So, you’re a plugger if you are typing on a real keyboard.
I don’t think abuse to new posters is a problem, but when someone asks a question that is dangerous,illegal or just should not be done then the replies will not be what they want. Besides a comment from a unknown user name to a unknown user name will not cause any physical,mental or financial pain so why worry about it.
As a long-time frequent UNknowledgable NON-mechanic participant of this forum, I will dare add a few observations.
The rate of traffic from new posters posing questions HAS noticably declined since the show went into reruns. The suggestion that Carolyn pass up the food chain the recommendation to promote the forum on the radio show reruns as current, active and ongoing could be key to keeping the forum alive.
The advent of texting has spawned a generation of young posters whose writing skills often are lacking and whose style annoys and baffles. When such unintelligable posts appear, the best responses I see ask the OP a few relevant questions seeking clarification and, if the OP responds adequately, go from there with mechanical advice. However, due to the annoyance level created by such badly written original posts, there are often immediate assumptions the OP is spam.
It is fine to call out an OP for questionable versions of a repair story and/or wrongheaded attitudes toward reasonable expectations and reality regarding mechanical service and repairs. But I have noticed a trend of some forum members immediately jumping full throttle down the throat of almost all OPs whose questions exhibit ignorant paranoia rather than posting educational responses as used to be the norm. A good method of dealing with such OPs is what several forum regulars do by having some well written stock answers handy to reply with as needed and appropriate. That often seems to calm down the OP and lead to a fuller, rational discourse from the OP leading to them receiving the help they need plus an education.
Some OP questions are just plain dumb, leaving forum regulars to wonder if anyone actually has critical thinking skills. Yet most such questions stem from the current trend away from kids growing up learning a few mechanical basics about keeping a lawn mower running or helping their dads with Saturday afternoon basic car maintenance or basic repairs to household small appliances or to the house itself. How many boys do you see anymore out mowing lawns for a few dollars? For that matter, how many do you see mowing their own grass? Nope, the mom or dad or even grandparent is out doing the yard work while junior is inside playing video games. So the level of utter ignorance in some OP questions is stunning and aggravating to most mature, seasoned regulars resulting either in no response to the OP or rather tart replies. (Although I grant that some questions posed are simply too tempting fodder for making fun of.) Forum regulars are left to wonder if it is even worth the effort to attempt education in such cases.
There have always been posters who are obviously trolling merely for validation of their viewpoint regarding a confrontation over service/repairs. The percentage of OPs like that seems to have increased as the overall rate of new folks asking questions has declined. Again, that seems to get back to the problem of the show being in reruns and listeners likely not realizing the forum is current. So, again, perhaps Carolyn can kick the idea upstairs to have the forum promoted on the show reruns.
On a personal note, I also wish that topics in the General Discussion segment of the forum were allowed freedom to explore non-car topic tangents. The wealth of knowledge and experience among forum regulars is impressive, interesting, and quite helpful. And in the long end, much of the tangental discussions have applicable value to understanding mechanical basics and critical thinking.
@Marnet
As usual, you have provided a beautifully-composed, very analytical post, and I have to say that I am in agreement with essentially everything that you stated. Additionally, I am curious about the type of work that you do (or did), as few people today–in any career area–can write as well as you.
I too am often flabbergasted at the poor composition skills of those posting questions here. And certainly my grammatical and spelling errors are too common for me to throw out much criticism. But often I am unsure of the meaning of an OP and wait until the regulars here have bounced a few rounds with the OPer to allow me to catch on. With a spread of 3 or 4 generations and 3 or more regional cultures some may read my posts with as much curiousity as I had reading the Canterbury Tales.
Hi Folks,
I wanted to add a few thoughts while I had a sec. A quick peek at analytics show that the numbers are fine-- there’s nothing that worries us. There’s some seasonal variation. Numbers of page views are up. Posts are slightly down. But, frankly, we think the quality of answers is up, and we also think that due to some SEO (search engine optimization) work on our end, people doing organic searches via Google are better able to find the answers they want. So, it’s possible there is reduced posting happening for that reason.
We’re actually deep into a redesign of the community, using many of your suggestions from several months ago. (For those of you with technical backgrounds, here’s a deeper dive: wire framing is done, and we’re analyzing platform options for the new community, Drupal v. Django. We need enterprise-level forums, with the flexibility that allow us to build it as we want and expand functionality in the future. We’re not plugging in a solution. We’re taking the time to build the “blue sky” version that we want. Drupal is about to launch v8, and whether we wait for v8 or build in Django is one discussion point. We’re currently talking with sites in Django to get their experiences. Once a decision is made, a series of sprints should get us to QA in about six weeks, launch in three months. Tied into this is a subsequent move into responsive design for all of ct.com and retirement of the m.cartalk site.)
We see the community as only growing, long term. Our goal is to build a great home for all of us, one with the functionality and design that satisfies both long-time, highly experienced regulars, and new visitors who might just need help once. That’s a broad swath of users, so an interesting design and experience challenge.
I think we have one of the best auto repair forums online-- one largely in keeping with the spirit of Car Talk, with a consumer-oriented focus that’s not intent on selling unnecessary service or products.
Once we get the new community launched, there will be a learning curve for all of us, and a period of addressing surprises that inevitably occur on a project of this size and scope. Then, we expect to promote it even more.
To all of you who hang out here, thanks for your time and energy. We’re working to continue to keep it as good an experience as possible. Bringing it in-house will dramatically expand what’s possible for the community in the years ahead.
All Best,
Doug Mayer
Senior Web Lackey
Doug, it should worry you that your statistics on the forum give an answer which contradicts the experience of everyone else who has commented on this issue.
