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Revamping the Motors Forum - Your input needed

hoodie6029

Hi Folks,

Been posting here for many years, like many of you that have remained here. It is sad to see it so quiet now.

Detailing, Learning to Drive and Upgrades and Audio are absolute ghost towns. Threads get one reply, if any. A week or more between posts in these forums at times.

I think the quietness puts new posters off posting in these forums which just makes things worse.

I've started a thread over in the Help Forum. I am proposing to merge these threads back into the main forum. Hopefully this will drive more traffic to Motors and threads where people need help or advice getting a better response. Detailers will get more people admiring their handiwork 😁

Proposal thread here: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058272562/merge-some-of-the-quieter-motors-forums-request#latest

Pop over there and post '+1' if you are in favour, '-1' if you are against. We need 18 +1 votes to get this considered.

Why merge these back in?

These three forums are so quiet that they might as well be archives now.

Will threads the would've been in this forum clog up the main forum now?

Doubtful. New threads for the 3 combined are in single figures monthly (roughly). We don't have a page of new threads/posts a day in the main forum so I don't see this being an issue

What do I have to do if I like your idea?

Pop over to this thread and post '+1' to support it. We need 18 votes to get this considered. 'Thanks' do not count as a vote

'I remember you, you posted something I didn't like/made a smart-arse response to my thread/didn't agree with me/Posted boring threads about Irish car statistics'

Apologies if I've had a disagreement with anyone in the past or bored you to tears but please don't hold that against my idea. Take my proposal under consideration and vote or don't.

'I'm completely against this idea. Keeping the Motors forum the way it is, is the hill I'm willing to die on.'

Perfectly fine. Just pop over to this thread and vote '-1'

Tagging mods for info: @unkel @tricky D @Neil3030 (Best stab I could make at finding mods as they are no longer displayed at the bottom of the page.) Please tag any other mods that you know.

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Comments

unkel

Agreed. Originally these subforums were created as the motors forum was super busy and more special interest threads got lost in there. Now it's the other way around

Myself and @Eoin are category moderators for the commuting and transport category, not motors moderators as such. The remaining motors moderators are:

@LIGHTNING

@Alanstrainor

@L1011

The other two users you tagged are long gone

L1011

I've no opposition to this.

LIGHTNING

No issue on my end. If its what people want lets pull the trigger on it

hoodie6029

Cheers for the feedback Unkel and L1011 and lightning. Got a few +1‘s over in help already so hopefully this can get approved. I think it’ll be a good first step to improving this forum.

colm_mcm

On a related note, Do we still need a separate EV forum these days?

hoodie6029

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119904391#Comment_119904391

It seems to be pretty busy, that’s why I didn’t suggest it. It encompasses buying advice, troubleshooting etc in one place for EVs which makes sense to me to keep together. Open to suggestion though. Is Buying ans Selling needed separately now either come to think of it?

I choose the 3 quietest forums for my merge based on that fact but if a bigger re-org of the forums is worth investigating I happy to contribute to that too.

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119904391#Comment_119904391

The EV forum is busier than the motors forum itself these days from a quick look just now!

I guess we could wait a few years and then rename the motors forum as the classic cars forum 😂

colm_mcm

We don’t have a diesel cars forum, EVs are so mainstream now that you’ve got a blocker to balanced debate. I’m laughing remembering the reasons why we set up the EV forum back in the day 😂

User1998

I think merging the Buying & Selling forum would be beneficial. Motors and Buying & Selling together would make for a somewhat busy forum

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119904453#Comment_119904453

ELM327

I'm all for this once you don't touch our EV forum!

hoodie6029

If I’m a new EV driver or potential buyer looking for info online will I join a general car forum or a dedicated EV forum first? I’ll be looking for a dedicated EV community.

Broadly, I think having a dedicated EV forum will attract more users to boards which will be good for us all.

[Deleted User]

Peoples knowledge about EVs is very poor when compared to the encyclopaedic level of knowledge posted by many posters in the EV form - I think it’s essential to keep electric separate for the next number of years - it’s only going to get more popular.

Buying and selling is stagnant because the Irish car market is stagnant due to circumstance beyond its control namely supply or at least slow supply- even then though, how much participation did it get besides the bangeromics or luxobarge threads?

