dannwilliams

I used to come to this forum to learn how others go about doing their tours and hearing about their journeys. When I was looking into getting set up for my first tour bike purchase and equipment, I came here. When I wanted to see what changes I could make that would make my trips more enjoyable, I came here. I wanted to see how people spent their days on tour, i.e. on-bike time and off-bike activities, I came here. Vast knowledge of all kinds of bike touring. All kinds of bike tours. All kinds of people who have it figured out, or who are looking for help figuring it out. And those willing to share what they know with all those looking for ideas. I want to thank all of you!

Now, it seems those folks have gone , and we are left with people who would rather cut down, insult, make fun of those looking for answers.

I miss the old days....

Machka 

Winter in the Northern Hemisphere happened.

staehpj1

The helpful friendly folks are still here. You just need to look past the BS.

mm718

True but what you have to wade through to get to the friendly helpful people is an embarrassment. I am surprised it's tolerated. Maybe more posts need to be reported.

VT_Speed_TR

Its an election year

staehpj1

I agree completely. The problem is that threads with decent content tend to get closed because of a sub thread where one person says something naive, intentionally baits, or just has weird preferences and 5 people feel the need to bait them with insults and hyperbole.

10 Wheels

Feel free to use The Report Button.

Mods are volunteer members, we can't see everything.

shipwreck

PLEASE dont report it till it hits a thousand!!! I have a bet on.

But seriously, I have been away from the forums for a bit, and logged back on to show some picks of the light weight Longflap style bag I am working on, one pound four ounces. The recent kerfuffle over UL made me change my mind. Till then I have been getting my online fix on https://www.facebook.com/groups/Full...icycleTouring/ .

staehpj1

I hesitate to report threads with bad content because there is also good content. I'd use the report button more if I was sure that the culprits posts would be removed or edited rather than the thread closed.

Just my opinion but I think a few people should be warned and then banned if they don't cool it. BTW, the ones who need that are probably not always or even usually the ones who are being called trolls, but more the ones who chime in with insulting post after insulting post.

dannwilliams

Thanks for the link, I'll check that out.

Tourist in MSN

1. Society has become much more polarized. A lot of people are more opinionated on every possible topic, and are happy to describe why anyone that does not agree with them is an idiot. If I elaborate any more on this topic, I am quite sure I will offend someone, so I won't.

2. When I decided to get into touring, the Bianchi Volpe, Trek 520, Fuji Touring were the only bikes you could find in a store to tour on. If you wanted to get into bike touring back then, you had to work at it. There was a community of sharing ideas built up at that time. Now, you can walk into a store in most major metro areas and walk out with a complete bike touring setup.

Happy Feet

I like to have fun and appreciate a quirky sense of humour but agree that the crass commentary is getting to be irksome. Especially when it's directed at people you know are having a hard enough time fitting in. In general I try to post in a way that I would not be too embarrassed about if I met anyone IRL (which sometimes happens on the diving forum I frequent). That doesn't mean I don't have my moments or have knee jerk reactions to things I read but I t r y to rein it in when I sense I'm getting too heated about a subject.

I'm an old man riding a bicycle... there's no way that is ever going to be cool unless I'm Sean Connery in Finding Forrester.

alan s 

I'm OK with all sorts of posters, and can easily overlook those who have nothing to contribute. I received lots of great advice on a recent thread about touring in the Keys, so there are plenty of people out there who are willing to help if asked. No one trolled that thread, or if they did, I didn't notice. Perhaps some people need to lighten up a bit and not take everything so seriously. The ability to laugh at oneself and others is a good thing, and you can't take too much of this so seriously.

antokelly

yip some right nasty feckers here that's for certain, almost every thread you read some jerk starts a row.

axolotl

This forum really has become a joke. I know of other bike touring forums which I'm more likely to visit and post on these days, that don't have the issues this one now has, namely:

--trolling
--repetitive and/or redundant threads
--rush to post by a tiny handful of members---grammar, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation be damned
--repeated bumping by a tiny handful of members of their own threads, and other narcissistic behavior
--useless gun threads or sub-threads
--geographic monotony
--threads which have nothing to do with bike touring

The only thing which has improved that I can think of, is the reduction in cyberbegging threads.

arctos

I too have been surprised by the recent increase in negative and abusive remarks. In general people currently seem more fearful and stressed economically and use anonymous forums and comment options to safely vent their the frustration, anger and powerlessness in their lives. Unfortunately that method is not constructive to the usual problem solving and sharing on this forum.

The knee jerk sniping and snarky comments will drive away novice and wannabe tourists afraid of being attacked for their lack of knowledge. If that happens more and more often, then this forum will shrink and die.

Self-policing works best in my experience rather than hoping volunteer moderators will act quickly and properly. But that depends on the attitude of the members making the comments. Even criticism can be stated in a constructive manner instead of as a personal attack. Ignore the trolls that intrude to starve them of the attention they seek.

Erick L

I've been here longer than most and things haven't changed much. They change more season to season than year to year.