Joke, right?
OK, 2 people said things that seem to inidcate they don’t think that there is a decline.
Personally, I very much appreciate Doug’s input and I offer him my sincere thanks.
I look forward to the upcoming changes.
I’ll take the stats from the web site over our subjective observations, every time.
Relax all. The posts have gone down since I got rid of your old Caravan with all the ongoing issues. Now my Camry is getting up in age and I will soon entertain you all with all sorts of questions.
Joking aside, I agree with the observations about the younger generations. I am not retired, nor close, but have enough time to come here and see what is going on. The younger generation uses some tap to talk app and post a question that seems vague to us. Communications skills are going down. I also think they have less desire to mess with things. Maybe because the first car they saw was already too complicated. The rest of us learned with time.
I’ve noticed two types of threads that have developed over the past year. The car-problem thread and the car-philosophy thread. The first generally doesn’t run far and long because this forum answers the posters question. Whether it be brake bleeding or Jeeps, Saab service or muffler bearings, the posters get answers quickly. The thread fades away. These may be affecting Doug’s analytics in a positive way. Poster need help, forum members provide help. That’s partly why we are here, right?
Some questions may be a little simple minded but everyone has to start somewhere. Sometimes that is at the very bottom (read your owners manual, first!) I’ll put it to this group that this site has international appeal as some of the questions we’ve gotten lately obviously come from outside the US and outside the English speaking world. Questions about cars we cannot buy here in the US or engines not available in US cars from folks with limited knowledge of written English. And we will still try and help them. I, for one, think that is a good thing.
The second threads can run forever winding their way through many topics. Interesting to read and comment, at times. Sometimes disagreements occur but that will happen. Generally we are reasonable people and Carolyn is here to moderate if we aren’t. They are still thought provoking discussions on which anyone here can comment. Also a good thing.
I look forward to the changes coming on the site. I’d like to see the show continue as well because they complement each other very well. We did lose something when the brothers retired the show and it would be nice to get that back.
Speaking of generational differences…
Listening to the ‘‘radio’’ seems to be in decline with the advent of streaming or keeping downloads on one’s ‘‘device’’.
Of those still turning on a radio ( usually in a vehicle ) how many of those are now much younger and do not even consider PBS as a listening option ?
Even MY radio time is relatively small and when the kids hop in the truck, the station is insantly changed.
During my limited listening times, I never hear Car Talk or this board promoted.
My drive to work is a whopping ten minutes and I listen to news on my PBS station, KGLP 91.7, 7:45ish till just before 8.
At work I can not receive the station inside the shop and the mechanics are blasting their heavy metal out in the shop. ( hence my net time during work as my longest contact )
So my next best listening time is on the way to get the kids after school which I purposely extend for listening time, about 2:20 to 3:20…still I hear no mention of Car Talk…but of course my local PBS is very localized with their own promos and sponsors related to the four corners reservation area.
So, as youall …upgrade ?..re-design things notice that awareness will be key for CarTalk.com.
( Maybe you already do but it gets lost with the local ads overriding the national feed that is constantly steaming in to every affiliate who then insert their own locals as warranted. )
@VDCdriver Thank you for the compliment. To answer your question, my work has mostly been secretarial or, as it has been termed for some years, administrative assistant. I have also spent my share of time working retail sales as second jobs.
As to the factual statistics regarding forum usage, it just shows that perceptions are often at odds with facts and that statistics alone do not tell the whole story.
@Marnet
One of my friends is an Administrative Assistant, and she is able to write far more competently and intelligently than the Administrator whom she…assists. I suspect that that same is true for you.
;-))
@VDCdriver Just smiling at the blue sky and humming a happy tune. But since the bosses have all been my work superiors, they obviously have skills I lack. 
Maybe, maybe not, Marnet. A few years ago, a man wrote a book explaining why the dumbest people got promoted before the smart ones.
In the factory where I worked for over 30 years, we could tell when a manager wrote a memo, versus his secretary. If the grammar was terrible and a lot of mis-spelled words, we knew the manager wrote it himself. Seriously.
I started using Linux around 1999. There was a very popular Linux board, where Linux users could post questions.
It has a /dev/random thread where anyone could discuss any non-Linux topic he wanted to. Thus, traffic was very high. IT guys would post a problem, and step over to get a cup of coffee. When they came back to their computer, the answer was already there.
The staff decided it was too much work moderating the wild West thread, so they prohibited any off topic discussions.
Traffic dropped to virtually zero, maybe a posting a day. Now, it is a miracle if you can get the simplest answer. But, the staff says it is content. So be it.
Its not as tho I make more money when there are more questions to answer… LOL Maybe if that somehow changed I would ask that more questions be funneled into this site. I mostly answer questions out of a desire to help or Boredom… If the site fades away I will just talk to my Cats more than I already do I guess… LOL
Blackbird
cripes doug, you sound like Obama, “the ISIS strategy is fine”
when i came here the content was great. great car talk and great far ranging discussions. there are brilliant people here with experiences that should be cherished. instead Carolyn, who i think is great, has been turned into a scold. i left because of the narrow range of discussion allowed.
any old web lackey can spend a few hours clicking on topics and make the views go higher, come on man…
i have started to listen to cartalk again tho, had to get my fix somewhere.
keep the show alive with new younger hosts, and keep classic cartalk alive for us older folks and you ll be golden
NPR as a whole has gone downhill and it breaks my heart. nothing but shallow navel gazing and slanted, extremely slanted, programming.
i loved NPR and learned so much there over the last 30 yrs. i can t stand to listen to it anymore.
even" you bet your garden" has become big brotherish
looks like this will be a short reunion…
wes