Degradation of the Community...

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

I've also 3 times over the years suggested each member has a self-moderated thread. Can we start a movement?

1
a : the marketplace or public place of an ancient Roman city forming the center of judicial and public business
b : a public meeting place for open discussion The club provides a forum for people interested in local history.
c : a medium (such as a newspaper or online service) of open discussion or expression of ideas.

People want a self-moderated thread in a forum because they want to benefit from the forum traffic, but don't want to deal with trivial matters like site management, generating traffic or open expression.

Improving moderation is a different matter. I don't know how the tools are, but I think that it would be useful if to have it be obvious when a thread creator is flagging posts and when a thread is technical.

 

[johnster007]

If you want to see a forum that's totally out of control, try the Tesla support forum.

This forum has the rating system, which incentivises useful and interesting posts, and disincentivises negative or frivolous posts. And it has the ignore system, to get rid of the obvious trolls.

Thanks to these tools the forum is fairly self-correcting, and I think remains an excellent resource and community.

I'm all for passionate discussions and even disagreements, it is a sign of the energy we are all bringing to this cause. We just have to remember that we are all on the same team, just arguing about the plays.

I've been out for about 5 years recently returned (new car coming) and it feels like an entirely different place. At the risk of sounding like another old timer, I miss the positivity, adventurousness, gratitude, helpfulness, and comeraderie of the old site. The change reminds me what the service center experienced when the car evolved from early adopters to mass market. The team there lamented the days when owners brought bagels and gratitude for helping them get back on the road in their Tesla. Today, I hear a different story. As a psychologists son, I agree with what many have already said we can do--reinforce the behaviors we want to see more of and ignore the behaviors we want to go away. My two cents.

 

[Shock-On-T]

I've been out for about 5 years recently returned (new car coming) and it feels like an entirely different place. At the risk of sounding like another old timer, I miss the positivity, adventurousness, gratitude, helpfulness, and comeraderie of the old site. The change reminds me what the service center experienced when the car evolved from early adopters to mass market. The team there lamented the days when owners brought bagels and gratitude for helping them get back on the road in their Tesla. Today, I hear a different story. As a psychologists son, I agree with what many have already said we can do--reinforce the behaviors we want to see more of and ignore the behaviors we want to go away. My two cents.

I've brought cake to my service centre

 

[johnster007]

I've brought cake to my service centre

I just reinforced your good behavior with a like.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Longing for the past is very normal, that's why people get nostalgic and retro sells. Nothing wrong with it.

Truth be told, Tesla has changed too and some of that is reflected here, so realistically the past will probably stay in the past.

 

[tomas]

People want a self-moderated thread in a forum because they want to benefit from the forum traffic, but don't want to deal with trivial matters like site management, generating traffic or open expression.

Improving moderation is a different matter. I don't know how the tools are, but I think that it would be useful if to have it be obvious when a thread creator is flagging posts and when a thread is technical.

I generally agree that majority of forum should be open, but I think each member could have *1* and only one self moderated thread, or maybe just use profile page. It could be fun. "Let me see what's new on forum, and oh by the way what are these folks thinking today?" Believe me, if it's not interesting it would get no traffic. And I think I agree with an option that allows one to view the deleted posts, much like "view ignored" does now.

 

[bonnie]

I've been out for about 5 years recently returned (new car coming) and it feels like an entirely different place. At the risk of sounding like another old timer, I miss the positivity, adventurousness, gratitude, helpfulness, and comeraderie of the old site. The change reminds me what the service center experienced when the car evolved from early adopters to mass market. The team there lamented the days when owners brought bagels and gratitude for helping them get back on the road in their Tesla. Today, I hear a different story. As a psychologists son, I agree with what many have already said we can do--reinforce the behaviors we want to see more of and ignore the behaviors we want to go away. My two cents.

Still happening in many places. But I agree that, as a whole, the nature of owners has changed. I balance my sadness over losing the close-knit camaraderie with the fact that this new 'normal' is a great indicator that Tesla is going mainstream. Friends & family that used to look at me as a bit geeky for driving electric, are now calling and emailing with questions as they switch over. And that's pretty cool.

Lots of service centers still have close relationships with owners. Owners take the time to make that happen. I've brought breakfast and other times brought treats. The local club in Rocklin, CA has done bbqs in the parking lot and other events to strengthen relationships for all owners.

 

[Merrill]

I always bring a few bottles of wine to the folks at my service center, I just appreciate there efforts and know how difficult their job is. (I have done it).

