Has anyone seen ToSlow? | Page 2 | GTAMotorcycle.com

Has anyone seen ToSlow?

My guess is this forum fade to black in a couple of years. It's a motorcycle forum... without a lot of motorcycle content.

The most popular threads are usually about Politics, what you're listening to, eating or doing to your house. Not about motorcycles or motorcycling.

A young motorcyclist looking around for community, rides, advice, farkling, and great motorcycle stories won't find much here. We see the odd "Hi, Im so excited about my first bike!!! And glad I found this place!!!" then ... crickets. You can find some tech help, but that too has been taken over by -- YouTube.
 
Lightcycle said:
That's exactly the thing. This forum skews heavily left and it's no surprise that the first people to jump ship are right-leaners.
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I’m not sure that GTAM for the most part is heavily (far?) left leaning. Many of us are central with light to moderate left leanings.
Most of the right leaners seem to be much farther to the end of that spectrum. I could very well be wrong, but just my point of view.
 
Can you imagine what it would be like if we still had to sit in front of a computer to view and respond like it was in 2005 when I joined.

My bike specific forum R1200R (R1250R) has really good participation for a very low volume model but has world wide participation and lots of interesting perspectives globally.

On small forums, the moderator truly has to be one and needs to contribute and sometimes lead the discussion and not just be a referee.

The All- in-0ne-forums like Reddit have no appeal as is never specific enough.
 
Mad Mike said:
My guess is this forum fade to black in a couple of years. It's a motorcycle forum... without a lot of motorcycle content.

The most popular threads are usually about Politics, what you're listening to, eating or doing to your house. Not about motorcycles or motorcycling.

A young motorcyclist looking around for community, rides, advice, farkling, and great motorcycle stories won't find much here. We see the odd "Hi, Im so excited about my first bike!!! And glad I found this place!!!" then ... crickets. You can find some tech help, but that too has been taken over by -- YouTube.
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Hence the Romper Room, which is spacifically for non bike talk.
The other bike sections still seem healthy.. but going into winter, chatter there will of course die down significantly.
 
Mad Mike said:
My guess is this forum fade to black in a couple of years. It's a motorcycle forum... without a lot of motorcycle content.

The most popular threads are usually about Politics, what you're listening to, eating or doing to your house. Not about motorcycles or motorcycling.

A young motorcyclist looking around for community, rides, advice, farkling, and great motorcycle stories won't find much here. We see the odd "Hi, Im so excited about my first bike!!! And glad I found this place!!!" then ... crickets. You can find some tech help, but that too has been taken over by -- YouTube.I
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I think some of the excitement is deflated by some of the suggestions given by some seasoned members or motorcycle riders on here. As wise as the suggestion is to go with a smaller bike vs the xxxRRRRRRR they have been dreaming of, they may be discouraged and don't participate on the forum.

As for YouTube.
When some members ask for tech help, they are often given a short description of what to do or not to do but ultimately they are pointed to wonderful video encyclopedia aka YouTube,.
 
Really not liking the general motorcycle Facebook groups, they're kind of spammy and have that international center bike show flea market vibe.

Facebook is good for bike specific groups though (troubleshooting etc)

Forums are much more organized.
 
regder said:
Speaking of missing people, I wonder about Chinese characters guy, hope he’s doing alright.
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I think what's missing here is the occasional newsletter. A lot of formerly active members would almost certainly join in again if they received a little poke (IE, a newsletter with some links to current threads etc) to remind them about the place. People get busy, ride a lot, whatever...and after not logging in for a month or three, they may legit just forget about things..

If there was a newsletter I suspect traffic would go up significantly as old members would see an interesting thread in the newsletter, click it, and get back into the groove.

It's something that perhaps @Paul could consider.

On the topic of Verticalscope as someone mentioned earlier...I used to admin a VS forum. In it's heydey it was massive, and insanely busy. About 150,000 members at the time (I see it's over 200K now but I suspect a lot of those accounts are spambot accounts that were deleted but just left to inflate the numbers) and epic amounts of posts.

When VS bought it things stayed the same in some regards, and changed in others. We were left to operate the forum mostly as we saw fit, but the advertising went off the charts, and we did *not* have much input on that. We had quite a bit of leeway as admins, but core features of the forum were locked out after the takeover, and we'd have to either ask permission and have someone at their office make said change, or just get told "no"...or sometimes just ignored. There was plusses and negatives - the server they moved us to was a drastic improvement, and we had access to 24/7 emergency resources, but it wasn't all ideal.

Anyhow..
 
