21 replies to this topic

[Risil]

Happy new year, everyone!

Around this time last year we decided to try and do something different with how to organize the season-long threads tracking the performance of teams and teammates. Until 2019 we generally got by with two threads per team: a spicy “Driver vs Driver” thread rating and comparing each team’s two drivers, and a “car thread” ostensibly about the design, performance etc of the cars themselves. The difficulty we found, both from comments on the board and from reports and PMs, was that conversations about team management, strategy, operations etc ended up in the car threads too, which, when heated, sometimes drowned out technical discussion that couldn’t easily be had elsewhere.

So for 2019 we tried a different tack, with driver vs driver threads expanded to include discussion of the other human elements of management, strategy and team personnel, and technical threads hopefully remaining a place to discuss the harder engineering stuff. I’m interested to know whether you think we’ve achieved anything with this, and whether the drawbacks outweigh the benefits.

Please try to be constructive – naturally there’s no perfect way of organizing our Forever Threads so please think about what you would like from the forum as well as what’s not working. Equally if you think everything is OK and we’re getting het up about nothing then that’s valuable information too.

Thanks for reading! Comment below, if you like.

[Anja]

Didn't really work for me. To be honest they made me wish even more that there was just one thread for each team with both the car and drivers discussion - which obviously has its own drawbacks so there's no perfect solution. I didn't frequent all the teams' threads but out of those I've seen, I feel like the discussions were often repeating and touching on the same subjects between both threads and it was kinda confusing and messy at times, more so than ever before. 

Edited by Anja, 12 January 2020 - 17:30.

[Marklar]

I think both are better than before.

The formerly driver vs. driver threads feel less frustrating now, because you can now throw in more different topics in there when a discussion is running in circles. It's anyway hard to discuss driver battles without including team politics and such (which were previously in the Car thread), so I think that's a great change.

Same really for the Technical Threads, previously they got polluted too much by stuff carrying over from the driver thread. It's still the case, but nowhere near as much.

Now there are some problems still. I still think that they are sometimes hard to distinguish on first sight, and even if the mods have tried their best by giving the team threads more individual names I still dont think that it's optimal. It may need to be a bit more consistent, while all Technical Threads are called "Team X Technical Thread" the Team Threads vary pretty strongly from naming all drivers, the team boss or nobody at all. Perhaps that could be improved.

Another issue is also that it's not always easy to tell what belongs were. Sure, it seems straight forward when you say Technical stuff belongs to the Tech thread, drivers, staff, etc to the team thread. But what are you doing if things overlap? Is Sebastian Vettel struggling with his car and Ferrari trying to cure it with a new upgrade still correct for the team thread or should that be for the Tech thread? Or both?

I dont know if it's just my impression but I feel like the traffic has decreased since the change. I dont know if it's just because people are confused now or because it's the natural process of social media draining the traffic from forums, but it might be.

[Afterburner]

Now there are some problems still. I still think that they are sometimes hard to distinguish on first sight, and even if the mods have tried their best by giving the team threads more individual names I still dont think that it's optimal. It may need to be a bit more consistent, while all Technical Threads are called "Team X Technical Thread" the Team Threads vary pretty strongly from naming all drivers, the team boss or nobody at all. Perhaps that could be improved.

Touching on this, to anyone: how about putting [Team] or [Technical] in front of topics related to teams/drivers? Too impersonal?

[Sterzo]

It's definitely been an improvement. Preceding the title with 'Technical' would probably help, perhaps even going further by saying "Strictly for technical discussions of the cars" and moderating accordingly.

 

Shortening the title of the Team Personnel and Drivers thread would be better, now we've had a year to get used to the division. They're a bit like an eighteenth century novel title at present.

[TomNokoe]

Fine. I've always thought this place was a little too heavily moderated, but I think there's probably a reason for that RIP Driver Threads   

 

Honestly, fine. All good. No problemo.

[KWSN - DSM]

Threads are what they are, they become what they become - I would suggest one single thread for each time, include drivers, tech, management and incidentals one single place, it is one team after all.

 

[mangeliiito]

I wished on many occasions there was just one thread, and like the Mclaren one was almost all the discussion held in the car thread. It might be a lot too dig through, but I would rather have one thread for the whole team and then if something big happens it gets it's own thread.

[hansmann]

I think it didn't make that much of a difference .

 

There still were basically the team/technical threads and the driver vs. driver threads, regardless of the thread titles .

With some teams more than with others, but that is my impression .

 

It's a good thing to split the two, though, and maybe going back to a clearly labeled driver vs. driver topic can avoid spilling the heat generated there into the more mature techical/team discussion .

[Beri]

I understand the reasoning as why the threads were separated. But the annoying bit was some discussions going on in the driver vs driver threads that should have been in the technical thread and otherwise around. I, myself, am to blame for a part of this happening at times as well. But it was the nature of the discussion at times that made this happen. Also at times I had to scroll back in both threads team/drivers of the team to find back the loose ends on the discussion where I left off.
Perhaps there is no perfect solution. But to me confining the discussions into one thread would make it a lot more easy to follow.