If you mothballed it today, you could eventually restart it to include buying and selling electric cars or indeed kick start it again now by moving buying and selling electric cars to that forum - however , the main electric forum traffic focuses on buying new cars- IONIC 5, MG4, Tesla etc so it would lose a lot of momentum if split between two forums - I don’t think that’s a good idea right now but it may become a necessity in say 2 years time when the market is flooded with new EVs (hopefully)

traco

I see no issue merging and keeping the EV one seperate. I'm guilty of not being here much since the site revamp but as I'm only an odd contributor now I probably should keep quiet.

hoodie6029

Thanks everyone for you replies and input to both threads. It really surprised me and was so glad to see a lot of people still care about this forum.

My initial idea was a small tidy up of the sub forums but there is clearly an appetite for a more radical reorganisation.

All the sub forums except EV are very quiet. I think a poll to decide the future structure may be needed.

The options in my head are:

Motors - no sub forums
Motors - 2 sub forums; 1 for Classics and 1 for EV/PHEV/Hybrids
Motors- 1 sub forum for EV/PHEV/Hybrids

I was going to start a new thread with a poll but then only Motors people will see it (some people don’t venture out of the other forums) and I don’t want to spam those forums will polls and have to manage multiple threads.

Hopefully there is a way to have one poll appear in all the forums, take the results and decide on the future and get boards to make the changes.

I pm’d the mods and cmods a couple of days ago with the above essentially. I waiting for them to get back to me. Hopefully they are discussing it among themselves.

I didn’t want this thread to die on its arse and nothing change.

Cc mods for info.@Alanstrainor @L1011 @LIGHTNING @unkel @Eoin

L1011

I would be in favour of keeping EV and Classics as separate forums. Classics is busier in summer normally, EV is still specialised and busy.

unkel

Agree with @L1011 - option 2.

DaveyDave

Probably best if EV is left alone for now, I reckon it's busy enough. Although growing in new sales I don't think people particularly care for general EV discussion outside of what car they should buy, it's still a very niche topic and the EV subforum is convenient for those wanting to get stuck into the topic. The EV forum also lends itself to having threads for individual models of car, merge it into the main forum then every second thread will be "Ioniq 5" "ID.4" etc. so the general threads will get pushed back into older pages as would less popular EV threads.

If every second thread was about detailing people would probably visit motors less as they just aren't interested and it would be in your face.

Option 2 seems ideal.

hoodie6029

Option 2 is my preferred option too. Just wanted to put out some alternatives too.

So over to the mods, how do we get this change done? Another thread where we +1 or -1 or a poll? Or do you have the power to just do it?

As I said before, I’m happy to give my time if you need help with this, so PM me if you need it 🙂

LIGHTNING

Option 2 gets my vote as well

Eoin

Looks like there's consensus here (option 2). I'll ask around and see who can click the right buttons to get this sorted out.

Eoin

Sorry for the delay on this - we are starting the process shortly.

I have added links to the previously stickied threads in the other forums to this thread.

traco

Option 2 works

Just a thought - Should the classics include summer / weekend toys as in non daily drivers? I've three others but none are technically classics as all sub 30 years old but in terms of posting and sharing info they may be more interested to those of a classic disposition or looking for a future classic.

hoodie6029

The Classics crowd are an inclusive bunch, you won’t get run out of town for posting something less than 30 years old 😀

ba_barabus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119990788#Comment_119990788

And rightly so, classics start with new cars and age gracefully

traco

Excellent - carry on so! I like to obey the rules so once I don't upset anyones cornflakes thats good enough for me.

Eoin

This request has gone to Vanilla, given the huge number of threads to copy over (would be a horrible manual process). When I hear anything, I'll report back here.

hoodie6029

WOOHOO!

The re-org has been done! Thanks to the Mods and CMods Eoin, Unkel, Alanstrainor, L1011 and Lightning for backing the idea and getting it done.

Thanks to all of the posters here too who supported it. Hope that this gives the forum the shot in the arm that it has needed and things get a bit more lively around here.

Hopefully we’ll have no more threads languishing unanswered like they were in Learning to Drive and Upgrades and Audio anymore.

Eoin

Great news. If anyone is looking for any of the stickied threads in the old forums, I have linked to them from the forum charter.

blackbox

Motors chat should definitely be a sticky.

hoodie6029

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120395867#Comment_120395867

Really? Last comment was 5 days ago (by me) and has been getting about 20 comments a month, not exactly hopping.