Denniz D Menniz was killed in a car accident evidently last night. He was the sole operator of LeChat and sounds like Tess is also not in good shape. It appears LeChat will be going dark soon so gather any email addresses I guess.
@“MG McAnick”
I Won’t Comment. I Have No Idea What Any Of That (OT, Denniz D Menniz, Tess, LeChat, gather any email addresses) Means!
CSA
“You should do a personal message from your inbox to make sure MG gets this notification.”
…especially since many (perhaps most) of us have absolutely no idea what he is referring to…
Maybe Tess will take over the forum. She was the originator of the forum several years ago and closed it, then in a few months Denniz D Menniz reopened it. It was always a tight clique though and reminded me of family skits on the Carrol Burnett Show. There were several of the old Rant and Rave crew there.
I think Tess is in pretty poor health herself. At any rate, this site took over for the old Rant and Rave pretty much back in the old days when there was a major software change with Car Talk and some people didn’t like it. A number of folks from the old Rant and Rave and Car Talk site migrated to LeChat. I can’t for the life of me remember what the first site was called that then morphed again to the LeChat site. That’s why I thought it was relevant here, but don’t know what his old handle was but there are several here who also frequent or post over there under the same or different handles.
Yep,anyway there seems to be a decline here(dont know why they are so resistant to having a general forum)After Toms demise,when people found out that this forum wasnt a direct connection to the brothers,thats all it took for some Folks to be “rara avis”,there is talk about a “Plan B” site,but it seems to be difficult to join.
Keeping a forum civil these days seems to be difficult and while Carolyn’s efforts sometimes seem somewhat picayunish I wouldn’t want to be responsible for sorting out posts to avoid the bedlam that is so common on the www. I will take this opportunity to congratulate our monitor for her obvious success in keeping this site from spiralling into flame fest like so many forums do.
I’m fine with keeping this car-oriented for exactly the reasons @“Rod Knox” said. And it was long before Tom’s passing when folks knew that they didn’t frequent this forum - we’d let them know every time a poster asked for Tom or Ray’s advice.
I don’t see the decline. Most of the regular names I was used to seeing years ago, I still see today (though I do wonder where Transman went). And I constantly see new names posting. I’d say the forum’s pretty healthy from a pure numbers perspective.
I’m still on the fence about a general topics room. It’d be fun to shoot the breeze, but on the other hand if we start regularly arguing politics/religion/other controversies, eventually hard feelings might develop, and that would be undesirable.
It makes sense now. When I first saw the thread title I wondered why @Bing was speaking French, and why all the fuss about a cat.
Well, first let me express my condolences. I’ve never heard of Denniz D. Menniz, but I am sorry to hear he was killed. That’s a bad way to die. I guess there’s not much sense in me checking out this “Le Chat” if its getting ready to close.
But other than that why couldn’t we have an “off-topic” category for discussions? You’ve got “General Discussion”, “Repair & Maintenance”, “The Show”, and “Distracted Driving”. How about “Off-Topic” or “Other”?
This forum seems to have gathered quite a few intelligent, rational, knowledgeable, fact-based people as regular posters. I’d be interested in what many of them have to say about various issues of the day and life in this borderline apocalyptic world we live in today. Seems like every time a discussion gets really interesting, we get reprimanded for going off topic.
Yeah I understand the point that there are other places on the internet to discuss these things, but I cannot seem to find them. Most of what I’ve found consists of crazy conservatives and crazy liberals hurling insults and bad puns at each other. I like to read about points of view other than my own if they are presented factually and logically without name calling and insults. I may even change my own opinion in light of new facts I hadn’t been aware of.
Anybody who doesn’t want to participate in “Off-Topic” discussions wouldn’t have to post there. The website makes its money from advertising right? So they could sell more of those banner ads on the threads in the “off-topic” category. I bet it’d draw a lot of traffic.
Edit to add: Good Points @shadowfax and @texases I hadn’t considered that about hard feelings and spiraling out of control. Maybe I should re-think this post, but I’ve got to go to work now. . .
When those ‘off topics’ discussions occurred in the past, they sometimes spiraled out of control…
I’m very sorry to hear about Denniz, even though I only knew of the other site’s existence through this forum.
The “true general discussion” discussion has come up a lot, and my uberlackeys at Car Talk Plaza have decided they want to keep it car-related. I want to gently disagree with the characterization of my requests to bring things back on topic as reprimands. A couple of people have described them that way, and I don’t mean it that way at all. I make a specific choice not to unilaterally close discussions at the earliest digression. Sometimes discussions have gotten really heated and 9/10 of those times, it’s when stuff ventures outside of cars. If I seem terse, it’s out of an effort to keep it simple: I’m not here to contribute to the car discussion, and to paraphrase Dirty Harry, an admin’s got to know her limitations. The closest I get to a reprimandin’ mood is when I see some intemperate comments to those who aren’t regulars and may not deserve some suspicions or reprimands. You’re quite pleasant to work with, even though I sometimes have to be the wet blanket. Carry on! 
It would be enjoyable to be able to discuss non sutomobile topics @EdFrugal. But the internet has become the DMZ between opposing sides of all manner of issues and that’s a shame. I am persona non grata to both liberals and conservatives as they each demand total loyalty to their agendas. I would vote for Rand Paul if he were nominated but that’s out of the question. Maybe if he drove a Tesla he could pick up a few points in the polls.
I actually think Carolyn is more lenient than she should be . If you are the cause of intervention it is the internet and you will not feel pain.
I also knew Denniz. He was a good guy. The type that probably never needed to be “reprimanded” although he had strong opinions. His death is shocking and sad and a reminder that life is fragile.
In other news, I think it’s really really funny when someone writes a comment saying that he won’t comment.
I’m sure Denniz would have seen the humor…
Well it was a head on car accident so it’s car related. Sounds like the other guy veered over the line. Gotta be careful out there.
“In other news, I think it’s really really funny when someone writes a comment saying that he won’t comment.”
No comment.
CSA