Forums are at lot like life. When young its fun and everybody is your friend. You do stupid things and everybody just laughs and moves on. You want to learn/try pretty much everything. Getting older you meet more and more people, some good, some bad. You tend to gravitate to those you know or get along with and ignore those you dont. When old you have a few close friends and limited interests that you focus on. Then you die.
 
PrivatePilot said:
I think what's missing here is the occasional newsletter. A lot of formerly active members would almost certainly join in again if they received a little poke (IE, a newsletter with some links to current threads etc) to remind them about the place. People get busy, ride a lot, whatever...and after not logging in for a month or three, they may legit just forget about things..

If there was a newsletter I suspect traffic would go up significantly as old members would see an interesting thread in the newsletter, click it, and get back into the groove.

It's something that perhaps @Paul could consider.

On the topic of Verticalscope as someone mentioned earlier...I used to admin a VS forum. In it's heydey it was massive, and insanely busy. About 150,000 members at the time (I see it's over 200K now but I suspect a lot of those accounts are spambot accounts that were deleted but just left to inflate the numbers) and epic amounts of posts.

When VS bought it things stayed the same in some regards, and changed in others. We were left to operate the forum mostly as we saw fit, but the advertising went off the charts, and we did *not* have much input on that. We had quite a bit of leeway as admins, but core features of the forum were locked out after the takeover, and we'd have to either ask permission and have someone at their office make said change, or just get told "no"...or sometimes just ignored. There was plusses and negatives - the server they moved us to was a drastic improvement, and we had access to 24/7 emergency resources, but it wasn't all ideal.

Anyhow..
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That could work as well to attract some back in. However I think there might be something like this set up. When I was away from the forum when I wasn't riding I did see an email every so often that would tell me "here is what you missed while you were away". I can't say how often that was as I didn't really pay attention to it much, but I do recall it.

Also, I am not sure why this is but I find that the email notifications don't seem to be working all to well either. (at least for me).

There are some threads that I do not get an email notification for, even though the are active thread and I have participated in them. This might be a glitch of some sort and may also contribute to users forgetting about the forum. (I think I may have "unwatched" 1 thread out of all the ones I participated in. )
 
bigpoppa said:
Really not liking the general motorcycle Facebook groups, they're kind of spammy and have that international center bike show flea market vibe.

Facebook is good for bike specific groups though (troubleshooting etc)

Forums are much more organized.
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Exactly.
 
Interesting timing for this thread. The bike-specific forum (tracer900.net) that I check on a regular basis is currently offline...looks like maybe the admin didn’t renew the domain name or something dumb. I joined GTAM years and years ago...I vanished for years as I spent more time on various bike-related forums. But I’ve re-discovered it and am really enjoying it. I’m ok with the smaller core group of posters - you get to know personalities a bit. I mean, I read every @crankcall post. I’m not being facetious!
I’m also still a member of an old school mailing list (OntVFR) and I haven’t owned a VFR since 2009...and I think the majority of members are the same. The camaraderie and fellowship are a big deal...especially over the last few years when we’ve all been isolated.
 
robertv19 said:
Interesting timing for this thread. The bike-specific forum (tracer900.net) that I check on a regular basis is currently offline...looks like maybe the admin didn’t renew the domain name or something dumb. I joined GTAM years and years ago...I vanished for years as I spent more time on various bike-related forums. But I’ve re-discovered it and am really enjoying it. I’m ok with the smaller core group of posters - you get to know personalities a bit. I mean, I read every @crankcall post. I’m not being facetious!
I’m also still a member of an old school mailing list (OntVFR) and I haven’t owned a VFR since 2009...and I think the majority of members are the same. The camaraderie and fellowship are a big deal...especially over the last few years when we’ve all been isolated.
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Saw you on there when I was interested in the Tracer. Maybe I will visit again sometime in the future. For now its GTAM and Stromtrooper
 
I was intro'd to the GTAM forum by a gent going by the name "Plumber Butt", had my first group ride captained by another forum member that has also vanished, met Paul and Cutekill at the Jan motorcycle show a couple of years back.

The GTAM camaraderie and willingness to help is awesome.
Would GTAM group rides help with raising interest?
Couple of years back I went on a GTAM end-of-season ride, there must have been at least 50-60 riders on all types of bikes!
 
Chris-CJ said:
I was intro'd to the GTAM forum by a gent going by the name "Plumber Butt", had my first group ride captained by another forum member that has also vanished, met Paul and Cutekill at the Jan motorcycle show a couple of years back.

The GTAM camaraderie and willingness to help is awesome.
Would GTAM group rides help with raising interest?
Couple of years back I went on a GTAM end-of-season ride, there must have been at least 50-60 riders on all types of bikes!
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My feeling is any community needs to constantly look for engagement to keep more than a hardcore group engaged. I used to belong to a few meetup groups, one in particular had an active leader who arranged a variety of great afternoon, day, weekend and even multiday trips. They catered to new and experienced riders - come one, come all. On several occasions, guys with wrenching experience helped other with their bike troubles.

