Everyone is entitled to their opinion. For what it’s worth, my views of this forum differ from the OP’s. I find the auto design/repair/maintenance information offered here quite useful, and in cases where it isn’t useful, it is at least interesting for the most part. While there are always some negative sort of posts and posters to be found in any internet forum, there are fewer of that type here in in most. Especially compared to other auto repair forums.
Oh, and based on some of the other OPs posts I’ve been doing some research on south of the border retirement communities. Sounds like a pretty good lifestyle. … lol …
Ah, I will miss you. I really liked the Mexico stories as I am from a third world country (or at least was at some point!) and could relate the “fix everything the death” culture and have lived through a lot of hack fixes that would seem ridiculous in the Western society.
I do not recall the thread but there have been a few that got out of control.
Me, myself, come here less frequently these days. Can not put my finger on it. A combination of life getting busier, wife having midlife crisis, kids growing and somehow needing some more TLC. Job has gotten crazy too.
I think you’re seeing the past through the nostalgia of rose colored glasses. The old unmoderated Car Talk forum was a brutal free for all. It was toxic, which is part of why it was so popular.
This moderated version is a lot different, but the only thing that has changed is your tolerance for dissenting opinions, because this forum is a lot tamer than it was in 2005.
Look, I like the guy, and he’s right more often than he’s wrong, but in that instance he was wrong. Lugnuts do swell. Well, they don’t swell because swelling implies they can go back to normal size - they rust and the rust bulges out and makes them look swollen. Having watched him over the years, I can’t imagine that being told he’s wrong about that is what made him leave.
I think we risk error if we assume that someone who hasn’t posted in awhile left because they’re mad at the forum. Perhaps he found other things to do, or perhaps he’s having health or other issues that keeps him off the internet. It’s not fair to him to assume he took his ball and stomped home.
I left the forum for awhile too a number of years ago. There wasn’t any particular reason for it other than I was absurdly busy with real life and checking the forum was prioritized behind things like earning a living. I promise I wasn’t mad at any of you guys.
Leave or don’t- that’s your call.
Complain or not- that’s also your call.
OP and I don’t always agree, and that is completely fine. I’ve never reported you to anyone, and don’t plan to start.
But I’m not about to beg you to stay, nor beg you to leave. I assume you are an adult, and can make grown up choices on your own that will be best for you.
but I’m not about to start coddling you in hopes that you will stick around.
If you want to stay, I hope you do.
If it is your desire to leave, via con dios.
I believe that it was the mid 90s when Rant & Rave was so popular and for the most part uncensored @Whitey. There was some moderation. There were some limits but for the most part even the flaming was done jokingly. But all the flaming and badgering went to R&R leaving the repair and maintenance forum clear of such haranguing The site was a lot of fun.
Yeah I agree with @Rod_Knox Rant and Rave was a lot of fun plus it was a place to discuss then the Bush politics without it spilling over into the repair and maintenance part. It was a free flow of opinions. Its a little sketchy now but with the new format, what’s her name started Chat House and it was pretty much the same folks there. Then through the years folks died and finally the last one was killed in a car accident and the place just died. Too bad. There should be an outlet for divergent opinions. But this is 9/11 so maybe for one day we can be united. Back to cars, I just drove out to the cemetery to collect the flags.
I just returned from a months long Car Talk hiatus, partly because of golf leagues and bicycle trips, but partly because of the restrictions on freedom of speech that has become increasingly part of commenting here. I become disappointed in the loss of the true Spirit of the Tappet Brothers and the freedom of thought discussion.
I don’t measure my being a Car Talk enthusiast in years, but rather measure it in decades, literally. I began listening to Car Talk, religiously, decades ago and was buying cassette tapes of the show and later bought CDs of it. In the old days I had a timer set up and would record shows on cassette tapes if I was not going to be home to listen.
Much later on, but I’m sure it’s been more than a decade (much more?) I have participated in this Community forum.
For those of us old time Car Talk enthusiasts ,and early supporters, we remember Tom & Ray and how frequently they went “off topic.” It’s what made the show! Sure, I listened to the car information and I learned a lot from doing so, but it was The Show’s freedom of digression that Tom & Ray so frequently engaged in that gave it and them the character that made me keep coming back! That was the true entertainment aspect of the show and included many digressions from the radio audience as well, which was supported.
For those who aren’t familiar with this true character of Car Talk I strongly recommend going back and listen to the shows to get a sense of what Car Talk is supposed to be like.
Just take a look at Puzzlers to see that not all (not many?) even pertained to cars.
Had Click and Clack restricted their show to strictly car only comments it would have collapsed and I definitely would not have been an enthusiast. There were/are shows that do that and I’m not interested.
