Housekeeping: Are We Keeping It Civil?

by Jack Baruth

Published: February 5th, 2014

Gone are the days here at TTAC where simply typing a phrase like, “You, Sir, are a usefully idiotic pawn of the Chinese government and a despicable fetishist of rubber pleasure devices” could get you banned from this site in two shakes of a Shanghai working girl’s tail. No longer. People say the meanest things about me and Derek, and we don’t care. Actually, Derek gets a little teary-eyed about it, so we rewrote his contract to specify that “PART IV. COMPENSATION FOR RIDICULE. Every time the phrase “game-changer”, complete with hyphen, appears on the site in obvious and plain reference to Derek Kreindler, he shall be compensated with one thousand dollars ($1,000) or two nights with a Lamborghini Aventador.”

But that’s not what we want to talk about right now. Actually, “we” means “I”; Derek’s out somewhere making it rain at a club while they tow his double-parked Aventador from the entrance.

In the seven months since the TTAC reboot, we haven’t banned a single legitimate user account from contributing. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the level of discourse has been pretty civil. About once a day, however, someone simply loses their cool and calls someone besides me or Derek a mean name. And then tempers flare.

The purpose of this post is to take your temperature about the level of conversation here. Do we need to tighten the reins a little bit? If so, how should that take place? Should we warn the offenders? Disappear them? Have a giant contest where we select the “Top Troll” and encourage everyone to turn on each other in a kind of bizarre sharks-in-the-water scenario? Let us know.

As always, we appreciate every single TTAC reader, lurker, contributor, flame-war veteran, and critic. Thanks for choosing us, even if it’s only to make game-changer jokes. Damn! Now we owe Derek another “stack”!

Jack Baruth

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Doug-g on Feb 06, 2014

Awhile back I got this feeling that I needed to get closer to my faith and God. So I asked God if I'm on the right track and ask for a sign. I'm on my way to the car to run errands and I say to God, "if this is right then let me find some folding money. It doesn't have to be much, a dollar will do". Well, I find a neatly folded one dollar bill at Safeway. The dollar was wedged somehow in the crack where the mop board butts up against the service desk. It isn't even touching the floor. I flipped. I called my sister who is still jealous because she now thinks God likes me better than her and she rides me all the time that I made the promise so I better keep it. The bottom line is that I'm spending most of my time in Torah study with rusty Hebrew. I only get to this stuff once-in-awhile and then only to read. But, that gives me a perspective of sorts and I think you guys are doing a great job. There will always be those few who are a pain all the time and a few who will lose their cool on occasion. I do wonder about the people who post all day long, EVERY DAY. What do these people do? I am leery of trusting the opinions of such people. I'm glad you're doing better, Jack. Now excuse me, I have a Torah to study.

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Steve65 on Feb 25, 2014

I'm just now dipping a toe back in the water here to see if it's again worth my time. One of the primary reasons I left, aside from the editorial trolling, was that the site seemed to be increasingly focused on being the Truth About the Car Industry. Which is a perfectly valid thing to be, but of far less interest to me than cars and driving.

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