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Anonymous
01-25-2003, 04:49 PM
I would offer some thoughts on the titled topics:

Approaches to Performance:

I think that many of the "disagreements" that occur on the 'board are due to the different Approaches to Performance that the participants are following.

I would suggest that there are four main categories of Approach (with the boundaries being blurred at will by each and every person):

1)....the Daily Driver With Some Ooomph...(the Walter Mitty Special)...cars with some mods to enhance performance for more power, better handling, etc.....more fun to drive in the daily grind...

2)....Agent 004: The Bondo Syndrome....(the name is Bondo, James Bondo)....cars modded mild to wild to make the getting from point A to point B more fun or important than why they are going to point B....

3).....Street/Strip, or The Weekend Warrior....(Bullitt; the Bandit)....cars modded to be daily driven, yet competitive at the stoplight grand prixs or on the dragstrip...

4)....The Racer....(insert favorite racecar driver name here)....a car set up for Competition.....with all the rules etc to follow for the class or group....

What is "best" for one of these Approaches may or may not be "best" for use in the other Approaches.....which underlies many of the conflicts that occur here. An excellent example of this false conflict is the recent topic on cam comparisons.

What is "best" is both subjective and objective. Too often, people want a "magic pill"....that one thing-to-do or part-to-bolt-on that will be the do-all and end-all.....there ain't no such thing.....some mod may work great for a Daily Driver, but Agent 004 would find it totally useless, and with good reason....And a lot of The Racer stuff is less than beneficial for the Daily Driver.....

If we were to keep these different Approaches to Performance in mind more, there would be less disagreement and confusion. In fact, more info like what was presented in the cam comparison topics would be forth-coming....evaluations of what works/personal experiences with/results derived from the using of different pieces/parts/mods for their Approach....

I would suggest a further delineation of performance forum categories......or an improved way of archiving the articles/posts....

Some sub-categories for archival organization would be to classify topics in mechanical, fuel, exhaust, drivetrain.....this would make it easier to review prior posts to reduce redundancy and rehash......

I enjoy the potpourri of the main performance forum.....but if, after a few days, a posted topic/replies were to be moved into its sub-category, that would enhance review of a topic to see the latest info/discussions on a particular subject by then searching that sub-category....

boostdemon
01-25-2003, 05:55 PM
I agree completely on your assessment of the internet car enthusiast personality. However, there will always be different takes on the same situation in which most cases there will be clashes of those very same personalities. If we were a psychology board, maybe it would be possible to take aside those dozen or so folks that just cant let differences in opinion be agreeable, and solve their personal issues... but we cant, and wont. Just a fact of life. Some people can agree to disagree, some will fight it out.

I think the performance forum will always be a general "performance forum" as we don’t have the staffing or the number of users to use for instance a "race only", "engine dynamics", "benchracing", "daily driver" sub category of fourms.

An archive is nice, a way to "save" all those threads we didn’t want to lose when our previous board would delete the last page of topics from the forum. However, we now have more then enough space, and a superb search feature (that works) in which anyone with specific topics in mind can search either a particular forum or the whole board for any set of key words or by the author if they remember someone’s thread having the info they wanted.

What i might suggest as an alternative to creating what sounds like a repository of info on particular topics, would be to encourage the users to invest some time in gathering info from the board, verifying it for validity and generating an article that we can put on the website. You can always add/edit/delete info from the articles as seen fit, just as you would on the board.

In regards to the whole "Adding articles to the site" we are currently putting together some details for a "real" contest that should help boost the interest a bit. Some real rewards and incentives. The new design of the site will make things much easier for users to participate then is has been in the past. I think all around, the site will start to develop a larger user base and produce a plethora of useful documentation between the board and mailing list as well as folks who are just common visitors to the site.

As a side note, its nice to see someone making the effort to express concerns in a constructive manor and make well thought out suggestions. I am grateful. Thank you.

:) -Dana