RetroRides - Where did it go wrong and what are the lessons?

[tooSavvy]

@captain_cal... HENRY 😮

One for the Scrabble club 😉

*So '1st World', all of it...... TF I'm so off-piste 🙃

🚙💨

[Knotty Ash Towers]

Too many Israeli-apologists on Pistonheads, along with people who disagree with everyone just for the sake of it...

[Patent]

7 hours ago, SiC said:

Probably a good time to remind that the forum isn't free to 

Is there a web link to contribute?

[tooSavvy]

5 minutes ago, Knotty Ash Towers said:

Too many Israeli-apologists on Pistonheads, along with people who disagree with everyone just for the sake of it...

I emphatically disagree....

🙃

🚙💨

[warren t claim]

10 hours ago, Fabergé Greggs said:

On this basis, how’s The Dark Wob working out? Genuine question. 

It's going great. Thanks for asking!

[IronStar]

16 minutes ago, Patent said:

Is there a web link to contribute?

 

[Cavcraft]

2 hours ago, captain_cal said:

Pistonheads is equal parts interesting and embarrassing, it's a good way to keep up with automotive news and there's always a lively discussion on each news story, but for god's sake don't venture into the off topic sections if you think you're doing alright £ wise, or even think you're reasonably well off - it's like that HENRY subreddit (High Earner, Not Rich Yet) except I think the subreddit is satire.

Best one I saw was on budget day and a fella was like "I'm SO FUCKED, I have three houses worth £2m+ each and this new mansion tax is gonna cost me at least £13k a year, I'm TOTALLY FUCKED"

Gosh, what a nice problem to have. 

If you flexed on here it'd be about having five fucked old cars and buying another 'just because'.

[Split_Pin]

The worst forum I was ever a part of was the Astra Owners Club. 

The head person (or whatever they are called) was a Grade A hoofwanking Bunglecunt. Total supercilious wanker.

His signature was 'Been apart of the Inner Circle since 2001'. His bum-chums would just have ganged up on me if I had ever dared to point out that his ignorance of vocabulary and grammar was conveying the opposite to what he meant. All because of his lack of knowledge, a space was missing between an 'a' and a 'p'.

I'm not one to hold a grudge but I hope karma has served him up a thousand fissures between his fingers and an unstoppable urge to plunge his hand into a pickle jar every 15 minutes.

[tooSavvy]

3 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

The worst forum I was ever a part of was the Astra Owners Club. 

The head person (or whatever they are called) was a Grade A hoofwanking Bunglecunt. Total supercilious wanker.

His signature was 'Been apart of the Inner Circle since 2001'. His bum-chums would just have ganged up on me if I had ever dared to point out that his ignorance of vocabulary and grammar was conveying the opposite to what he meant. All because of his lack of knowledge, a space was missing between an 'a' and a 'p'.

I'm not one to hold a grudge but I hope karma has served him up a thousand fissures between his fingers and an unstoppable urge to plunge his hand into a pickle jar every 15 minutes.

Ah..... I signed up (for AVAS) and bore for England 🫣

Karma, eh 🤣🤣

🚙💨

[Out Run]

6 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

The worst forum I was ever a part of was the Astra Owners Club. 

The head person (or whatever they are called) was a Grade A hoofwanking Bunglecunt. Total supercilious wanker.

His signature was 'Been apart of the Inner Circle since 2001'. His bum-chums would just have ganged up on me if I had ever dared to point out that his ignorance of vocabulary and grammar was conveying the opposite to what he meant. All because of his lack of knowledge, a space was missing between an 'a' and a 'p'.

I'm not one to hold a grudge but I hope karma has served him up a thousand fissures between his fingers and an unstoppable urge to plunge his hand into a pickle jar every 15 minutes.

I imagine he could care less!

[Pieman]

Any excuse to post this piece of genius....
 

 

[JMotor]

I sometimes visit RR. Even post sometimes too. 

Braithwaite's Morris Ital is an epic build and that fella with the Fiat 850 Camper van that he saved. Do enjoy a good resto thread me like. 

However. Those Simcas in a particular thread made me raise an eyebrow at the quality of the welding done. 

It's bad. Like REALLY bad. To the point I'm amazed at how can someone happily stand back and call it good. 

[Cavcraft]

10 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

The worst forum I was ever a part of was the Astra Owners Club. 

The head person (or whatever they are called) was a Grade A hoofwanking Bunglecunt. Total supercilious wanker.

His signature was 'Been apart of the Inner Circle since 2001'. His bum-chums would just have ganged up on me if I had ever dared to point out that his ignorance of vocabulary and grammar was conveying the opposite to what he meant. All because of his lack of knowledge, a space was missing between an 'a' and a 'p'.

I'm not one to hold a grudge but I hope karma has served him up a thousand fissures between his fingers and an unstoppable urge to plunge his hand into a pickle jar every 15 minutes.

Probably told this story before, but I bumped into some sort of Astra (Mk4?) Club members years and years ago at a show. One of them (who iirc was holding court with a few others) saw my Astra (I wasn't with the club) and offered me some fancy exhaust system, and was banging on about how good it was and how cheap. Anyhow, we offered it up to mine and it wouldn't have fitted, so that was the end of that. Except for when I got home and he was on their internet thing calling me every c**t under the sun for wasting his time. I asked him why he didn't say that in person when he was there, and he promptly disappeared from the forum.