My guess is YOU changed. You're not looking for answers anymore. You should be giving them.

indyfabz

I have to respectfully disagree with the above. Unless my memory is fading (which is entirely possible), I don't recall so much animus, etc., on this forum. There are two locked threads on the first page, one on the second and four on the third. Compare that to the 41, where there is none of the first page, one on the second and one on the third. Those two were started by someone who was been temporarily banned for trolling in the past. One of them was a "nip in the bud" lock.

tramptrade 

It sucks to have to wade through the day care toddler-tantrums about their toys, but there is still some fantastic information here. As a newb cycle-tourist this is still my go-to site. Not sure how it used to be, but the mods here seem to be doing a pretty good job compared to many other forums I've haunted.

pdlamb

Depends what you're reading, I guess. Despite all possible good will, I don't think most web fora or newsgroups work well as a conversation. You have some people who check in once a day, consider their responses carefully, and whose posts are well thought out. Those get drowned by the people who watch the forum almost continually and post their views whenever anyone else adds a post (and it often doesn't seem to matter whether the previous poster added something new to the discussions, or even whether they agree or disagree!). It's almost like politics nowadays, having the last word seems to indicate "winning."

So in an informational forum (e.g., bike mechanics), the answer usually pops out within a couple dozen posts. If you're looking for opinions on a contentious topic (e.g., dyno lights), all the opinions you're going to get have appeared within two or three pages, though answers may be re-posted for many more. For the most part, if a topic has more than three pages, it's got a lot of repetitive sniping, and it's not worth my time, except for "the weather is so bad I can't watch TV any more" entertainment.

Maybe what we need is for the moderators to be able to implement a "slow lock," which would limit certain posters to post only a few (one-four) comments per day to an affected thread. Perhaps that would force the worst border-line offenders to self limit their posts, because if they posted too much this morning they couldn't respond to a worse provocations this afternoon or tonight. Does anybody think that might work?

indyfabz

You very well may have something, but off the top of my head I think it might have to apply to everyone equally. Back in the days of the old Yahoo! comment boards, which were full of trolls (some of whom were quite entertaining), you could only make X number of posts within Y time frame. I think that time frame was pretty short (i.e., minutes, as opposed to hours or days). Perhaps having a maximum number of replies/day to any given thread (and perhaps even a maximum number of BF posts/day across all threads) would limit "bickering," result in more considered replies and cut down and/or eliminate replies that add nothing new or useful to the topic at issue. What such a system would require technologically is far beyond this luddite's ability to comprehend, but if it wouldn't require a Herculean effort, it's definitely something the site's admins might want consider, if they haven't already. I would be very interested to hear their opinion(s) on the subject.

shipwreck

I think that one of the reasons for a change is that more and more of the posters here have been in internet "how to" forums their whole lives, as opposed to having figured things out for themselves with all that pesky real life experience, static research(books and periodicals)and personal interactions. More and more, Ive read posts asking pretty obvious questions that could be researched in minutes, but that wouldn't give that custom tailored feedback on what pedal to use, or bags to buy.

One thing I try to remember when asking for advice or help, and using a tool like the forums to do it, is that its not a perfect tool. I keep it in the box, but don't rely on it exclusively. Its there to augment the best tools I have, which is experience and failure.

And as to offering advice when you have reached the level of experience(and failures)where you feel comfortable doing so, I try to only participate when I actually have something to say, since it bugs me to read posts based on theoretical opinion. Not always, but sometimes.

bikenh

Machka wins. I see it on other, non-biking listserves all the time. When people have too much time on their hands they have the tendency to pop out of the woodwork and you'll hear from people you rarely hear from otherwise and that just starts a domino effect that runs out of control. It's winter in the Northern Hemisphere and most people aren't out riding their bikes or aren't riding them as much as they normally would so they have more free time available and as a result they have to find something to do with their time. Get spring here and things will more than likely calm right back down...until then your hosed.

Looking back at BB's closed post why did people get off topic and not stick to the topic that he posted about? I wouldn't have a thing other than people saying you can't ride 20K a year and have a full time job. I know of someone that has did just that. Yeah, it got out of control and I should have walked away...pretty much like I did with BB's still open UL thread. I pretty haven't even looked at thread for the past couple of weeks...other than watching the count of posts climb everyday.

Maybe the simple rule of sticking to the thread topic should be enforced. Granted with volunteer moderators that doesn't make it more challenging.

Come summer you won't even remember this ever happened and it more than likely will have disappeared until next winter.

tarwheel 

Some solutions:

- Don't feed the trolls. I won't mention any names, but there are obviously some people trolling this forum. I ignore those threads, but they seem to generate a lot of action. Ignore them, and they will go away.

- Start some threads on topics of real substance, or contribute to some of the threads that actually pertain to touring.

- Post some trip reports, preferably with photos.

veganbikes

I think the biggest issue is the war that a few members are trying to start about UL touring. I think most people's opinion would be tour how you want. I still like it hear because I think there is still some good. I think we can bring it back and I think we should. I think one problem is once you have been around a bit you have fewer questions or sometimes you might run into a situation where you have already seen the question asked over and over and you just are fed up. People need to respect each other but also know respect the forum as well and use it properly.

Going off of what Shipwreck said, this is a tool and sometimes not always the best tool for the job and that is why you have a toolbox and you can select the right tool or use multiple tools.