Good idea.

- John Smith.

Would you mind doing that speech in front of a large american flag? I feel compelled to chase Rommel all the way to the sea for some reason.

Policing proper manners and preventing ‘junk’ content and endless irrelevant banter are essential to keep the place livable, though.

Sounds like a good plan, Robert. I don’t understand the praise being heaped upon Slashdot; your plan of cherry-picking moderators sounds a route much more likely to preserve the unique feel of the site. Self-moderation systems seem to produce sycophantic popularity contests and group-think, censoring points of view rather than behavior.

I agree most heartily with the above. I’ve used this same structure on other sites and it seems to work the best overall.

Good luck.

However, the noxious practice of allowing people to creat “handles” for use on comments sections, really allows for some rants that would never get published; just look at some of the stuff appearing on “newspaper” web sites.

If a person knows that the name they go by is going to be posted, they’ll consider their words more carefully. Besides, in terms of making a social networking site, it becomes easier to link up with someone who might be going to the same auto related event you are; and to get hold of them via the phone book. (Which people who have seen something I had published have done, and it’s almost always welcomed.)

Whatever happened to Cartalks forum? I left it for a couple of months then came back and it had gone from poor to worse. I haven’t gone back since. I definitely agree that designing the new TTAC after Cartalk’s forum would be a bigggg mistake.

The best forum that I go to is Stovebolt.com. Obviously not a general forum; it deals entirely with pre-1973 Chevy and GM trucks (the original in-line six developed by GM was known as a stovebolt engine). This site is a great example of how to police a forum. Once again, politics and religion are forbidden subjects no matter how reasoned or well mannered the discourse might be. It is annoying at times, but it does result in a pleasant site to go to both for technical assistance or just to shoot the bull in the “Off Topic” forum.

Finally, I would also like to complement the literacy of the people on this forum. Since it was brought up by a previous poster, I’ll second the hope that this site never sinks to the level of every other site I’ve seen on the internet where half of the posts are difficult or impossible to read due to all of the abbreviations and misspellings of the most common words. What’s doubly impressive is that this high standard exists in an arena with nearly nonexistent editing functions.

Anyways, just thought I would make a comment.

The more I think about it, the more I like this idea.

My 2 cents as someone who reads often, but comments little is to keep the sight focused on intelligent discourse.

This would all but eliminate a typical forums section without vigorous 24/7 moderation. But there has to be another way to further elevate the TTAC experience…

My suggestion is to make long term members who have shown their ability to be genuine and decent over a specific period of time (decided by your staff) in the article comments the sole community in the forums.

I know this might acually eliminate myself as a founding member due to my lack of comments over my year or two of membership, but if you look back at all of them I doubt you’d find a single ‘flaming’ or ‘attack’.

This smaller community would in essence police itself by notifying you of improper use, and it’s contents could be read-only for the rest of the internet so that non-members could educate themselves with the diverse, well thought out opinions of your readers.

Achieving entry into the forum would be a reward for the kind of intelligent discourse TTAC promotes, and anyone who took the time to fake their way in would be quickly identified as fraud by the established members.

What do you think?

Your feedback has been MOST helpful. I’m thinking now of a phased introduction of features, so we can maintain quality when (to God’s ears) traffic increases.

As long as I’m at the helm (and hopefully longer), TTAC will not descent to Myspace and/or Car&Driver levels to become editorial fluff and nonsense.

Moderation would be usefull to maintain the high degree of usefull comments. A global delete of the First Post crap and other unrelated nonsense.

Change is good.

You have my full support. As others have said, I need my coffee and my TTAC, so do what you gotta do.

A few months ago I lost my Imus in the Morning — and I’m not adjusting well. Had somebody given me the option of losing Imus or paying ten bucks a month (even to the “victims”), I would have happily ponied up the Hamiltons. So let me be the first to suggest a premium membership fee (or whatever kind of fee makes sense). Maybe this is the way to keep the editorial section free of kids, bums and flamers.

That said, I’m going to put my money where my mouth is and head over to the TTAC SWAG area today…cha-ching!

Lookin’ forward to TTACSpace! (wink)

Have you ever been to a really great restaurant, and wished they did more advertising so more people knew about it? Bad idea! Just tell your friends, then they tell their friends, etc. Each person spreading the word is their own filter.

I support opening up the site more, but I can’t imagine how much filtering Mr. Farago has to do already in the comments sections alone, just to keep this site running. For my part, what keeps me coming back is the writing both above and below the fold, and the clean site design. But please, for the love of God, DON’T dumb down the editorials (or anything else) just to bring in more people!

TRUE car enthusiasts are small in number. While I understand that you want to bring in more people to the site, just increasing the traffic is no guarantee that the quality of the site will remain. As has already been pointed out, the site will open itself to many undesirable elements unless certain measures are taken upfront in the planning stage. Right off the bat, I would say NO to an open forum type arrangement.

The other idea of allowing visitors to post pictures and such, I really don’t see the value in that. Do we need to see everybody’s “ride” here? Besides, there are other sites already set up where people can sooth their egos posting pics of their cars.

The one suggestion that I really like is getting the experts that post comments to be given a forum, so to speak, to elaborate in their area of expertise. A perfect example would be to get an in-depth opinion of a car salesman to rebut some of the posts and comments made about car salesmen and maybe even offer advice. The same insight would be very useful from the many professionals that I know for sure share their comments here.

In the end, I found nothing wrong with the way TTAC was before and I certainly don’t find anything wrong with the way TTAC is now. I would however be disappoited if TTAC became just another place where people argue about which car is the best and how they beat a Ferrari with their modded Yugo. I enjoy the articles that give an insight to the industry that isn’t readily available at other places. In my opinion, THIS IS WHAT MAKES THIS SITE UNIQUE. This is what should be the focus and what should be enhanced.