Update EM site/forum? Specific ideas.
 

This is a little presumptive of me, but I want to create this thread to crowd source SPECIFIC & WORKABLE ideas and resources for updating the EM site/forums if the owners wanted to update it. (I am not an owner, btw, I am just a 10-year member making myself very comfortable, lol.)

What are your ideas for software, content, organization, appearance...?

The inspiration for this thread comes from discussion today on the "Is ecomodder dying/dead?" thread.

A change (very minor) I suggest would be to the description of ecomodding so it is less narrowly about ICE drivetrains only but might also include EVs and such...

Current language below the ecomodder.com banner:
A suggested modest revision (my changes shown in bold):
Very minor, but there are bigger ideas... your thoughts?

Truck forum and and electric car forum.

It'd be nice to be able to sort pictures and move them from album to album. But that would depend on how they are stored and referenced.

Every YouTube video embedded in the site has the full screen button disabled.

Easily the most irritating thing about the site. Other vBulletin forums don't do this, only ecomodder.

EV forum...

There is a "Fossil Fuel Free" forum, but I agree that the should be a separate EV forum or sub-forum. EV technology seems to be quite different than stuff like biodiesel.

Truck forum...

I also agree there should be a separate truck forum. There's a big difference in modifying a people (person) hauling car and a vehicle designed to haul firewood, lumber and fire going off-road.

Could put the Truck forum under the Unicorn Corral

Haha. But seriously, lots of people NEED trucks for work. A forum for ecomodding trucks could include things like the buy a trailer thread, EV conversions, and ways to make them more economical and cleaner. Importantly, it might also bring new members with know how and interest in more ecological transportation. I see nothing but wins. And the aerocap threads and prius truck threads have been awesome.

I'd be posting stuff like this:

https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-f...15444m0g-0.jpg

Do you get paid to post air-cooled VW content? :D

If I made money I'd have to pay taxes so I don't. (Actually I could rake in $10K before it triggers a liability. Who should I talk to? :))

https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-f...4-100-1057.jpg

Teniendo en cuenta que hay un subfórum francés, quizás otro en español iba a ser una buena idea. Creo que no soy ni de lejos el único latino en el fórum :D


Even though both approaches aim to a "fossil fuel free" goal, maybe a dedicated separated space for biofuels could also cater to those looking into ethanol for instance, also eventually making them more comfortable to make it clearer when there is a more performance-oriented intention.

It runs the risk of becoming like ecorenovator.org/forum/. Which spun off from Saving@Home in 2008.

I recognize three name from the last 24 hours. Whelp -- compare with
At this moment they have about half the lurkers Ecomodder has. So maybe...?

¡Me descubriste! También estoy disponible para participar en un subforo en español.

The more sub-forums you have, the more difficult it is to decide which forum to post in or to search. For example:
So if you have converted a truck (whatever that is) to be an EV it should go into the trucks forum. By the same logic, if you have converted a car to be an EV it should go in a cars forum. What then would go into an EV forum? Only vehicles that started life as an EV?
Or someone wanting information about EV conversions might search the EV forum and miss EV conversions of trucks because those topics are in the trucks forum.

Personally I ignore all sub forums and just look at new postings regardless of which forum they are in.

True. There is a lot of overlap.

I would still think EV conversions would go in an EV forum.

I guess I'm just bothered by the number of full sized pickup and SUV owners coming onto the site wanting to get 40mpg out of their behemoths.

Overlap is always an issue. I think, personally, it's more important to clearly show that truck modders are here and welcome here by doing a few explicit things to show it. You look at the site, you see the truck forum (hopefully active) and you realize you might get answers and learn. Ditto an EV forum. EVs are also clearly a major and growing part of the future. In both cases maybe it helps people find EM in google searches if we are more explict about it.

That's a good point. And even though some overlap would be quite obvious, seems like it had not been really a problem regarding some members who own EVs.

Not averse to this.

Anecdotally, it seems the percentage of new members who are looking to mod trucks has grown more than any other.

Which makes sense. Smaller vehicles are maybe efficient enough that people say "meh, 35 MPG is good enough".

But a 20 MPG truck is still a serious expense.

It would be nice to have more EV modders, but I expect we'll get relatively few. Every EV has a dedicated owners forum and/or (far more likely) FB group. I expect most owners would just post there.

Thanks for that suggestion. Quick & easy to do. Implemented.

Sorting pictures in an album or between albums?

That's vBulletin code. Above my pay grade.

What about the disabled full screen button on videos?

I don't care that much, but apparently I need to spike my post count to post links so I'll throw in my unnecessary $0.02:

I greatly prefer forums to other forms of "social media" due to their organization & archiving of information. Unfortunately, almost everyone else seems to prefer emotionally manipulative dopamine/rage dispensers like facebook which means level-headed information dispensing forums are in decline everywhere. Here, despite recent record gas prices, the number of registered users in a day peaked in 2014 and the number of total visitors peaked in 2019. :(

So by and large forums are pretty grim places to visit these days, but I think a lot of that can be lessened by consolidating the activity to fewer subsections rather than spreading it among 21. I'd propose merging sections that have 1 year old posts still on the front page unless that section serves as a historical archive. A 10 year old section with fewer than 500 posts is averaging less than 1 post per week. Not even 1 thread, 1 post... So without a lot of existing demand, I think adding a new "EV" or "truck" section is a move in the wrong direction. Renaming or changing existing section descriptions to be more inclusive of EVs or trucks does make sense though.

I greatly appreciate that this forum hasn't been overwhelmed by spammers and bots like so many others, but requiring 15 posts before linking seems a bit excessive. As a former lurker, I registered in large part to reply/add new data to an interesting/controversial topic (the costs/benefits of hypermiling with respect to re-start emissions) and was disheartened when the post I spent an hour composing was rejected by the forum software because it contained links to university studies.

Still, I appreciate the work admins & moderators already do just to keep the lights on as is. As a point of comparison, I could not even register at the cleanmpg forum because their registration form recaptcha is broken (it was also broken on their "contact" page).

If you click Recent Posts occasionally in the evening, you'll see a run of posts from a new handle with 'links can't be posted'. By the next morning they're gone.

Also occasionally, if you take too long composing and click submit, you'll get a message that the page needed to be refreshed, then it comes back without the text. [the forum ate my homework] It's preventative to copy the post before you click submit, just in case.