Restructuring the F1 Car subforum

[Steven]

The popularity of the site and the availability of online images means we can now see much more of the cars than ever before. While this is a fantastic opportunity it also means conversations about features of the cars gets lost among the pictures.

After some discussion among the mods and a few other members, we’re proposing that members set up individual threads to discuss parts of the car, you could think of these as “hardware” conversations. This approach also improves visibly of generic topics (ie exhaust packaging) that are often hidden in a car thread. The result will be more topics that will be shorter and more focussed. Examples of “hardware” conversations include:

• Mercedes AMG W05 – Front wing
• McLaren MP4-29 – Rear suspension
• Lotus E22 – Split Nose
• Exhaust routing comparison

To emphasize this change, and still maintain the technical nature of the car related discussions, the car subforum has been renamed to "F1 Car Hardware & Development". Hopefully that'll highlight that it's not the place to list lap times, worship a driver, or call for the TP to be fired. It is now positioned on the main forum, rather than as a forum underneath the General Chat.

Along with these changes that do move us towards a blog style, more features and modifications within the site are coming up in the next few weeks, all of which are based on user input gathered in recent months. In the meantime, we will help you with this change where help is needed and look forward to your feedback!

[Just_a_fan]

Interesting change. I fear it won't improve clarity/accessibility but hope to be proved wrong.

To explain my fear: I can see each car having dozens of sub threads about each part of the car. It's already difficult enough for forum members to keep track of each aspect of each car and it must be hugely difficult for the mods to have to keep merging and pruning the existing threads. I hope I'm wrong.

Well done for trying to do some to ease the current free-for-all =D>

I would say that I think most technically-inclined forum members would be welcoming of a much harder line being taken on off-topic wibble (driver X is great, etc.) in the technical threads. New members (and some old members too!) need to understand the difference between technical and chat / yin-yan.

[stefan_]

Great to see that you guys are constantly thinking about how to improve the forum. I must admit it's a good idea, but I'm afraid it's just that - it sounds good, but I think there's a lot of chance of chaos to be created and people to get really lost in discussions taking place in different threads, because on a "W05 front wing" thread for example you can't make people not drift away in other discussions, as the FW interacts with the suspension, bargeboards and finally the diffuser - that can be another separate thread.

Finally, and probably it's just me here - I don't think I will have the time to sort out and place the pictures/updates (as I always do) in their separate thread, as I presume the most known cars and the ones we get the most pictures of (W05, F14T, E22, MP4-29) will be split into many "subthreads" for different parts and it will be very time consuming. And not just for me I think, but also for the people wanting to read about that car and being kind of forced to browse different threads.

Anyway, thanks for the good work you guys are doing for this forum. Keep it coming and we'll see what happens.

[jagunx51]

Great to see that you guys are constantly thinking about how to improve the forum. I must admit it's a good idea, but I'm afraid it's just that - it sounds good, but I think there's a lot of chance of chaos to be created and people to get really lost in discussions taking place in different threads, because on a "W05 front wing" thread for example you can't make people not drift away in other discussions, as the FW interacts with the suspension, bargeboards and finally the diffuser - that can be another separate thread.

Finally, and probably it's just me here - I don't think I will have the time to sort out and place the pictures/updates (as I always do) in their separate thread, as I presume the most known cars and the ones we get the most pictures of (W05, F14T, E22, MP4-29) will be split into many "subthreads" for different parts and it will be very time consuming. And not just for me I think, but also for the people wanting to read about that car and being kind of forced to browse different threads.

Agree .....even discussing W05 can also related to other merc powered cars.

imho, considering there are so many F1 car parts, does it mean we will have so many threads ?
let say,
- Red Bull RB10 - Front Wing Adjustment Screw
- Red Bull RB10 - Rear Wing Adjustment Screw
- Red Bull RB10 - Front Suspension Adjustment Screw
- Red Bull RB10 - Rear Suspension Adjustment Screw, etc.

So far, this forum format is Okay to me

[Steven]

... Finally, and probably it's just me here - I don't think I will have the time to sort out and place the pictures/updates (as I always do) in their separate thread, as I presume the most known cars and the ones we get the most pictures of (W05, F14T, E22, MP4-29) will be split into many "subthreads" for different parts and it will be very time consuming. And not just for me I think, but also for the people wanting to read about that car and being kind of forced to browse different threads.

Anyway, thanks for the good work you guys are doing for this forum. Keep it coming and we'll see what happens.

For clarity, you can continue to post your pictures in the existing car threads, as this is usually about the car in general. People willing to discuss specific things should see to include a picture themselves where appropriate. I'd like to reiterate though that everyone should pay attention to give credit where it is due.

The general car threads right now are incredibly long, and for the most popular ones simply too long to be easy to read for anyone who isn't on the forum each single day. This change attempts to create some clarity in the chaos by having separate threads. There sure are enough posts for that

Also, it's been considered before to rename the general car threads as picture threads, but for now we opted against that as the threads still allow discussion. We'll see how things go and decide on changes as we move on.