 

[buttershrimp]

Still happening in many places. But I agree that, as a whole, the nature of owners has changed. I balance my sadness over losing the close-knit camaraderie with the fact that this new 'normal' is a great indicator that Tesla is going mainstream. Friends & family that used to look at me as a bit geeky for driving electric, are now calling and emailing with questions as they switch over. And that's pretty cool.

Lots of service centers still have close relationships with owners. Owners take the time to make that happen. I've brought breakfast and other times brought treats. The local club in Rocklin, CA has done bbqs in the parking lot and other events to strengthen relationships for all owners.

View attachment 245823 View attachment 245824 View attachment 245825

Nice job! This is the way to happiness with Tesla it seems, I've had wonderful help from folks at the service center by bringing Krispy Kreme donuts and breakfast tacos to them. That cake party is inspiring.

Oh no! Bonnie! I.... just.... realized... something....
Didn't that guy who posted the thread on his Tesla being defiled at the service center (only to later disappear from the thread) say something about crumbs or cake being in the backseat?

I'm having a Bruce Willis 6th sense moment right now!... "I see cake people"... The cake was in the car all along!

Oh, these forums are fun... I love it here.... very fun to see what everyone writes. Lots of smart folks.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Oh, these forums are fun... I love it here.... very fun to see what everyone writes. Lots of smart folks.

Please tell us more parody jokes about AP2 vs. AP1!

 

[stopcrazypp]

In another thread @jeffro01 lamented that in the olden days people with critical posts would have been shouted out as "shorts".

I agreed with him, that certainly would have happened.

I just disagreed totally on whether or not that was a good thing.

I for one am SO, SO very happy that TMC is no longer like that. We have great technical contributors like @verygreen and @lunitiks bringing new insights, even critical insights - @wk057 no longer being the lone voice on that. We consider information that comes from leaks and new poster much more accurately these days and avoid shooting down unpleasant messengers (who more often than not were right even before) and so forth.

We have more people that are here to share an experience, instead of being on a mission, and that makes for a better owner's and user's forum overall as it balances the voices. I think the TMC of today is producing more accurate analysis, more accurate user help, and is overall a much more useful place to be these days. Even the TMC blog on the front page is very balanced, giving room to all kinds of voices. Moderation is very reasonable too. All in all, superb job TMC! I love it.

What I see @jeffro01 lamenting, and indeed some other old-timers, the loss of the close-knit early adopter Tesla community that was massively pro-Tesla and fighting early attacks on the community as well as the company. I'm sure there was some unique cameraderie there, but I must say coming along a bit later, I say adapting with the times was needed. When I came along, I found that old spirit hindering accurate analysis of the Model X situation, for example. Turns out, the old-timers were massively wrong on that, but kept hindering the process of finding out.

It is so refreshing to see that with AP2, the new community is taking a much more realistic and technical approach. Now there is a sense of discovery, that was IMO not here when Model X was being discussed early on. The Model X debacle and AP2 debacles, naturally, helping to even things out anyway, but also simply the growth of the community. Things have become more normal. This is not a guerrilla war anymore, this is a civil society, to use such a comparison.

The community has changed, but also Tesla the company has changed and grown into something that deserves and needs IMO a different approach.

This is not meant to take anything away from the early times on TMC. I am sure the camraderie then produced results useful for the times and indeed was a valuable service. But there is also the case of the "founder's syndrome". At some point realizing that the old ways are hindering the new ways must be considered. IMO that was what happened.

Put it this way: IMO the old community was no longer working for the new times. The new community IMO works immensely better.

I kind of missed this whole boat on this but I think this warrants a response as it convolutes and misrepresents a bunch of different things. @jeffro01 already responded about your whole "short" argument, but I'll put in my 2 cents too. I think all of the old timers will agree with me that the days of the "shorts" are definitely not missed. The response (and skepticism about new members) in those days simply was necessary because shorts did exist and they really did think they could influence the stock price with such posts. That doesn't mean we wanted to have to constantly drive shorts off.

You are also implying that camaraderie and being positive about Tesla is impeding the forum from being technical/analytical and that the degradation of that is actually helping this forum.

First issue with this argument is you are mischaracterizing the history of this forum. This forum had always had plenty of technical/analytical discussions from before the Roadster came out (the "old-timers" may remember this: @TEG, @JRP3, @WarpedOne, @malcolm, @vfx). After the Roadster came out, some members even built very useful products for Roadster owners (examples: OVMS by @markwj, Tesla Tattler @scott451, CAN-JR/CAN-SR @hcsharp). Then the Model S era (for example @Ingineer, @wk057). You pointed out the more recent: @verygreen, @lunitiks (@DamianXVI , @kdday, @Bjorn, @JeffK also deserve some acknowledgement). Note this list is not comprehensive, but just off the top of my head.

