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Originally Posted by LimeRockRacer
Ok....I have to chime in...not sure I want to be in the "old guard" category though...prefer " younger getting older middle something or another"....
I vote to go back to Team Juicy Racing as our web site name and address. True enough some of our esteemed northeastern founders exist but the site was never eastern only. I believe our quest to garner approval and participation from the Series mgt. Has diluted the freedom of expression on this site. TJR has stickiness and and certain amount of humor and irreverence. We have become way too PC and I think that is one overriding reason the site has lost some activity. Certainly the amount of racing for some has decreased due to the obvious economic issues.
True enough Aaron and George's ban on instructor participation started the whole process and I believe Michael is more open to what his customers think. In the end this site should not be about keeping series mgt. Happy. It should be a forum for friends and like minded people to share communicate and learn. If the harsh reality of what series participants say is hard to hear at times mgt can decide whether they want to participate and listen to the free feedback or to ignore it.
Harsha's point about the friendly trash talking and jabbing is completely gone now. No one wants to do race recaps anymore for lots of reasons. I think one of the reasons is because the hassle of possibly offending some one by failing to mention them or saying the wrong thing makes it not worth the effort.
There are tons of intelligent and witty personalities in this community. Let's get them back to voicing whatever
it is they want to say. We need to get back to having fun and not being so sensitive about how someone feels or what they post. Until this happens the site will continue to decline.
The new instructor only site seems to be a mistake to me. I do not see many instructors posting anymore on the general site. If they need to communicate privately then they cam PM or e mail. Lets blend them back in. They are sorely missed.
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Part of the problem is many of us are doing a lot less racing or none at all, that means fewer people chiming in about race weekends, writing race reports, sharing stories after weekends. There are far more lurkers than posters here, always have been, not sure why. Plenty of people reading, few writing. I doubt that concern of offending anyone in Lakeville is much of a factor though. Why less barbed jabbing each other? No idea, different mix of posters as others have said. When macdod, amok, porkchop, sydude, etc were all active there was a lot more of that going on, I miss it too. Agree on instructor only forum....to be honest I have forgotten all about it, should can it.
I do believe Facebook is a big factor, there is more posting on an hourly basis there among SB people than we see in a typical week, much of it race related, any topic is open, fair amount of jabbing too, a lot of fun. And the Burger forum (which is really fun) is where many instructors go, they have race series pools and that is a draw, and I think they like having a place to play that is completely removed from SB - this relates to your TJR vs SF name Chris, they don't worry about offending customers (or mngmnt) there, they want their own place to play, tough to get around that. This site is primarily about the SBRS, the number of customers is down and that means less activity here. It is a small pond we fish in even in up economic times, but I don't think trying to draw in other series drivers is the answer. How do we draw in MX5 drivers?
So what do we do to open this up more? Been asking that for 6 years, my guess is things will stay as they have been. One thought I have had and never acted on is just printing up biz cars with the SF URL on them and having a pile of them on the hospitality table near where the results are put. Anyone want to do this? I have spent many, many hours this past week working on the next Mech Fund T-shirts, not complaining but more volunteers for this kind of task would be welcome