The BritishV8 Pub

I think this guy has an interesting point of view on forums. What do you think?


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Certainly makes sense. I've wondered about this for a while now. Though I'm not sure about his recommendation of blogs - are they not less general in nature, regarding information available? Seems like you'd have to spend a lot of time searching different blogs in order to garner the info you're looking for. I'll admit I'm not familiar with them, but it would seem there's much less opportunity for discussion with multiple parties about multiple topics, as you can on a forum.

What I've seen on the British Car Forum is there are a stalwart bunch who remain and are active; new members are still joining up, but overall activity has remained fairly level, with maybe a bit of a decline.

MGE is quite active, but I sense some frustration in many of the "regulars" over much of what the author brings up. It's a very different animal, as it's sort of self-moderated and folks get away with a lot more than anyone would dare post on BCF.

Interesting stuff. Thanks for posting, Scott.

I agree with what you said about blogs, Mickey. Forums provide a place for dialog. I think most of us hit BV8 fairly often but it seems new posts are getting more scarce. Maybe we are getting tired of spending time behind a keyboard?

It goes in cycles. I used to worry when traffic slowed down but it doesn't bother me any more.

However, it used to be and may still be that this was the forum for serious discussions and more technical problems. I don't know how true that still is, as we finished up the Roadmaster project and that traffic died down.

But, the forum is still the one place where all makes of British Cars and Spurious owners can get together so it's still important.

Jim

I visit this forum nearly every day (must not have anything to do!), and do so to see what others have done, and learn from their
solutions. I tend to be a gear-head detail geek, and gravitate to anything with an engine, gears, or that leaks oil. My wife tells me
I am way over thinking things when I complain that even though I am researching a solution, the person at the professional shop
or parts supplier has no idea what I'm talking about, or discounts what I have suggested out-of-hand, just because they have
done it differently for 35 years. I know I don't live in a hotbed of hotrod shops, but you would think someone would have heard of
Megasquirt, or a Helmholtz resonator! So, someone add a technical project, so I can keep my aging brain cells in circulation!
Dennis

I think forums are the best venue for discussing technical issues. The ability to post photos and engage in a threaded conversation on one subject is a plus. Facebook doesn't have that ability and you have to wade through lots of junk to get where you want to go. As it relates to British cars and modified British cars, some lessening of traffic may have to do with the aging of the folks who participate. The forum is most active when people are doing builds and repairs and as our base gets older we may not be undertaking new builds or crawling under the cars the way we used to.

I use forms like this all the time. The trick is gathering all the information, seperatering out the fiction,facts and different approaches.

The research is all part of the fun for me and you get much more out of the forms then simply reading the repair manual. I pernonally need to spend more time sharing / giving back.

I think British v8 is the greatest.There is so much to learn from the archives and the guys that have been here along time are so knowledgeable about mechanics and British cars and love to share what they know, that new people who find the website and get guidance from it should enjoy it and support it from time to time to make sure it stays alive and healthy. Cheers to Curtis Jacobson if no one minds.Ps Curtis did you get my last donation?

-and then there are guys like me posting back to a topic started about 6 weeks ago or so.

The subject of buggy whips has probably not died but the number of people looking for information is pretty thin. It used to be 60% of the population (even with a smaller population- that's a lot) and now it's 1/10th of 1%. Still worldwide, there are probably sections of the internet dedicated to buggy whips and other horse motivation tools.

I think he has good points but when trying to discuss something like we often do here, not everyone is on all the time looking for the same questions to the same problems. Some come in years later and restart an old thread or a new thread with a discussion slightly different. His wheel/cycle is a good starting point but there is always something new to consider. This board/forum: [www2.mg-cars.org.uk] is the grand daddy of them all. I post thousands of times there in the 1990's and into the mid 2000s before hitting the MG Experience and this forum. I was in my 20s. I'm a 'young' forties now. The system aged out and I'm sure the owner didn't want to invest time and money into it. Those who want to often don't get a lot in return.

The new boards are somewhat of a phoenix rising from the ashes effect. It comes back, larger, smaller, different. Now if we go through another 'great war' where we recycle all the metal, there may be no MGs, Jaguars, Fords or Chevrolets to pass down in which case, there would be no forum as there is no subject. Things change but we do well to preserve what we have. Although this forum is about alterations to our cars, it is somewhat about preservation to some smaller degree as well.

I'm sure forums will be here in another 20 years.

-BMC.

I was disappointed that there was no increase in activity here while the MGE was down.

If we don't use this forum, what will become of it & all the information contained within?

The Triumph TR7 Forum had a lot of great information on their swap list, including a thread Rodney Wells did which showed his 1uz conversion steps very well. Alas, I can no longer find that, much less post on it. They tried to migrate it to another but the success has been limited. We could end up with the same kind of thing.

Isn't MGE still down?

Came back up last night, but was a bit later before anyone could post.