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The Death of Motorcycle Forums

It may, or it can fuel disputes that boil over into the rest of the forum, and the real world. It also leads to cyber whiplash when you think you have some idea what a person is about, only to stumble on some outrageous posts of theirs in the depths.


Bam... Nailed it! :thumb
 
I believe in freedom of speech. But freedom of speech does not give anyone permission to be an arsehole.
Actually, it does in the U.S.

You should be able to say your meaning without being prosecuted. But if you are an arsehole you should have to accept consequences from being an arsehole while expressing your opinion. If you say something that is offensive (or hurtful, or racist, lie, cheat, etc) you need to be able to accept a restriction from expressing yourself for a while. Sort of an online prison. I'd suggest posts from persons like that needing to be reviewed before becoming public. The downside is that would place lot of extra work on the forum administrators and they have plenty of that already. Some sort of AI could help with this, read all posts and block those with certain keywords/sentence structures until admin has reviewed them.
I have no desire to be a speech jailer. I'd prefer to encourage social norms that don't lend themselves to people deciding it's cool to be an asshole.

Other than flagging posts for blacklisted words, I don't want an AI running a forum. We humans (all of us, not just staff) can do better if we care enough to try.
What young generations like is communicating with their own generation. So it's a sort of Catch 22. You need young people to attract young people. Until you get young people involved you have trouble attracting young people. Malcolm Gladwell's book "The Tipping Point" is worth a read to get an insight into why some ventures are more successful than others.
Young people also need to start riding motorcycles. That is difficult, because they need to spend lot of time getting permissions to do that. Motorcyclist really should get together and try to get those laws/rules relaxed so we get more motorcyclists. I think it would be reasonable to follow the countries that make it legal to ride a low cc motorcycle on a driver's license. It's much easier for youngsters to get on those little electric scooters and ride around on them. So maybe put a little electric scooter section on the forum and spend some effort on getting information about that to the youngsters.
At least in the U.S., two-wheel licensing laws are somewhat fragmented, but I believe a 50 cc scooter can be ridden in most places without a motorcycle endorsement - a driver's license and insurance are all that's required. Electric scooters may become popular in the U.S. due to the ease of maintenance and operation. I hope that's the case because they're an efficient, quiet mode of transportation that could be useful to many people.

I think a greater barrier to youth taking up riding is the extreme level of sheltering some parents resort to while raising their children. That's not to say that there aren't valid safety concerns about sharing the road with cars & trucks, but swaddling children in bubble wrap isn't all that great of an alternative.
 
US law does recognize a number of important restrictions to free speech. These include but are not limited to; obscenity, fraud, child pornography, harassment, incitement to illegal conduct and imminent lawless action, true threats, and commercial speech such as advertising, copyright or patent rights.

I'm well aware of how free speech works in the U.S. My point was that simply being an arsehole is not prohibited by U.S. law.

Depending on the circumstances, being an arsehole may be actionable on ADVb because this is a private entity, but it'd take some effort on the part of the arsehole to garner that kind of response.
The AI would not be running the forum. It would be helping running the forum, like an administrator. One that monitors every post and not only stops ones referring to obscenity, fraud, child pornography, harassment, incitement to illegal conduct and imminent lawless action, true threats, and commercial speech such as advertising, copyright or patent rights. It would also look for certain sentence structures that would imply one of the aforementioned items. An administrator that would never get angry, insulted, or go on a power trip. The other admins would of course be monitoring and adjusting if needed.
We have forum members that are able to identify and report questionable activity, and I believe our staff is capable of responding appropriately to illegal activity. Even if it were possible, I believe adding an AI into the mix would be an unnecessary complication, not an improvement.

I don't see how what you proposed would prevent a staff member from getting angry, insulted, or going on a power trip. Once seen, a staff member will react to a post however they react. As has been stated many times, the expectation here is that any moderation will be done with a light hand. If one of us stumbles, it'll be addressed.
 
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I think the CSM ,ect.ect. places let people be rude and insulting without consequences.

I figure the biggest assholes on these places are cowards, I think they wouldn't say the stuff they say with a keyboard face to face.

I live in a rural area , words still have consequences , a person says 'Stuff" about somebody , there's a good chance that he's going to get the chance defend what "stuff" he said physically. On the 'net no consequences.

I try to apply that in my comments , but I'll sometimes "keyboard" stuff I wouldn't say face to face to a mid 20's stout young man. No consequences.
 
US law does recognize a number of important restrictions to free speech.
Right, that’s why they are in the boards rules. I was more referring to the simple stuff that gets you banned on ADVb if you don’t go with the flow.

I think the CSM ,ect.ect. places let people be rude and insulting without consequences.
Yea some will be, some just want a place to debate the times.
 
I am on several social media platforms including tiktok. If you do a hashtag search for motorcycle, just #motorcycle has 26.6 billion views. You can search for anything of course. That's where everybody is. Manufacturers, dealers, influencers, tiktokers, young and old. You put a like, you forward, you save, you share, you follow, and you comment.
 
I find that a poor way for a business to support its customers. I should be able to go to a company's website and find documentation on my product with very little doubt about how to get to that page before I even start looking. I find it extremely annoying when companies ignore more traditional channels to embrace whatever is The New Hotness this week.

The worldwide web is the core platform of the internet and has more than three decades of use. It's still as relevant as its always been, and isn't going away. Nothing is permanent, but it's a safer bet to still be relevant in ten years, unlike the endless parade of social media platforms. I have no problem with the use of those platforms, but for some uses, there's still significant value in boring old html.

