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Facebook's negative impact on car culture and tech info

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I know that the point of this thread is meant to focus on "Facebook's negative impact on car culture and tech info," but today I feel compelled to emphasize (like others have) how good we all have well-archived information again on this particular forum and I just realized today how big of a part of my car-life that this forum actually is. I was starting to remove my 1g clutch pedal assembly for rebuild, which many of us know that job to be a special kind of h3ll. I reviewed the FSM before I started tackling the job, but also instinctively went to hop onto dsmtuners to access the tech articles/walk-throughs (and generally great pics that members provide in the walkthroughs) before really diving into the job, not knowing that site access was down for a better part of today (for some reason I couldn't access it, at least). I was kind of devastated actually because I'm so used to having dsmtuners to access this type of useful, nicely archived info to supplement the FSM. I ended up googling and only found some lame text-only walkthroughs from old dsmtalk posts, but it dawned on me then how much this site is actually part of my car-life when I couldn't access it (even temporarily) because it really is my go-to place for this type of well documented info and pictures, and for generally reading pleasure of course. It would be a shame if facebook ever killed off a forum like this.

Having said that, and knowing what this forum means to me, I will agree to the original point of this thread and "not contribute to the facebook blackhole for automotive tech info" moving forward and will exclusively post that kinda thing in dsmtuners instead. I won't lie though, I would use facebook to advertise For Sale stuff, just due to traffic volume.

I am grateful to this site, thank you.
 
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I would be willing to bet that a majority of the "older" crowd leans on forums and the young ones use fb because that what each LEARNED to search on, to some extent of course. I must admit that fb has a plethora of parts for sale vs here, which is the main reason why I started using fb again.

I have seen more link backs to here lately on fb though!
 
... not knowing that site access was down for a better part of today (for some reason I couldn't access it, at least). I was kind of devastated actually because I'm so used to having dsmtuners to access this type of useful, nicely archived info to supplement the FSM. I ended up googling and only found some lame text-only walkthroughs from old dsmtalk posts, but it dawned on me then how much this site is actually part of my car-life when I couldn't access it (even temporarily) because it really is my go-to place for this type of well documented info and pictures, and for generally reading pleasure of course. It would be a shame if facebook ever killed off a forum like this.
We've been having some server software issues creeping in again lately causing the site to lock up. I'm going to be upgrading some back-end software over the weekend to try and address it. Sorry the site was down for you when you needed it.
 
I help run a local DSM group on FB, but we keep the idiot questions out and do not accept posts that can be easily searched and answered. IT works wonders.
Telling people in FB groups to post their tech questions in forums, letting them know that you'll reply to them in their thread will go a long way to keep forums thriving and keep those tech discussions archived for others to read and reference later. ;)
 
I would be willing to bet that a majority of the "older" crowd leans on forums and the young ones use fb because that what each LEARNED to search on, to some extent of course. I must admit that fb has a plethora of parts for sale vs here, which is the main reason why I started using fb again.

I have seen more link backs to here lately on fb though!

I've noticed the increased link backs to here as well! Good to see.
 
I'm guilty of just sharing shit on fb when I'm doing stuff. Since it's just so easy. , Maybe turn build threads into something like a FB timeline type deal, so it's easy to post to it off your phone or something. It would be pretty cool, have a news feed, a post pops up and we see Bastarddsm auto-swapped his car, hundreds of people simultaneously get in a car wreck, spit out coffee, ect... but then since it's tied to here the posts never get lost/burried in the rest of the junk. I don't know, everything is f***ed anyway, so enjoy what you can while you can LOL.
 