Edited by Beri, 15 January 2020 - 08:58.

[mangeliiito]

Can't we do an spilt between announcements and discussion? 2 threads for each team - one where you post links and news and one for discussion. In that way, no news gets lost in the chatter but you don't have to read through 2 threads to follow the discussion. Works well for another forum I'm on.

[absinthedude]

I think  it works.

[enjoyingRBR]

I think both are better than before.

The formerly driver vs. driver threads feel less frustrating now, because you can now throw in more different topics in there when a discussion is running in circles. It's anyway hard to discuss driver battles without including team politics and such (which were previously in the Car thread), so I think that's a great change.

Same really for the Technical Threads, previously they got polluted too much by stuff carrying over from the driver thread. It's still the case, but nowhere near as much.

Now there are some problems still. I still think that they are sometimes hard to distinguish on first sight, and even if the mods have tried their best by giving the team threads more individual names I still dont think that it's optimal. It may need to be a bit more consistent, while all Technical Threads are called "Team X Technical Thread" the Team Threads vary pretty strongly from naming all drivers, the team boss or nobody at all. Perhaps that could be improved.

Another issue is also that it's not always easy to tell what belongs were. Sure, it seems straight forward when you say Technical stuff belongs to the Tech thread, drivers, staff, etc to the team thread. But what are you doing if things overlap? Is Sebastian Vettel struggling with his car and Ferrari trying to cure it with a new upgrade still correct for the team thread or should that be for the Tech thread? Or both?

I dont know if it's just my impression but I feel like the traffic has decreased since the change. I dont know if it's just because people are confused now or because it's the natural process of social media draining the traffic from forums, but it might be.

Agree, would really want to see names like:
“Mercedes technical” and “Mclaren personnal"

Instead of “Red Bull................ oh yes and Gasly was there too”

I like the way it works, dont like the thread names

[pacificquay]

I prefer individual threads on individual news lines or discussion points rather than these catch all ones. Makes the forum seem fresher and if a point is not engaging it simply falls away. Too many here see starting a new thread as a cardinal sin.

[PayasYouRace]

As far as thread titles go I'm fine either way, but I'd like to see members who are fans of the teams take a bit of ownership and start appropriate threads and name them as such, with an engaging and rewarding OP.

 

The reason we had some silly thread titles last year was because it ended up being mainly on us to create each thread and writing "x team thread 2019" for each one gets tedious.

[DeKnyff]

I think people (including myself) posted indistinctly on both, without really being aware on which one they were. So, at the end of the day, having two threads per team was a bit pointless.

 

As others suggested before, I'd prefer a less rigid thread structure.

[SophieB]

I prefer individual threads on individual news lines or discussion points rather than these catch all ones. Makes the forum seem fresher and if a point is not engaging it simply falls away. Too many here see starting a new thread as a cardinal sin.

 

I agree with this. The paucity of new threads creates further issues too - their comparative rarity means the new threads that *are* created get their existence questioned if they are possibly a bit trivial, contentious or about something a popular driver has said/done.

 

Yet trivial, contentious or threads about popular drivers allow people to jump back into discussions.

[Marklar]

I find it odd that only 15 users have voted after nearly three weeks, hardly representative. Cant be only the fact that less people are around at this time of the year, since the activity of some other threads indicate that far more regulars are online. Bit of an seperate issue here but I sometimes wonder whether pinning topics is always achieving what is desired....

[mangeliiito]

I find it odd that only 15 users have voted after nearly three weeks, hardly representative. Cant be only the fact that less people are around at this time of the year, since the activity of some other threads indicate that far more regulars are online. Bit of an seperate issue here but I sometimes wonder whether pinning topics is always achieving what is desired....

Yes, the pinned one are easily missed. Took me a while to notice it.

[Risil]

I dont know if it's just my impression but I feel like the traffic has decreased since the change. I dont know if it's just because people are confused now or because it's the natural process of social media draining the traffic from forums, but it might be.

We could probably put some numbers to this but it's undoubtedly true that the team politics at Red Bull, McLaren and Mercedes were less intense than at other points in this decade. The forum can't claim credit for that!

The only real points of anger and controversy in 2019 were instances of stewarding malarkey involving Ferrari drivers.

[Risil]

OK -- looking at the feedback we've decided we'll keep with the current format but dial in the wacky names for the team threads. Thanks for participating everyone. As always, ideas, observations and criticism are welcome, please PM them our way.

 

I also want to echo Pacificquay and SophieB that Racing Comments will be a more dynamic and interesting place with more and varied threads, even if some of them die after 5 posts. So don't be shy! If you come across something that is racing-related and newsworthy, please make a topic about it!

[Otaku]

For me, it was way worse. I much prefer to have all the info in just 1 thread, but I see people don't agree so...