 

 

[stuboy]

13 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

The worst forum I was ever a part of was the Astra Owners Club. 

many years ago i was on there as was helping an exfriend do up his dissastra and all they wanted to do on there was to mod there cars all the same.... 1 was playing card centre consoles..........

[stuboy]

5 minutes ago, JMotor said:

that fella with the Fiat 850 Camper van that he saved

was it green

[cort16]

There was some great builds on there and some really talented people. I think.a lot of people years ago found AS via Mr bolloxes mega threads on Retro rides. I think the narrow window of allowed topics killed it . You can't swear, you can't talk about anything vaguely modern, you can't go off topic, you can't say anything negative  it just narrows the interest.

[JMotor]

@stuboy

Different one. 

Was hand painted a kinda of lilac blue, was burgundy originally.

Now a kinda of ochre colour and he is fitting a newer engine from a Punto.

Think his forum name on there was grumpybadger? 

[bangernomics]

I believe this forum trialled such a thing under the codename 'Joy Division'. I was banned the second time when I pointed out the true meaning of the term (clue; it aint a pop band).
[mention=4055]Sheefag[/mention] will confirm this. 

I was a big fan of their second album.

[Spiny Norman]

10 minutes ago, cort16 said:

There was some great builds on there and some really talented people. I think.a lot of people years ago found AS via Mr bolloxes mega threads on Retro rides. I think the narrow window of allowed topics killed it . You can't swear, you can't talk about anything vaguely modern, you can't go off topic, you can't say anything negative  it just narrows the interest.

This. 
Think RR is how I found out about this place all those years ago, my account's still live but I don't think I've even looked at it for 10 years. There were/are some great cars on there but the whole North Korea vibe really put me off. If you don't toe the party line and blindly bleat your appreciation for every chopped spring and rustified bonnet you're persona non grata and in danger of disappearing one night. 
Maybe I'm doing them a dis-service, maybe it's changed? 

[CaptainBoom]

I did lurk on RetroRides for a while, some of the project threads caught my eye, either because of the source vehicle or I just liked their execution of their project.  Gradually though, I found an overlap on the threads over there to Autoshite, so now you're stuck with me, sorry!  The banter and community here are far better, I like to swear, a lot. It shows everyone that I have an IQ comfortably in single digits, I can't get on with a swear filter and over-cautious moderating.

The 'Blowing smoke up people's arses' thing got on my tits a bit, If I were modifying a car and I'd done something fucking stupid, I'd want someone to tell me before I put the kids in it, or bashed a pothole and the whole car split at the seams in front of a convent with a kitten nursing wing.  There was a thread with some chap with a Corsa(?) where the welding was atrocious, he was getting patted on the back/egged on like he was some sort of God's gift to metal sticking.  It was all splodges of pigeon shit that would have broken if he gave them a stern look.

I now lurk for one thread only, there's a 83 year old chap (user handle johnbonnett) who is hand building a car from a Reliant Kitten chassis, with a modern-ish Ford Fiesta(?) engine and a body hand formed from aluminium.  He started metal working in his 60's as a hobby.  It's pretty incredible what he has achieved.  I'll follow that one through to completion and then delete the bookmark.

I think what is slowly killing off RR is the edge appeal; limited viewpoints, a slender scope of what they expect from you when you modify a car, a lack of forthright (honest) opinions, and above all a failure to evolve.  I'd say a lot of young people don't modify their PCP'd cars any more, they daren't to be honest!  This place appeals to me because such the broad appeal of opinions available, all walks of life are here, folk who run old bangers as a lifestyle (like me) and plenty of people who do so just because they want something different.  Literally anything goes here, and it's better because of it.  Even if it is crowdfunding tyres for a Renault 30 (it's been ages since someone brought that up!)

As for PH, Crikey, I couldn't get on with that, far too many peacocks wishing to show off their magnificent plumage and thickness of their wallets all without having a clue of what they were doing. 

[cort16]

The retro rides gathering still seems to be quite a big event .

[DodgeRover]

1 hour ago, JMotor said:

I sometimes visit RR. Even post sometimes too. 

Braithwaite's Morris Ital is an epic build and that fella with the Fiat 850 Camper van that he saved. Do enjoy a good resto thread me like. 

However. Those Simcas in a particular thread made me raise an eyebrow at the quality of the welding done. 

It's bad. Like REALLY bad. To the point I'm amazed at how can someone happily stand back and call it good. 

TBH although it looked awful it's evidently strong given it has been tested round the oval etc.

There's plenty of folks who would have ground it back to nothing and called it good. At least he wasn't trying to hide anything 

[grizz]

14 hours ago, Lankytim said:

Ah, the enforced positivity. I’d forgotten about that. The plan was threads would rise to the top of the board via positive reactions and any that were a bit naff would die a death and fall off the bottom as nobody was allowed to criticise them and they wouldn’t get “bumped” due to no interaction. Any comment that was vaguely critical could get you into bother “Great car, not sure I’d roller it with blackboard paint had it been mine but still really cool”. People would do some crazily bad modifications to their cars and nobody was allowed to comment truthfully on them as “their ride their choice” or whatever. 