I guess we're old AND misfit , since we missed out on the whole Facebook thing, and now it is over! :beatentodeath:

Most of the teens who spoke to WIRED aren’t too worried about their friends seeing their parents’ Facebook posts because their friends aren’t on Facebook. “[It’s] an ‘old person’ social media,” says Lauren, a high-schooler in the Bay Area. Lauren doesn’t have an account, and none of her friends are active on it, “because what are you gonna post that you want your grandma to see?"

https://www.wired.com/story/teens-cant-escape-facebook/
 
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I see some of the members in here pushing people in the DSM FB groups to use forums, and I appreciate those efforts. I see some of those people you're interacting with who talk about how forums died years ago and that they don't need to log in to look for the information they need. It's unfortunate that they prefer to interact with other DSMers only on FB. :toobad:

I see group admins over there participating and would love for them to get involved here as moderators to help us improve things, clean up the data, and grow things in a positive direction for the community. Just imagine if all the group leaders over there got involved here and stopped catering to all of the repetitive questions and aiding in the flushing of good tech discussions down the toilet. I would love to have people who want to be involved to help shape the future of the site, maybe even help us plan new features and sections, instead of volunteering their time in FB groups.

I'll keep working on things to help make the site better.
 
If we’re gonna keep the DSMTuners community alive, then we need to act more like a community, and act less like a search archive.

For years forum members would turn off new users by saying...
“Use the search!”
“Did you even search!?”
“Its been talked about 1000 times!”

It has ruined the sense of helpfulness on DSMTuners. Yeah I understand that if someone is serious about finding answeres then it would be helpful for them to search. But also it should be ok for people to ask questions no matter how many times it’s been asked by others before.

Further more a lot of the good older information has pictures and links that are broken; It’s real unfortunate. That means we need new people to do new write ups. New people to re-ask those old questions, and Re-discover the answers.

Let’s not forget that DSMs are a dying breed. I know we’ve been saying that for years but it’s really starting to become a reality especially for 1G’s

People like Facebook becoause of the interaction between people. There’s no good search function but people having a good time asking questions and others enjoying helping answer.

If we’re gonna keep the DSMTuners community Alive, then we need to act more like a community, and act less like a search archive.
 
I'm fine with people asking the same questions over and over. On my forum it is a rule that you're not allowed to tell people to search. You can only help, not be a dick. Being a dick isn't one of the options on a good forum. Telling people to search is being a dick. The more dumb questions that are asked multiple times the better chance there is of someone finding that info they need if they choose to search. The more people you have on your forum that are coaxed into not being dicks the more helpful the replies tend to be and less fluff happens in the replies.

I don't use FB at all, deleted my account years ago. I am the future.
 
If we’re gonna keep the DSMTuners community alive, then we need to act more like a community, and act less like a search archive.

For years forum members would turn off new users by saying...
“Use the search!”
“Did you even search!?”
“Its been talked about 1000 times!”

It has ruined the sense of helpfulness on DSMTuners. Yeah I understand that if someone is serious about finding answeres then it would be helpful for them to search. But also it should be ok for people to ask questions no matter how many times it’s been asked by others before.

Further more a lot of the good older information has pictures and links that are broken; It’s real unfortunate. That means we need new people to do new write ups. New people to re-ask those old questions, and Re-discover the answers.

Let’s not forget that DSMs are a dying breed. I know we’ve been saying that for years but it’s really starting to become a reality especially for 1G’s

People like Facebook becoause of the interaction between people. There’s no good search function but people having a good time asking questions and others enjoying helping answer.

If we’re gonna keep the DSMTuners community Alive, then we need to act more like a community, and act less like a search archive.
You'll see in the rules for our site we discourage people from replying to questions with "use the search" - this has been a policy on the site since it was launched:
Do not reply to a thread with "Use the Search" - answer the question, link to the answer, or don't reply at all.
https://www.dsmtuners.com/help/rules/ (under Tech Forum Rules)

With that said, repetitive questions are known to cause a couple of major problems in forums:

1. They fill the search results with tons of threads about the same topic, making it very difficult and time consuming for people to sift through them all and locate useful information. This makes it tough to expect people to do research before they ask, and in some cases, they might actually have made an effort but got lost in the sea of similar results.