I guess when the forum drifts too far and the restrictions become too great and most of the remaining fun gets sucked out of Car Talk I will cite that as the reason in my departing comments.
The current political vitriol that seems to be bubbling up from every keyboard connected to the www makes it impossible to allow uncensored posting on non political forums. It’s really become insane. There are far too many people who are certain that their side(R vs D) holds the sacred high ground as they stand on a stack of soap boxes. I don’t think that R&R could have survived the current feces flinging that develops even here on a non political forum. I often drop in on several political forums, some left and some right leaning and find that the bashing devolved to the Beavis and Butthead level and continued the decline. And surfing from one forum to another I find the same links over and over.
More and more “Lonesome Rhodes” seems to have been a quite prophetic character.
You don’t have freedom of speech here. This is not a government website. The first amendment only says the government can’t stop you from expressing your ideas - it says nothing about the staff of a non-government entity restricting what you’re allowed to say on their turf.
Put another way, you can hold a “down with (politician)” sign on the sidewalk in front of my house all you want, but as soon as you walk into my yard, I get to choose whether or not I want to allow you to be there with the sign.
I’m sure you get the distinction, but many don’t and I think it’s important that the clarification be out there.
All that aside, I’ve gotten the impression that there’s a reason behind tightening discussion to cars in the wake of the Tappet Bros exit from public life. I suspect that if they can show the people who are paying for this site that it is a site that performs the public service of helping people with their car problems, they will be able to stay running. But if those people come in here and see yet another politics forum where we’re all yelling at each other, they won’t see the need to continue spending money on the place.
Long ago I posted my curiosity concerning who was paying to keep Car Talk/Rant & Rave on the net and it seems a few people posted their personal opinions but no one knew and a few months later Amazon got involved and there was a tumultuous upheaval that virtually ran off all the regulars. I dropped out for several weeks and when I did drop in again re-registering was necessary and someone had taken my handle requiring me to rename myself and watch my old name be drug through the mud by its new owner. That situation led me to drop out again for many months, possibly more than a year, and when I returned again the place was totally different and I rarely dropped in for quite a while. Eventually some intelligent posters became regulars and I registered again and slowly fell into being somewhat of a regular myself. Long ago Impala, Slanter, AOD and Mrs AOD were regulars and I wonder whatever happened to them. Dropping in was like visiting with old friends back then.
I wasn’t referring to anything political. You brought that up.
I was referring to interesting anecdotes and discussions which spring up, after a dead horse is beaten into hamburger, that sometimes get shut down.
As far as car advice, some of it given here is good, some bad/wrong (that part isn’t “policed”). That’s the nature of the beast. it’s like going to a doctor for medical advice.
Many (most) of the car questions are promptly addressed enough in the first response or two and then that’s where the fun often begins.
I feel it does no harm and that somebody coming here for serious car advice can take their good or wrong advice from the first few comments and they don’t have to keep reading after that. Sometimes these discussions save the site from boredom/stagnation and I know many regulars here enjoy it and they are quite entertaining.
There’s no reason in my opinion that a site can’t be both informative and fun at the same time. Heck, they even allow people to talk in our little local library these days.
Yeah, I tend to agree, and having talked with our resident moderator over the years, I suspect she’s OK with that too. But someone has given orders that need to be followed - if we could find out who that someone is, perhaps we could convince them to allow more goofing around, but it wouldn’t be right to ask Carolyn to risk her job by disobeying orders so we can have more fun.
btw, I spoke to the politics because a lot of what went on in the rant/rave board was political.
I can’t remember when I started but sometime I suppose in the late 90’s. Those people don’t ring a bell at all. The older I get the harder it is to keep track of what happened in what year. Often I relate it to what car I drove at the time. Then I kind of have a blur from driving a car for 20 years. I know what car I drove for Senior Prom and who I went with, but I can’t for the life of me remember what car and who it was for the junior year prom. Maybe it was the same 61 Merc, but I know it was a different girl.
That’s precisely why I mentioned having (requiring) folks not familiar with the old Car Talk radio show to spend a little time listening to what went on there.
There was good car advice and bad/wrong car advice (some from the brothers themselves… remember when they’d check back with folks to whom they gave advice? Ha, Ha!).
But the really good parts of the show often didn’t even directly (or indirectly) pertain to cars. Sometimes they’d place calls to friends and relatives of callers to try and straighten out misunderstandings, etcetera… And the brothers Magliozzi would get laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe or talk and it was great fun.
I get that here from reading witty comments from some brilliant regulars on this site. It’s what keeps me coming back. Heck, I can google good/wrong car information in a thousand places.
I would like to see that spirit kept alive, for Tom & Ray, and to elevate this car site from the others. CSA