I remember the fella who ran it gave me a right going over one time and got quite personal, deleting his post after a minute or so, It was all over nothing too.  I remember thinking what a prick he must’ve been. 

I had a very bad run in with one cnut whom I still wish ill health and mayhem on. 
The boss never had the balls to tell his clique off. 
I had previously written a long, bitter post but deleted it. 
a very flawed place. 

[DavidB]

The best forum I’ve ever been on was Migweb, a Vauxhall forum, I signed up in 2002 and had such a good laugh with meets etc and the forum was hilarious. I think it properly died when moderation became too overbearing and new members joined scaring off the old ones. The funniest post I saw was someone posted up a photo of him eating a big eclair clutching it in his hand with his mouth covered in cream very innocently saying this cream cake is crazy it’s just making such a mess, and someone posted ‘will be back in a sec’ and about a minute later posted up the same photo with a massive cock replacing the cake, I was in the library pre-broadband days and was just laughing my head off.

I learned most of the things I know from there and they had a very active community outside of the forum like Billing and Santa Pod, someone took his Carlton up the strip and did an amazing one minute thirty second run, one of the slowest on record  

 

[DodgeRover]

There's still a couple of threads I go over to read, mainly in the garage and other modifications threads, the others are long term rebuild of interesting stuff and braitwaithes marina and similar - I had previously pointed out there was literally no point in the for sale section any more as it was just an advert for kgf who never added anything to the forum at all and got moaned at by hotwire I think, his refusal to allow anything bike related was just plain stupid. 

 

[Cavcraft]

1 hour ago, DavidB said:

The best forum I’ve ever been on was Migweb, a Vauxhall forum, I signed up in 2002 and had such a good laugh with meets etc and the forum was hilarious. I think it properly died when moderation became too overbearing and new members joined scaring off the old ones. The funniest post I saw was someone posted up a photo of him eating a big eclair clutching it in his hand with his mouth covered in cream very innocently saying this cream cake is crazy it’s just making such a mess, and someone posted ‘will be back in a sec’ and about a minute later posted up the same photo with a massive cock replacing the cake, I was in the library pre-broadband days and was just laughing my head off.

I learned most of the things I know from there and they had a very active community outside of the forum like Billing and Santa Pod, someone took his Carlton up the strip and did an amazing one minute thirty second run, one of the slowest on record  

 

Migweb was hilarious.

[DavidB]

7 hours ago, DodgeRover said:

There's still a couple of threads I go over to read, mainly in the garage and other modifications threads, the others are long term rebuild of interesting stuff and braitwaithes marina and similar - I had previously pointed out there was literally no point in the for sale section any more as it was just an advert for kgf who never added anything to the forum at all and got moaned at by hotwire I think, his refusal to allow anything bike related was just plain stupid. 

 

I think I mentioned something about it a couple of years ago, saying they should have a separate section for KGF stuff as it was really taking over and got shot down for negativity or something unfortunately! They must have been getting kick backs as it was obviously just saturating the for sale section - I don’t believe RR was all about £60k Sierra Cosworths.

[comfortablynumb]

41 minutes ago, DavidB said:

separate section for KGF stuff

Yet they managed to do that for a bumper supplier IIRC?🤔

Maybe they don't pay as much...(Allegedly!)😁

[R Lutz]

11 hours ago, DavidB said:

 I think it properly died when moderation became too overbearing and new members joined scaring off the old ones.

The moderation is the killer in all instances. For example, the latter could be put firmly in their box if the place was free of moderation. A moderation team or admin team (there's no difference) will always show unconscious bias in their moderation. And yes, they are all corrupt, not necessarily for kick-back cash. KGF stuff is just free advertising. But somebody on the moderation team will be getting something for it, somehow. 

[delux]

Worst forum I ever joined was the 'subaruforester' forum. Cant remember the exact name. Their site had a complicated set of rules all of which seemed to centre around paying £9.99 a month!

Content seemed to revolve around DPF problems, how dealers are all arseholes and where to get the cheapest tyres. About 6 regular posters who could find something negative about anything! You could offer them a tenner for nothing and they would want 2 five pound notes, that type!

If you wanted pics in your posts you could only upload them direct (I guess to increase search engine results?)

I sat for ages downloading pics from my flickr then uploading them to the site like an idiot. Then they suspended my account cos in my signature there was a link to my flickr. If you look hard enough, there was a link to my ebay stuff on my 'about' page on flickr. This apparently was an 'illegal' link, an attempt to avoid the trader subscription. 

Bigjimny forum is another 'used to be good but now shite' one. Used to be full of greenlaners and people doing hardcore modifications down to people who wanted to learn how to do their own repairs. A real community full of people wanting to get stuck in. Now its full of people with the latest (overvalued) version comparing autobox shift speeds, best paint wax and complaining to dealers about rust on suspension parts!

Anyone remember when autoshite was just a page full of seveties photographs?