2. It causes irritation on the part of those who take the time to answer questions thoroughly and regularly... the people who know their shit get tired of seeing people ask the same questions they've answered over and over and over, and eventually they lose interest in sharing their knowledge because they feel the people they're helping are being lazy and not making a simple effort to do a little bit of research before they post a question. It's not a lot to ask that people read through the Frequently Answered Questions forum and do some keyword searches in a few specific sub-forums or in the Tech Articles before they ask a question. It's a matter of being considerate of others' time and generosity.

I've always disliked people being shut down with condescending replies due to the question being repetitive. But I also understand the irritation. That's why the policy we have always had here is that you are free to tell people to use the search when answering a question only if you're explaining to them how they would be able to find what they're looking for next time, while at the same time answering the question or linking to the answer. In other words, teach them how to fish while also offering some fish. Replying with "use the search" with no other helpful information is not something we want to see.

To help cut down on repetitive questions we have a "similar threads" feature on the New Thread posting form that dynamically populates a list of threads with similar titles. The list is shown just as a user finishes typing their thread title so that they can see what threads on that topic already exist. It encourages them to check to see if the question they're asking has been discussed before.

We also have a few sections that people are asked to read through and do searches in specifically to find common information before they post questions:

https://www.dsmtuners.com/forum/frequently-answered-dsm-questions.44/
https://www.dsmtuners.com/forum/tech-article-archives.42/
https://www.dsmtuners.com/forum/newbie-thread-graveyard.88/

If we find new questions being posted that have clearly been answered several times before and the answers can be found in the FAQ forum or the Tech Articles we might move those threads to the Newbie Thread Graveyard forum (after a link to the answer has been posted), which is a locked archive forum. This is done to try and keep the search results cleaner and shows the person asking the question that they could have found the answer in the places where they were asked to check before posting a question.

No matter what, we ask that people be respectful with their replies. Because this is a community, not just an archive.
 
Hello all, I wanted to write my opinion on this matter as well as give you a little background info on me as well. It was 2002 and I was 17years old when I saved up enough money to purchase my first car. I was in love and it forever changed my life. It was a black 95 Tsi awd that was bone stock with 90 thousand miles on the clock. At 18years old I could not turn a wrench, but I could do what I was good at and that was washing and waxing my " new to me" car weekly if not daily. This was a time when in my town there were several small performance shops in my small town and those were the hangouts for car guys. I would go down there to listen and try to learn all that I could from the owners and mechanics. You would actually have to go up there to look through the parts magazines and dream about what parts you couldn't afford. It was a whole different era and I'm proud to be able to have been a part of it. The biggest problem that I had was that all my buddies and most everyone in town was mainly into body kits, wings and neons as the original fast and furious had came out and that stuff just took off. I never got into all the body mods that really were popular at the time, I just wanted to make my car faster. The problem is that nobody in my town knew anything about that stuff and at the time internet was unheard of, at least in my parents home. I tried asking but anyone that I thought should know this stuff was as clueless as I was. So I just left my car alone till I could learn more. Fast forward a year or two and I start community college and find that in the computer lab there were websites that you could learn invaluable information. Mach v for parts vfaq and best of all was dsmtuners. I spent hundreds of hours pouring over the forums and searching the classifieds. It didn't take long till I figured out the whole wrenching thing and picked up two more talons to play with. Hence the name " Triple threat" LOL .... it seemed good at the time. If I had a question about anything dsm related I could always search it on this forum and find an answer. I never posted or commented because I knew that there were people on here that were way smarter than me. As a matter of fact I'm not sure that I ever had the need to write a question out because someone had already posted about the issue and I could learn from them. This forum along with 3 talons has turned me into an excellent mechanic over the years and has completely changed my life. I have built motors from atv's, Harley evo, multiple twincam harley repairs, vintage jap bikes, rockets, diesels.... as most of you all the list goes on and on. I'm not exaggerating to say that I would not be the man that I am today if it weren't for this forum. Facebook is junk, and it is killing off the good forums and leading to a lot of misinformed people. Not to mention the time wasted while scrolling through it could be valuable time in the garage actually turning a wrench instead of looking at the phone screen all night. I still have my first car and will take it to my grave. I do still have the other two as well as a 95 auto awd for my wife to hurt feelings in. I thank you all for what you have done and continue to do for the community. I hope that this forum will be active for years to come. Maybe I will try to post a little bit. I just don't spend much time on the screen, it gives me a headache these days.
 