Now what's the point of that long list? The point is out of that list, only one I can point out tends to lean a bit negative on Tesla. The rest do not. So there is very little correlation between giving good technical/analytical commentary and leaning negative about Tesla. The other point is that there is not a sudden rise in TMC being more technical/analytical from things heading in more negative direction, but rather this always being characteristic of this forum (what drove many from the official Tesla forums to here).

There's been some complaint that some technical threads are driven off topic by members defensive/positive about Tesla. However, recently many technical threads are being driven off topic by members complaining/casting doubt/negative about Tesla. Sure, if the OP of a technical thread leans negative, he will blame the positive members for driving things off topic, and vise versa, but that's not really the issue. The issue is there is more noise than signal.

Now to circle back to @jeffro01's argument about the constant negativity (driven by a few members repetitively; I've even seen some recent threads driven to the point of personal attacks). I can put his argument another way. As this forum grows more "mainstream", the moderators simply can't keep up to prune out all the noise and keep every thread on topic. The difference is if we are going to have more noise anyways, having camaraderie and positivity is a lot more enjoyable/tolerable than enmity and negativity.

To be clear, this is not a call to silence criticism of Tesla or for those handful of negative members to stop contributing, but there is probably something that can be done to make the forums more enjoyable for everyone.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

@stopcrazypp I agree there have been great technical posters in the past, indeed I called out the Roadster sub-forum as a special place when discussing Autonomous Vehicles sub-forum in the same vein. @wk057 is of course in his own league.

The biggest issue, thus IMO, is the response to critical posters but not just them, to posters whose activity can be seen as against TSLA interests, such as seeking leaks or speculating on product changes, ramp-up speeds etc. In those cases the atmosphere has often quickly gotten defensive. Eds anyone?

p.s. I don't think anyone misses shorts. I meant some (perhaps) missing the time when negative or disliked posters were shouted away as shorts.

 

[JRP3]

To paraphrase Biggie, "Mo people, mo problems". This exacerbates the issues on both sides, we get more negative people and more people who over react to any negative post. Not much can be done except to try and eliminate the worst offenders of both extremes when possible.

 

[Merrill]

Honestly I do not mind negativity as long as it is done without demeaning someone and if that negativity is followed by suggestions of ways to improve said problem. Come up with positive input to be helpful.

 

[TEG]

Random old timer comments:

#1: In the early days, the forum used to be overrun with junk posts from off topic entities and so the moderator job involved a lot more clean up of unwanted messes.
It wasn't even healthy debate, we would just get stuff like:
"Burning gasoline is normal, EVs are a stupid waste of time that will never work."
"Perpetual motion is possible... Just put wind turbines on your car and drive forever."
"I am here to sell some product and just spam the internet with my ads."
There also seemed to be some professional "shills" perhaps employed by big oil to just start controversy and dissent.
I am glad that stuff seems to be gone for the most part, and now we are left with differing opinions on more minor things either leading to healthy debate, or unwanted unpleasantness.

#2: There has been a sense that the quality of conversation will slowly decline as Tesla goes more mass market.
Many people buying Roadster thought of it as an experimental investment in the future, or purchase of a fun toy, not the one car that must work for all their practical needs.
We started to see more signs of higher expectations with Model S & X, and now with Model 3 people are expecting it to be a mainstream vehicle that lives up to all their expectations of competing vehicles with less tolerance for things like fit & finish problems, high service costs, etc.

With all that said, I went about 10 years here on the forum with nobody giving me a "disagree" mark. Then in the past year, they started coming more and more... Did I change to be more disagreeable? Well I notice many other long timers also getting "dinged" now.
I think we have a more "disagreeable" assortment of new forum members now. In a way I think this is good / healthy. The forum used to be accused of being a haven for starry eyed "fanbois" and people would question if we thought Tesla could do no wrong.
Now I think we have a attracted a broader audience with more people who are here but "not convinced yet". I want to look at it as "healthy skepticism" and not just rampant negativity.

We are also in a waiting period for a new model to start getting delivered. There is always an up-swell in anxiety when we have a lot of members waiting for the vehicle they want.

 

[brianman]

Quoting for content, not for targeting...

But IMO the problem is not people understanding necessarily, it is sometimes the writer (like me) not writing clearly. So it isn't that I for example consider people lacking in understanding. I know people are smart. Sometimes I just write poorly and clarification is needed. Other times text is just hard and nobody is to blame.

IMO, the onus is on the reader to politely ask for clarification if there is some ambiguity.