Forums may go the way of listserv, but I believe they still have a place, too.
There are links to websites within.

A quick search will reveal that 80 million Americans have a tiktok account. 60% are between 16 and 24. Instagram has about 120 million users in the US. We have to renew the base and attract new, young people. I don't think it's happening. Forums are outdated. That's what the article from Common Tread was saying.

I agree with you that forums still have a place. They're not being used like they used to be. I'm okay with that.
 
I find that a poor way for a business to support its customers. I should be able to go to a company's website and find documentation on my product with very little doubt about how to get to that page before I even start looking. I find it extremely annoying when companies ignore more traditional channels to embrace whatever is The New Hotness this week.

The worldwide web is the core platform of the internet and has more than three decades of use. It's still as relevant as its always been, and isn't going away. Nothing is permanent, but it's a safer bet to still be relevant in ten years, unlike the endless parade of social media platforms. I have no problem with the use of those platforms, but for some uses, there's still significant value in boring old html.

Forums may go the way of listserv, but I believe they still have a place, too.
It's amazing how difficult manufacturers are making access to information. I cannot name a single manufacturer that has a good old pricelist covering all models. Usually you have to go to the model specific webpage to see the price. That makes comparison difficult. Which might be the reason. And finding torque numbers for fasteners on manufacturers website is just about impossible. Finding that information is one reason I come to the forums.
The "Unofficial Zero Manual" website came into existence because of Zero's lack of public information. I've always thought the guy maintaining that site is missing an opportunity by not having forum there as well.
 
I like to think that I’m generally a polite person. I was drinking and posting last night when I obviously shouldn’t have been. :fpalm
I find I do my best posting that way :photog

Him and a few others are creating it all over again here. :(
Do they leave the garbage bin and contribute ride or tech info in other parts of the forum? Even if they spend 95% in there and pop in to a bike related thread with a hum-dinger of a contribution .... well thats worth it.

It will stay in there here. If it comes out in other forums they will be gone, if a mod takes action outside those forums because of a belief or post inside those forums then they will be banned.

If everybody follows the rules and avoids the parts of the forum they don't like ... everybody should be good.
 
Do they leave the garbage bin and contribute ride or tech info in other parts of the forum? Even if they spend 95% in there and pop in to a bike related thread with a hum-dinger of a contribution .... well thats worth it.

I have posted this before but I'll repeat it. I understand why we have CI. However, those who come to this forum but contribute nothing outside of CI aren't adding any value to this forum. Why not restrict access to the "basement" to members with a certain number of posts. That would weed out those who just come here only to discuss politics. This is after all a motorcycle forum. Maybe not allow new members to even see the basement until 25 posts.
 
I have posted this before but I'll repeat it. I understand why we have CI. However, those who come to this forum but contribute nothing outside of CI aren't adding any value to this forum.
I think we're saying the same thing. I think my thought, not well expressed, is that they find the place by an interest in motorcycles, then find their way there. Those pages are not sent to the search engines so people are not finding them at random and registering to argue in there.

Why not restrict access to the "basement" to members with a certain number of posts.
Totally do-able if thats what the community wants to do. Requiring things like X number of posts, registered for X number of days, X number of likes, Like/Post ratio of X, ADV+ only members or some combination of those are all possible. We just need to vote on it as a community :freaky
 
Cross Training Adventure on YouTube has a video where he touches on the decline of MC forums. I threw in a plug for ADVb but it looks like it got deleted. :dunno

 
Some members slapped Barry around on ADVr around a year ago. They didn't like him starting threads based on some of his videos, which seemed dumb to me. Discussing a YT video in the comments is not a substitute for a forum. Last I checked, his ADVr posting dropped off abruptly after that, so I'm surprised he mentioned the site in the video.

I can’t recall all of the details but I think he was creating multiple new threads for every new video. It was getting excessive. When he kept it contained within one thread, I think there were no problems.

Edit: plus I think he was hurt and off the bike, so many of the videos were just recycled content just to keep YouTube views up.
 
Some members slapped Barry around on ADVr around a year ago. They didn't like him starting threads based on some of his videos, which seemed dumb to me. Discussing a YT video in the comments is not a substitute for a forum. Last I checked, his ADVr posting dropped off abruptly after that, so I'm surprised he mentioned the site in the video.

That's too bad. Is his user name over there 'B1'?
 
As long as they aren't forced to change anything about CSM, I think it'll continue to bring in a substantial amount of traffic. I recall someone saying that a large percentage of overall traffic came from the Basement, with CSM/JM leading the charge.
I don't believe CSM brings in any traffic. The basement is not searchable via the web and requires a log in. The photos, bikes, and regionals forums are still the big draw.
 
I only saw one thread per video, but maybe there were more per video, which I agree would be excessive.

He had a bad neck injury a little over two years ago, and was completely off the bike for a year, iirc. Seems to be back riding now. I think his biggest challenge is creating new content that doesn't cover ground already featured in his hundreds of other videos. Maybe with his neck healed he can do more traveling and use that to kick off new content.

He would start threads for each new video in multiple places across the forum.

The reusing content was just reusing the same old video from previous videos and talking about the same things. Technically they were new videos but the video of the riders was old and the topic was already discussed. I understand he was trying to keep busy during the recovery. I think if he had just kept it to his mega thread, it would have been fine. I subscribed to the mega thread and watched a lot of his stuff.
 
Maybe, maybe not. If someone was putting raw numbers in the face of potential buyers, it couldn't hurt to lump in the lower levels, too.
I suppose they could do that but the folks making the purchase decisions will know the difference.
 
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