Discouraging and penalizing people for making "use the search" style replies are two different things. I think the general attitude of "car guys" is that they think they're smarter than everyone else and they know something that nobody else knows. The problem this creates when you get a bunch of "know it alls" together is that they start their usual measuring contest with egos and bench racing, insults, insinuating stupidity in others, etc. I don't really hang out with any "car guys" save for a few close friends. The car meets are generally full of people that think they're super "in tune" with car culture and what it means to modify cars.

I only got into cars because I was poor and didn't want to pay someone I didn't trust to do who knows what to my vehicle. This served me well. As soon as a community becomes a chore to use or be a part of I usually will find something else to do. I like it here, I know there are some good people here. I know there are a lot of people here that still need help and guidance. The know it all attitude of EVERYONE has to go though.

A good example is "Cleetus". Everyone worships him like he's so smart and I've seen him do and say more stupid things than I don't know what. What this spawns is a large following of people that will mimic the "success" they see. I wonder how many dumb kids f***ed up their cars trying to spray nitrous into their air filter after seeing Cleetus do it...... except they didn't turn into youtube millionaires and have a broken car.

My other gripe is that the parts that you will need to keep these cars running is dwindling. At some point if someone doesn't decide this platform is super important and pick up the torch to make aftermarket things for us, we're going to run out of stuff to keep these cars running. How long until all the xfer cases and 5-speed 1g transmissions are gone?
 
Discouraging and penalizing people for making "use the search" style replies are two different things.
And I've tried different approaches to it over the years with varying results. The bottom line is, communities are full of vastly different personalities and you find that achieving balance is tricky. Penalizing people for replying with "use the search" tends to drive away the people who have been around the site longer and many who have a lot of experience with the platform, as they tend to tire of the all the same questions being asked over and over. Some will look for a place where they can be more "colorful" when noobs ask common questions (some will remember NABR), as they feel tough love and hazing is not only necessary but healthy too.

And then on the other end of the spectrum, if you penalize people for not searching first you drive some of the newbies away, pushing them to other places where they can ask their questions and not be criticized so much. They end up feeling like the members here are assholes and elitists, and the moderators are on power trips for being too strict. Those newbies could end up being solid contributors in this community.

It's a tricky balance, but I've always erred on the side of not penalizing people for asking common questions, and requesting people NOT to reply with "use the search", instead answer the question and educate the person asking the question on how they can quickly find answers to repetitive questions in the future. You won't ever make everyone happy, but I feel like this is the best approach. Now getting everyone to follow suit, well, not always easy.

I do somewhat agree with your assessment of a lot of people in the auto enthusiast world though. Attitudes are everywhere.
 
Thanks for keeping the forums alive! I'm guilty of being sucked into the black hole that is facebook, too. I also secretly wish it would collapse. LOL!
 
Thanks for keeping the forums alive! I'm guilty of being sucked into the black hole that is facebook, too. I also secretly wish it would collapse. LOL!
Your photo posts on FB are one of the few bright spots of that abyss. Feel free to share more cool photos here in the Hangout - I know I appreciate them even if I don't comment.
 
Chris, as a NABR (not FNG) member and Group Admin, I'll do anything you need to help keep the forums alive and well. I much prefer this format to FB when it comes to car related stuff!
Just keep participating, sharing info, documenting builds, inviting others in to participate, and encouraging others to ditch FB groups for talking tech and answering others' questions there. Give people your username and tell them to come post here and tag @you and you'll answer their questions or chat with them here in the forums. That's really all you can do. The more people continue to answer questions on FB the more people will continue to go there and use that platform for tech.