If a reply suggests there was miscommunication, there are many strategies for handling it but none of them start with anger. Deep breaths are good.

 

[brianman]

Sounds good. Just make it so the deleted posts still show up ("post deleted by ___") and with reason for deletion.

Agreed. Also, I'd recommend not deleting the content but shrinking it to a very small font and using the "make you click here to see the content" functionality that is already used for the bottom 90% of long posts.

I guess what I'm saying is (1) indicate why the deletion so that people can learn what is not wanted for future postings and (2) instead of deleting/censoring use a "demote font size" and wrap "show spoiler" type UI. No reason to hide bad actors from the world, giving them fodder for incorrect "censorship!" yelling.

 

[brianman]

I generally agree that majority of forum should be open, but I think each member could have *1* and only one self moderated thread, or maybe just use profile page. It could be fun. "Let me see what's new on forum, and oh by the way what are these folks thinking today?" Believe me, if it's not interesting it would get no traffic. And I think I agree with an option that allows one to view the deleted posts, much like "view ignored" does now.

I somewhat get what you're asking for, but I suspect the "here's my journal thread" isn't all that compelling to site moderators. (I'm not one; I'm guessing.)

What should be interesting to site moderators is "owned topics" where there is a directed discussion rather than "stuff Jimmy wants to talk about this week" all in one place.

Can the existing blog functionality support this usage?

I suspect the desired feature set is something like:
(1) author creates opening content ("first post") as blog
(2) comments from members are allowed
(3) author can add update sections to the opening content to address FAQs or make corrections
(4) author has the ability to report posts that need 'attention' (moderation being one example)
(5) after some level of trust in author is reached, site owners allow author "full moderation" privileges for all content in said blog post

Maybe I should post this idea in Site Feedback instead....

 

[GoTslaGo]

Random old timer comments:

#1: In the early days, the forum used to be overrun with junk posts from off topic entities and so the moderator job involved a lot more clean up of unwanted messes.
It wasn't even healthy debate, we would just get stuff like:
"Burning gasoline is normal, EVs are a stupid waste of time that will never work."
"Perpetual motion is possible... Just put wind turbines on your car and drive forever."
"I am here to sell some product and just spam the internet with my ads."
There also seemed to be some professional "shills" perhaps employed by big oil to just start controversy and dissent.
I am glad that stuff seems to be gone for the most part, and now we are left with differing opinions on more minor things either leading to healthy debate, or unwanted unpleasantness.

#2: There has been a sense that the quality of conversation will slowly decline as Tesla goes more mass market.
Many people buying Roadster thought of it as an experimental investment in the future, or purchase of a fun toy, not the one car that must work for all their practical needs.
We started to see more signs of higher expectations with Model S & X, and now with Model 3 people are expecting it to be a mainstream vehicle that lives up to all their expectations of competing vehicles with less tolerance for things like fit & finish problems, high service costs, etc.

With all that said, I went about 10 years here on the forum with nobody giving me a "disagree" mark. Then in the past year, they started coming more and more... Did I change to be more disagreeable? Well I notice many other long timers also getting "dinged" now.
I think we have a more "disagreeable" assortment of new forum members now. In a way I think this is good / healthy. The forum used to be accused of being a haven for starry eyed "fanbois" and people would question if we thought Tesla could do no wrong.
Now I think we have a attracted a broader audience with more people who are here but "not convinced yet". I want to look at it as "healthy skepticism" and not just rampant negativity.

We are also in a waiting period for a new model to start getting delivered. There is always an up-swell in anxiety when we have a lot of members waiting for the vehicle they want.

Not to be disagree-able ... you couldn't have gotten any "disagrees" before (IIRC) March 2016. There were no options to "disagree" before then.

Then things changed....

 

[tomas]

I somewhat get what you're asking for, but I suspect the "here's my journal thread" isn't all that compelling to site moderators. (I'm not one; I'm guessing.)

What should be interesting to site moderators is "owned topics" where there is a directed discussion rather than "stuff Jimmy wants to talk about this week" all in one place.

Can the existing blog functionality support this usage?

I suspect the desired feature set is something like:
(1) author creates opening content ("first post") as blog
(2) comments from members are allowed
(3) author can add update sections to the opening content to address FAQs or make corrections
(4) author has the ability to report posts that need 'attention' (moderation being one example)
(5) after some level of trust in author is reached, site owners allow author "full moderation" privileges for all content in said blog post

Maybe I should post this idea in Site Feedback instead....

Sure, @brianman i think this is in same vein, but improvement on what I suggested. But I think number of these threads per member should be limited. I dunno just a hunch some members would be "quantity" over "quality".