... Considering there are so many F1 car parts, does it mean we will have so many threads ?
let say,
- Red Bull RB10 - Front Wing Adjustment Screw
- Red Bull RB10 - Rear Wing Adjustment Screw
- Red Bull RB10 - Front Suspension Adjustment Screw
- Red Bull RB10 - Rear Suspension Adjustment Screw, etc.

So far, this forum format is Okay to me

Perhaps that is stretching it a bit too far, but time will tell how this pans out. I would think that the front wing adjustment screw can go in the front wing thread, etc.

[Emerson.F]

Personally i think its a bad idea.. When we discuss a car we wont JUST discuss the new rear suspension or JUST the frontwing. Its going to get messy..

[FoxHound]

It will be overkill imo.

The problem I see occuring is for eg. RB10 front wing.
The wing influences the whole car, would any mention made of developments behind the wing to make use of the airflow be off topic?

[turbof1]

It will be overkill imo.

The problem I see occuring is for eg. RB10 front wing.
The wing influences the whole car, would any mention made of developments behind the wing to make use of the airflow be off topic?

We will give some leeway on this. A mention that it has influence on this or that stays on topic of course, as long as it comes from the object that is the topic.

I know it's quite a balancing act, but it's nothing we haven't done before - in the past Richard for instance cut off the lotus drag reduction device from the main lotus topic. That went down very well.

We also will do this gradually - if an interesting discussion pops up at the car thread, we'll seperate this. Smaller discussions will stay at the car thread. No need to dig through the car threads to search for interesting but also expired discussions.

Just stay open for it people. We'll see how it goes.

[Dragonfly]

Yes, detaching an emerging separate topic from a general one at moderators' discretion is a better approach IMO.

[SiLo]

This sounds like over complication. Real discussions ebb and flow and they always get destroyed by mods who come rampaging in claiming 'You aren't talking specifically about something on the car in a technical manner' even when the discussion allows it and requires it.

I can see this creating a huge headache for the mods because people don't want to have to look around for the thread where they want to talk about things. It will also increase post numbers vastly by separating one post about 4 things into 4 posts about 1 thing. Wrong move IMO - but feel free to prove me wrong and I'll eat my proverbial hat.

[bobster30]

I don't think this is a good idea.. I don't really post often but i like to read everything, but i think it's getting very unorganised this way.

[NewtonMeter]

I'm sorry, but I don't like it.

In my opinion as user, the discussion is over regulated as it is on this site. Before every single post, you need to weight up wether the a post belongs in a team thread or car thread and the lines are becoming more vague by the day. Therefore, posting on other forums are a lot simpler and frankly more enjoyable because you aren't nannied as much.

It just seems that if so many posts need to be moved and warnings given all the time, that maybe the users of the forum find the post catagories (car vs. team) unintuitive. And from a usability perspecitive, an unintuitive design is a bad design.

This change will make it even worse. IMHO ofcoursre.

[turbof1]

There's a reason why we have such a tuff policy: a lot of our members are engineers, tech journalists, have experience in aerodynamics or are just very interested in the technical side of f1. Infact, that's what made our community that big and stand out from the rest: the technical expertise. I'm sure that's why most people actually joined as members.

But it's a doubled edge sword: we became victim of our own popularity. A lot of people actually complain about the constant off topic discussions. A few years ago a typical car thread would just be 10 pages. Today we easily go up to 50x that. Those 10 pages back then were only technical talk. Today we have the same or even better technical analyses, but they are simply lost in all of the discussions going criss cross through eachother.

Moreover, we have so much availability to info. a race weekend brings easily a thousand pictures nowadays. Discussions about that info just can't be done anymore in one single thread/car.

We act very stringent on off topic discussions, we know that, but I feel the members should do their part as well. There's nothing complicated whatsoever about team talk in the team thread and car talk in the car thread. This way we atleast safeguard that managerial aspects are seperated from actual technical aspects. Could you guys even realise if we didn't intervene? people that contributed the most wouldn't be bothered anymore and just leave. Eventually such a thing would kill off the community.

You guys should atleast gives this a chance. Yes this looks like a big change, but I think it's not big a deal to get used to. We'll listen to anyone who has comments, remarks or critical reception, but first you should actually experience it before starting to complain. Then we can see further.

[Postmoe]

I feel this change difficults having a quick look on upgrades. I'm not interested in looking for different pics in different posts: it's stupid, counterintuitive and implies several clicks and tabs for understanding and speaking about the same thing.

F1technical is gonna look and feel like a bad ERP.

I enjoy looking for upgrades when taking a little break at work. Now it's gonna be harder for me.

I would rather ban the pompous and absolutelly fake technical comments about terrible team management and doomed projects. No need for changes in teh structure of the forum.

[GrizzleBoy]

It does make sense to do this for the sake of technical discussion integrity, but I hope it doesn't segregate users too much.

I don't have a huge interest in some aspects of the cars, but I always enjoyed and learned from the different discussions that went on in the car threads. If I have to make a conscious effort to enter a multitude of threads, per car, I feel I might miss out on things that in the past would have been freely discussed in one place.

But that's just my opinion/thoughts. Maybe my lack of effort is the problem

Edit:
Please hurry with the changes. I'm already having withdrawal symptoms. Its Thursday. I need to satisfy my painted carbon fibre fetish!