I'll keep doing what I can to address the technical side of the site to make it easier to use. I'm working on development sites right now using the latest version of the forum software that we'll eventually be using here - very cool updates to functionality, that's for sure. If anyone knows any good app developers I'd love to ask them some questions. No, there are still no plans for a fully developed app, but I have some ideas for an app integration.
 
If im replying to your educational rant in the wrong section i apologize im technically new to the whole fourm society I did make an attempt in the past to embrace the Forum trend unfortunately it just never cease to fail no matter the initial subject or query 90% of the time one of two things would inevitably happen eather the topic would erupt in a all out race war or some one with a superiority complex would feel the need to belittle some one else eather looking for help but not understanding the in and out of how fourms work and with out meaning any harm ask a qustion that has been answered a hundred times in the past week or the person sharing there knowledge that isn't wrong but not quit right at the same time but would work out nevertheless is attacked because his methods are not exactly what you would call by the book is it going to be on the steps not on myself but others from turning to forums for any advice or knowledge but just recently decided to give it another shot and discovered that The Forum world has cultivated a helpful knowledgeable and patient user base. Well at least this one has not disappointed which I'm going to be honest has given me hope.
so in addition to pleading with the individuals turn into the internet full answers to there whether it be common or complex questions perhaps you should also make a plee to tthose in your position the owners the forums and Inspire them to follow your blueprints how to create produce and maintain and produce a productive and useful forms that will attract members that are like-minded and share similar interest
because inevitably the will become feed up with all the misinforming self-serving opportunist that litter the social networking platforms and will need somewear to turn for real answers to what ever real world problem or situation they may be facing
Now all that being said please dont take anything i have said in a negative way because honestly i dont know weather or not you have already taken the action i am suggesting i just thought that if you hadent considered it perhaps that could be something to consider seeing how it is you already hold the key and proven it can be done then maybe also the one who should set the standard but but that's just my opinion I've always believed that if a change needs to be made in a better system needs to be put in its place can you go with that and I'm certain I'm not the only one who believes that you have that veary system just food for thought. But the regardless whether or not you decide to take to heart my suggestion keep up the good work that you've done and are doing with this forum so many of us appreciate it
 
My main issue with the forums is when you find the thread your looking for but then all the pics are no longer viewable. Then when you past about it people complain about bringing up and old thread or not looking. Members need to learn to just help out instead of bitching to the new guy
 
My main issue with the forums is when you find the thread your looking for but then all the pics are no longer viewable. Then when you past about it people complain about bringing up and old thread or not looking. Members need to learn to just help out instead of bitching to the new guy
Sometimes it's good to mention the threads you found had broken images when asking questions. It lets the people who are reading your question know that you put some real time into researching and looking for the information first. Not that they should bi*** and complain (on this site) but it helps alleviate some of the frustration, since a lot of people assume every answer to every question can be found by searching - and we both know that always isn't the case.

On a side note, I would ask that if you do come across posts with broken images, that you report those posts if they are absolutely not useful anymore. We've done a better job than most forums at retaining old linked images, but it's something that we need to clean up too. And if you do find that the answer to your question cannot be found, or if all of the information you come across is obsolete or heavily dated due to newer trends and technology, I ask that you take a moment and post the answer after you figure it out, and consider doing a write up on the subject in the Tech Articles section so that someone else can find your answer later. That's how we keep the search data relevant and fresh.
 
Thank you @Ludachris for this. I used to be one of the as you said Facebook Lazy people who asked basic questions on DSM pages. I did the dumb thing of buying one of these cars and not doing research and this website has helped me much more than those posts on FB ever did. Thanks again for posting this!
 
I don't know when in the internet's history someone came up with the idea that you shouldn't zombie bump a thread. I do it all the time when needed and I advocate it. There's nothing wrong with bringing an old thread up..... especially one that was never answered because people ignored it or didn't take the time to help the other person. If you found an OLD thread by searching google or here..... and it has information you found useful.... well then that old thread is useful. No harm in replying to it with a legit reply. I think it's a bit aspbergery of people to look at dates of replies and then spend their time replying just to tell you that you zombie bumped. It adds 0 value.... period.
 
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