[hobojoker]

Chittychittybangbang has devoted a lot of his time and attention to this site, and I just wanted to make a thread to thank him for creating such a wonderful database for everyone to use - I'm glad that I've been able to help with a few things!

He's a great guy and he's done a lot to help people with their TDIs and without his help and this website I would have had much more trouble with my already troubled TDI conversion =P

So - Thanks!


P.S.
I hope that bucket was enough to patch your driveway!

 

[chittychittybangbang]

Thanks for the praise! Much appreciated.

PS, here is the rubber band we found hanging off one of the hoses.

The car hadn't been serviced yet and everything was gleaming clean inside. Lo and behold, a rubber band was just sitting in there. It wasn't a special VW rubber band, it was just looped around some of the hoses and I'm guessing nobody saw it or they saw it and didn't feel like cutting it off.

 

[hobojoker]

Where are those pictures you took going up, Mk6 info section?

 

[chittychittybangbang]

The best of each set of pictures is used and will go into the various FAQ. Most aren't used because they don't have good frame, focus, lighting, or because another one is just better.

 

[50mpg]

:nana2: That says it all

 

[glennmax]

Myturbodiesel.com is a gift you can open again and again.

Thank you Chittychittybangbang for the gift.

 

[thrab]

All hail the turbodiesel.com! Might want to consider installing some wiki software so it can be community edited (moderated changes of course, not free reign). Works well for computer programming communities, not sure about automotive though. I haven't seen it tried anywhere for automotive now that I think about it.

 

[chittychittybangbang]

All hail the myturbodiesel.com! Might want to consider installing some wiki software so it can be community edited (moderated changes of course, not free reign). Works well for computer programming communities, not sure about automotive though. I haven't seen it tried anywhere for automotive now that I think about it.

URL fixed turbodiesel was already taken.

I haven't seen any notable car wikis that weren't mostly forum posts copied over. You also need a massive number of active users to keep it going. Every FAQ page has a note somewhere in it to ask a question about this page at the forum or make a suggestion or correction. There have been millions of page views and I think I've gotten about 10-15 user suggested page corrections or improvements. I know there are editing or content mistakes but it's very rare for people to post a heads-up. I have also noticed people going to other forums I visit and commenting on my content there. I would think that ross tech's wiki is one of the most used VW or Audi wikis out there and I haven't noticed any entries that look like they were user contributed.

Also, my guess is that experts are more likely to edit a wiki than a casual user. I would think that the average level of experience and skill is much higher on a computer programming community which means a greater experts:casual user ratio. The qualification for a programmer is higher than just owning a computer. This isn't a knock on casual users, it's just that there are lots of basic questions on car forums.

Thanks for the suggestion and the reason for the long explanation is because I've given it thought but based off what I've seen elsewhere, it's not worth it. Then again, I don't see the appeal of twitter and look how big they are.

 

[thrab]

If you're fine with doing all the work then go for it! :thumbsup:

Programming websites actually get some pretty no brainer questions on the forums. Stackoverflow.com is not really a wiki or forums, different kind of concept. It has plenty of stupid questions along with some really good ones. Wish more sites would adopt their style for other topics. The Wikis are usually very high quality since you usually have to be a contributor with the community to edit them anyways. I could definitely see a StackOverflow format being great for automotive questions as well.

 

[chittychittybangbang]

I've used stackoverflow and I could see a problem is building a repeat visitor community or scaring new users with that format.

I actually like the old audiworld format/new quattroworld format. The forum is like an outline. Each response to a thread is indented to indicate who is talking to who. This lets you scan every post without having to scroll by it like an inline format like the default vbulletin. You can change the view format of vbulletin but the problem is that people aren't used to it. People have enough trouble using forums as is.

For my sister site www.evwaudi.com, the only VW, Audi, and Porsche EV and hybrid site out there, I've decided to use invision power board because the current vbulletin is no longer usable and they raised the price a lot. Upgrading vbulletin forum software used to be only about $50 which gives you an idea of how disrespectful it was to the users on "other" forums I visit that they hadn't upgraded their software in about 5 years. A main competitor site misspells "Touareg" on their front page which gives you an idea how much thought and effort they put into their site. Then again, Touareg is hard to speel VWvortex was locked into their forum software as well.

I'm using an old version of vbulletin because of the current version of the software is straight out bad. One example is that Vbulletin added advertiser support for the forum but their terms of use let them collect information on how the ads are doing. Since they run many competitor forums, this gives them the right to basically stealing trade secrets. They also have a clause that lets them take a percentage of ad revenue. It's currently set at 0 but it's outrageous that they even have this setting and raises the question of when they intend to change it.

I haven't put up the EV and hybrid forum yet because I am already working about 10 hours/day on developing both sites and researching information, (At a previous job I used to spend well over 100 hours/week on work. Although it sounds made up, working weekends increases work hours by 40% and a DVR lets you cut TV watching time by 1/3 by skipping commercials.) but I think it'll be a good niche to occupy and the quality of information I have there already is better than anything you can find on the internet on VW and Audi hybrids. For example, I've learned that 98% of car review articles test drive the car and just copy/paste what's in the press releases. The buying guides on this site and what I'm working on for the EV site contain information that you can't find in press releases and technical data beyond what you can find in normal car reviews

 

[Webers1]

Thanks, the effort shows.

 

[thrab]

The StackOverflow format can definitely be intimidating for casual users, is more of a format for professionals.

That new licensing with the ads is definitely pretty douchey. I've seen a lot of sites using phpbb lately. Open sourced under GPL. Probably not as feature rich as invision power board but hard to compete with free.

People appreciate the work you put into the FAQs I am sure. Online reviews of cars are definitely pretty useless, same copy and paste crap everywhere. Sometimes I wonder if they actually drive them before reviewing.