"Wah wah wah...."
"Hey you, you're a POS"
"No, you're a POS and cliquish"
What the hell is going on in here, are you sure this isn't Facebook?"Hey you two, shut up, we're trying to fix the forum over here!"
I've been gone for a good long time, and am just now coming back. If you're interested, I originally faded away as the forum became less and less relevant to me. I saw one too many posts asking the same old questions that had been answered a thousand times before. This forum had plenty of problems over the years, not the least of which was how information was managed, but overall, it was a good, welcoming place I will always have fond memories of.
To fund a forum, you have to have something people want. It's commerce just like anything else. Whether that is information, camaraderie, networking, or whatever. I gladly paid voluntary annual membership fees for as long as I felt I was getting that much value out of the site. Slowly that faded and I stopped coming here altogether. For me, this site had a small, but dedicated number of more hardcore offroad guys like Swordy, SPAZZ, Coachreed, AlaskaVX, Ldub, Triathlete, and many others who were pushing the VX beyond what it was intended for. Whether you are a diehard TOD zealot or not, you can't deny that their threads and mods were interesting-at least to me they were. There were also plenty of colorful individuals in here that kept the pace going. People came here due to the VX, but stayed for the great people they met. I don't see a lot of that in here anymore. It's a ghost town. Forget the bitter infighting, make efforts to stop being "cliquey" even if you think you aren't. Step down off that soapbox and think about what your VX means to you. Is it worth giving up that magic for some cheap mudslinging on the internet. It isn't for me.
From the outside looking in, this forum desperately needs threads that are actively maintained, updated, and cultivated. Back before the "FAQ" and "How To's" were mediocre, and most hadn't been updated-ever! Some things certainly don't change, but let's be honest, how many lightbulb threads do we need? A single thread, searchable, with hyperlinks(that work), and links to related threads or info would be far superior to the needle in a haystack method of information currently being practiced. The FAQ and how to sections should be more like a bunch of stickied threads in a wiki format than the largely outdated mess they were before. Stickied threads with active moderation can pull relevant or more current information from regular mainstream threads and keep a body of relevant references on hand for anyone to use-all in one easy place. That's what facebook gives that this place doesn't-instant gratification. Some new person asks a question and someone is almost always on hand with an answer. The problem is that question and answer aren't ever making it over here and that potential revolutionary fix is lost to us.
I recently made my way back to Pirate4x4 as well. It is also a specter of it's former glory. I remember one of my favorite things about that site was this author "Billavista". He single handedly authored Pirate's "tech section". He wrote engaging, information rich, articles on things people were doing and interested in, and had a way of making it approachable and entertaining. How many times could we have used a better writeup, or hell, even a video of someone doing some in depth maintenance or some task that others routinely struggled with. Wouldn't it be nice to say to some "newb": "Here you go, just go to this one section, and all your questions will be answered."? That can be a real thing. VX.info needs content and we are the providers. With the veterans of the old days gone and much of their information with them, someone has to replace it, and if you're the only ones here, that's you(and me).
Now let's all get our $h!t straight, come together, and fix the place up a bit.
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