I’ve mentioned to some of you that I’ve made a little investment in tech help. I hired a guy to fix some of the problems with the site, clean things up a little. But I’ve lost track of everything that needs attention. I’d also like to get your suggestions about things you’d like to see added to the site. For example, there was a suggestion made about adding “thumbs up” (and down) buttons for posts/replies. Do you guys like this idea?
I am also thinking about bringing back Clover Cam as a regular part of the site. Ideally, it would not be just me posting vids of the Clovers I encounter. I’d like to get videos from you, too. I think we could make hay with this – and have a lot of laughs. What say you?
And, what else?
I have been thinking about trying to organize/catalog the car reviews. I’ve got a veritable library of them going back to the mid-1990s. I’m thinking it might be a handy resource and also entertaining. We could do it A-Z (click on “Audi,” then on the year/model you’re interested in reading about).
I am also going to try to do more – and more professional – videos. Let me know how you like these. And if you have something specific you’d like me to discuss, or write about, let me know!
Stay tuned…
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How about a place for pictures of “Reader’s Rides”.
I like that idea; we had such a thing on EPautos Mark I (which still exists, kinda sorta, in the form of the Forum)… but I will ask our new IT Obergruppenfuhrer about this…
Hi eric. Since you asked, better functionality for mobile devices would be groovy.
Love the idea of a searchable catalog as well as the CloverCam (hell, I may have to buy one of those dash cams just for that).
Hi Yeti,
Both (mobile and searchable catalog) are being looked into!
My personal take on things, as a newcomer
YES to:
-Sorting new car reviews by Manufacturer/Year/Model (not necessarily in that order).
-Weekly Polls asking about opinions on certain vehicles/issues, such as “How much automation is too much for you?” (Drive by wire, Electronic throttle position sensor, Manual throttle cable), etc.
-Q&A session possibly. I would love to be able to ask some “insider” questions to a new car reviewer if I had the opportunity.
NO to:
-Clover/Elio side bar that keeps following me.
-Like/Thumbs Up/Plus 1 comments, (as a Millennial I am so tired of this kind of rating system, it cheapens everything down to half brained click monsters)
-Autosubscribe to threads I comment on. I might have this wrong, but I can’t seem to be able to turn this feature off.
My two pence.
That looked like an enjoyable three minutes of clover and porker free motoring!
Yes on the thumbs up/voting.
As for clover cam, if you re-implement it, it has to be a section of this website, and not a separate site. The camera I used to film my driving with broke, and I haven’t replaced it. It seems like using the camera is dwelling on negativity. I have missed a couple of entertaining moments, but people smarter than me say your focus determines your reality. If I expect to need the camera, then I’ll certainly encounter shitty drivers. Ya know?
With that said, I could donate an old clip I have if you re-implement it.
I’m not sure a voting system on this site is germane….and probably not on any other site either. A thumbs down seems to keep people from reading a comment closely. So many comments are just people discussing something that’s neither good nor bad.
Most sites seem to go with just a +1 system these days. Downvotes aren’t displayed on most sites anymore because that may discourage comments, or hide the unpopularity of an opinion.
For this site, like Mith said, if it is troublesome to implement, we can all do without it. But there are plenty of times where I’m reading comments and I’d like to give it a +1 vote, because I agree with it a lot. Of course I’d have to do that for every single post I read here so maybe you’re right now that I think about it.
Not sure I like the idea of the thumbs down. One of the things I like most about this site is that the comments are generally intelligent and reasoned discussions,and even when folks don’t necessarily agree with each other, there’s no flaming or nastiness. If you get a bunch of thumbs down, maybe you get defensive and a little less polite. Just my 2 cents, I think things are pretty cool the way they are.
^^I agree with this. There’s too much emphasis on thumbs up/likes/plus 1s etc. that people seem to focus on getting these ratings or focus on the ratings themselves that it takes away from what is actually being said itself.
If people are too lazy, or too inept on being able to read something and then formulate their own opinion or intelligent response, then they shouldn’t be able to contribute to something by simply clicking a button.
Phillip the Bruce,
You may wish to check your browser settings to be sure it is set properly to let the computer “remember” the login. (Another option is to write the password in a file to copy and paste as needed.)
Eric,
My thoughts:
If is is easy maintain/implement:
(if any of these suggestions cause more problems, then ignore them)
● Thumbs up/down is a nice feature.
● Sorting the comments by: Highest/Lowest rated, Newest/Oldest comments
● For the reviews sort by two ways:
⇒ Manufacturer–>year–>model
⇒Year–>Manufacturer–>model
● If there is a way to easily add colors to written text. Occasionally I would like to write in different colors to make my posts easier to follow. I understand that it should be doable via html codes, but I never had much luck with
thatthis. If there is a list of codes that will work, perhaps adding (or pointing to) a page with examples, that would be nice.I don’t know about anyone else, but I can’t log in. I get this message:
“Sorry, no login providers have been enabled.”
I have to enter my ‘name’ and email every time I post.
PtB, it’s happened to me twice recently. The easy fix is to close the page and open a new one from email. It finally came to that the first time and I just did it right off the second time, no problem after that.
8 – I just tried that, but it didn’t help.
And Mithrandir, the browser remembers all my other passwords.
I even tried once to have the login window email me a new password. But I still got the same message.
At least Firefox remembers my login and email, so I only have to enter 1 letter and then click them.
The last time this happened to me PtB, I closed out a couple tabs I had open. I opened a different page from email and that worked fine. I have no idea why but I’d do the hokey pokey if that fixed it. Do you use Firefox? I use No Script and deleted the history. It didn’t make a bit of difference.
Thanks, Phillip – I am going to ask my computer guru about this!