Some were well off riding shiny new bikes, others needed to carry wire, quickstart and duct tape in the panniers of their 20 year old S40s. Everybody had fun - the common interest was getting out for a ride, the glue was the leader.

When the leader passed away a couple of years ago, the group dies with him. I kinda miss that.

Ive been on a few rides with GTAM members, but not many. I'd enjoy more of those -- there are lots of us who post great solo rides, maybe next a thread with a ride calendar would attract a few more into the community.
 
Chris-CJ said:
I was intro'd to the GTAM forum by a gent going by the name "Plumber Butt", had my first group ride captained by another forum member that has also vanished, met Paul and Cutekill at the Jan motorcycle show a couple of years back
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I was intro-ed to GTAM by another user on the old GStwin forum (OMG, I just checked, it's still up!) Another user on there saw that I was from Toronto and told me I should join GTAM. I asked her what a GTAM was...

I eventually met her IRL (keloran, for anyone that remembers), as well as a whole bunch of other GTAMers. Around the time I joined there were these massive meets all over the city, where pretty much all the active members would ride to a spot, eat and hang out, then go for rides after. We're talking 50-60 people each week. It made the board a really homey place to hang out. Someone would post something and you could immediately put a name and face to the message on the board as if they were saying it out loud. That was nice.

The people I met in those days I still see regularly. Some of them have become life-long friends; we've hung out at each other's homes, gone on overnight and weekend rides with them, some have even flown or ridden across the country to visit us here in BC. Funny coincidence - keloran and her husband just spent a week hanging at our place last month. But most of those OGGTAMers have long moved on from GTAM, though.

The board has changed quite a bit from those days. I still know quite a lot of GTAMers who are still hanging around here. In fact, I know 3-4 people IRL on this thread alone. But nowhere close to its heyday. Now, I think the anonymity of it all makes people overly bold and a little too snippy to each other. Things are said that you wouldn't otherwise say to someone who you know IRL.

It's still a nice place to hang out though, and most of it is due to the excellent moderation. The tone set by Paul, Ric and Brian have really contributed to this welcoming atmosphere. A big shout-out and thanks to them for keeping this place running so smoothly.

Anyways, enough of this nostalgic rambling... back to your regularly scheduled programming...
 
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oioioi said:
When some members ask for tech help, they are often given a short description of what to do or not to do,.
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You just need to post a link to the Maintenance for Noobs 101 thread. (Axel) problem solved.


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Lightcycle said:
I was intro-ed to GTAM by another user on the old GStwin forum (OMG, I just checked, it's still up!) Another user on there saw that I was from Toronto and told me I should join GTAM. I asked her what a GTAM was...

I eventually met her IRL (keloran, for anyone that remembers), as well as a whole bunch of other GTAMers. Around the time I joined there were these massive meets all over the city, where pretty much all the active members would ride to a spot, eat and hang out, then go for rides after. We're talking 50-60 people each week. It made the board a really homey place to hang out. Someone would post something and you could immediately put a name and face to the message on the board as if they were saying it out loud. That was nice.

The people I met in those days I still see regularly. Some of them have become life-long friends; we've hung out at each other's homes, gone on overnight and weekend rides with them, some have even flown or ridden across the country to visit us here in BC. Funny coincidence - keloran and her husband just spent a week hanging at our place last month. But most of those OGGTAMers have long moved on from GTAM, though.

The board has changed quite a bit from those days. I still know quite a lot of GTAMers who are still hanging around here. In fact, I know 3-4 people IRL on this thread alone. But nowhere close to its heyday. Now, I think the anonymity of it all makes people overly bold and a little too snippy to each other. Things are said that you wouldn't otherwise say to someone who you know IRL.

It's still a nice place to hang out though, and most of it is due to the excellent moderation. The tone set by Paul, Ric and Brian have really contributed to this welcoming atmosphere. A big shout-out and thanks to them for keeping this place running so smoothly.

Anyways, enough of this nostalgic rambling... back to your regularly scheduled programming...
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Very generous of you Gene. Thanks.
Fyi,ToSlow has been reinstated as a member and is welcome any time he wants.
 
He reached out to me a while ago asking whether he was banned or not, and I couldn't find an example of it or what could've caused it at the time.

I think he just got fed up and felt he was being attacked personally. Not sure. We only emailed a few times briefly, and I met him in person when he picked up the usb/lighter charger that I picked up for a few members late last year. Nice guy and we had some laughs during a brief chat.
 
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