Agree. There seems to be a general sense of laziness in searching for information even when it’s so much more accessible than ever before. Personally, I look through my own library, then internet search, then talk to people I know, and last of all use a message board, at least when I’m troubleshooting a problem or looking to do something I’ve never done before.
Sorry for the bump but today 03/02/2018 I noticed the ’ all categories ’ drop down list does not have ’ Ask Someone ’ on it.
Selling the show to radio stations…
It seems the easiest was to control the hecklers was to remove access of that category from everyone except the moderators.
Good morning. As I mentioned in another thread, Ask Someone did not go away. I changed the permissions so we could filter them first. I don’t know if that can be our sustainable system going forward, but it seemed prudent in the short term.
It’s too early to call it a lemon, if you ask me. But could I please propose a different way of looking at this? If somebody came here with a car problem and they wanted to fix it, most of you would offer some questions to guide the diagnostic process. What we’re getting here from some folks is akin to “why don’t you give up the junker anyway, and use a bicycle?” We are actively having discussions in between lattes about how to update the question interface to bolster what we get here. We’re about 12 days in.
Yes, it’s challenging from a moderation standpoint. I appreciate that some are replying to ask the Ask Someone OPs to try to elicit some more information. If they come back, they come back. We certainly hope so. Please don’t respond to the very scanty questions with sarcasm or “is there a question in there, or just a rant?” because I’m just going to remove the posts. Comments like these are frustration at the site and our project that’s being directed at the posters, who don’t deserve it. We do need your specific feedback to try to make the feature work, because it’s here to stay for a while. Like Doug has mentioned, and others have echoed in this thread, we need to find new means to pay the bills now that the show is gone; we have to evolve so the site can remain as an accessible resource for car repair info for years to come.
Thanks for your patience. Please keep the constructive feedback coming; I do share it with the Lackeys.
Have a good weekend.
Carolyn
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I’m with you, Carolyn. I think a couple-a-three months of effort on all our parts is a small price to pay for keeping the site active. I hope the naysayers (nattering nabobs of negativism? Remember that line from Spiro Agnew?) will turn their complaints into constructive criticism.
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I don’t think any amount of time will improve the poor quality of questions coming from the ’ car complaints site ’ will improve when you consider what has been posted so far.
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I’ll try to provide some constructive feedback.
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The soft rollout caused some hard feelings. There’s a number of posters who spend a lot of time and energy providing useful content and feedback. A significant change was made without the courtesy of an announcement, hence the negative response. In the past, I thought changes were communicated adequately; I don’t know why on this one, though.
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Both sites seem to have very different approaches to car problems. CarTalk tends to look for solutions, with the underlying assumption that cars will not run without issues periodically. CarComplaints tends to collect problem info and disseminate the data. Consequently, there will be a natural friction between the users.
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I have looked though some of the CarComplaints site, although I have not gotten an account to get access to the “Add Complaint” portion. Are users of this site typically asking for advice on solving their problems?
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