They're too busy reading a push notification that just hit their phone's lock screen. Thanks to all who continue to participate and contribute here on DSMtuners and in other forums. Just know that some of us appreciate what you do for our car culture and our community. Do us all a favor and use FB for keeping in touch with friends and family, and use forums to communicate and interact with your respective car communities.
If you are one of those people who spend time as an admin for a DSM FB group or just a person who spends time helping answer DSM tech questions posted by others on FB, I invite you to get involved here and put your time towards something more meaningful than the toxic mess that FB has become. Help us clean up the forums, remove obsolete or bad information in threads here, organize the data for others to benefit from for years to come, and build on the thriving community we've had here since 2001. Quit giving your time, attention, and participation to a social media platform that has ZERO interest in whether or not our automotive hobby/community flourishes or completely dissolves - a platform that continues to absorb quality technical information that will get lost in the abyss, never to be available for reference later by others in our community. Support forums, especially those that are operated by the enthusiasts that built them. Send me a PM to find out how you can get involved.
And thank you to all of those who take this message to heart and follow these requests.