FocusCanada Forums

Alright, I'm gonna pipe up here for a second.

Move along if this doesn't intrest you.

This site is losing good members to utter bull$hit. I have yet to give a penny to this place, I have yet to buy a t-shirt, I've got the decals but who doesn't. If it came down to it, I'd open my wallet. I'm sure there are a bunch more of us here too.

We've lost 2 good contributing members over the past few months. All because of a difference in views. Total bullshit if you ask me. That's the beauty of this place, we have different views on things, but one thing remains the same.... we enjoy the same car.

I'll be the first to admit, this place is not the greatest place on the planet for Focus info. Let's just deal with it.

There are other ways to contribute to this site better than money in my opinion.
Do things like, organize meets. A place where we can all get together and talk cars, talk family, talk s**t, whatever we want. I think the fact that this site has a huge fan-base of people who genuinally care about eachother is support enough. There isn't a guy on here I would't extend my hand to in a time of need. And that's what this place is (was) all about.

The fact that we can organize a camping trip, convoy out there 8 people deep, have a wicked weekend, and not discuss cars for one single second says something to me. It says this place isn't about cars. I'ts about making friends, networking, contacts etc.....

There are about 6 guys on here I have known for about 4 years, and consider good close personal friends. That to me is FocusCanada.

The focaljet is a perfect example of this. There is about as much personality there as the waiting room in my doctor's office. No individuallity. It's like stopping by a buisiness, Not a cool place to hang out like this place is.

What can you do to contribute??? Come out to the BBQs, come out for beers and wings, be supportive, get involved. I can't stand people who sit at home on their computers bitching about how shitty this place and never see them at a meet.

I'm probably wasting my breath, I just don't want everyone jumping ship over something so ghey.

See you on the patio.

a.d.

Well Said... I'll See you guys friday :D

wish i coudl be there friday, or anyday for that matter.

ur right about difference in views, everyone is entitled to them, but theres a point where people need to let it go and conlude that they wont change the other persons point of view.

and yes this place is more about friends then cars, but as soon as a car problem pops up, everyone tries to help out.

same with friendship problems, everyone here has an open ear and can usually bring some humor to the situation.

ive noticed lately more then before(since i joined in Dec) , that the newbies have been sticking around alot more...so there must be something that is keeping them here.

This club is the bestest!!

My final post on the day is this:

I'm not discontinuing the hosting of the PDFs, nor am I "leaving". Apparently my ideology towards car clubs differs from the vast majority here, so I'm going silent (or relatively) for a while. I'll answer PMs and what not, but not actively posting.

Oh, and if someone finds S2, ask him about the outstanding how-tos to be PDFed. If someone shoots me a list and locations, I'll PDF the remaining ones and add them to the correct RAR file.

Out of all your posts Adam...I've never seen you explain your "ideology" of a car club, cuz honestly, I have no clue what you want from us.

Please explain, this is the time to share, to make this place the bestess. :lol:

Im not trying to start anything here

I know when i first started coming to this site, and [FJ]...i would just look around for parts, or problems solutions with the car.

It wasnt until i actually went and met some of you guys, like Dan's BBQ, that i actually started contributing, like actually posting and giving/respoding to opinions with my opinions. And thats how a community gets started.

Ive bought a t-shirt, and whenever i met another focus owner, i pimp the site. Ive never actually given to the site. But the best means of return buisness is word of mouth. Im sure that people do that same and thats how the site grows.

This is more of a water-cooler/ meeting place, but if it wasnt for this place, most of us wouldnt have other people to help find parts, in and around our areas, and even to install them!

If you love the site that much, donate. If you dont have the cash, or choose to spend it on something else, then thats your choice. Dont get to worked up if people dotn see it your way, becuase thats the way the world works.

I went from Toronto, and Dan's BBQ metting owners there, to moving half way across the country to meet a new bunch of focus owners. I mean thats says something itself.

It's funny, really. I never truly realized why I was having such a hard time coming to grips with this, until it dawned on me: Focus Canada isn't a car club.

I've said before that I believed that Focus Canada was a car club when I "joined", and by joining I mean registering for the board. It always felt weird to me to consider Focus Canada a car club, but I had believed it was indeed possible... I was the minority member from North Bay, and I struggled to get other members from the area as being "just me" on the forums and around North Bay got boring in a hurry. Thankfully Oscar TG and ThraxXx were converted in a hurry :)

Agian, I guess it's MY mistake. I've gone and mistaken FC.net for a car club. We're a gathering of Focus owners and something of an online community. We share knowledge, opinions, and Anthony's mad PS skills.

What would I do? Create regional chapters in the forum. Appoint mods for each chapter, with obviously cross-over responsibilities in case someone is sick / on vacation, etc.

Within each regional forum, have FS/WTB forums, a G2G forum, and a local sponsor forum wherein the regional sponsor could do as Mitch does now. Simplify the entire Sponsor Forum to one sub-forum from the current three... it's too busy.

Have one Focus Talk forum, and one OT forum for the entire FocusCanada community as it is right now. The OT forum should be left alone, and everything within should be assumed as NSFW.

Keep the Site Suggestions / Issues forum. Make it easier to have members' rides featured on the front landing page. If nothing else, have a FF.com-ish Monthly Featured Ride contest, featuring 3 winners. I'm sure other members would come together on this.

Appoint members to work on other FC apparel and vinyls. The initial stuff is great, I'm not kidding, but more variety too could be appealing to others. Again, I'm sure others wouldn't mind.

I have more, but I need to go restart a server.

OK, I'm back.

Let's get together and design some banners that could be used in a variety of signs / whatnot for car shows that we attend. It would be PIMP to have a big FocusCanada.net banner hung on my rear window, or placed across the trunklid or open trunk area. I'm sure with the great people we have here, it wouldn't be hard.

Don't really change anything on the main landing page for FC.net, except maybe enlarge the members' rides pictures a bit.

Alright, that's enough insanity for now. I'll step back and finish the Ice Capp my better half brought me. :)

those are good suggestions. But i dont think we have the volume for all of that.

We have what? 800 registered members, and only about 20 that actually consistently. I mean there are already regional places for focus owners. OFOC, BCFocus, Calgary focus owners, quebec...

Quote:Agian, I guess it's MY mistake. I've gone and mistaken FC.net for a car club. We're a gathering of Focus owners and something of an online community. We share knowledge, opinions, and Anthony's mad PS skills.

So Adam, does this mean you're repatriating with FC? :unsure:

I never pulled a Quebec. I just said I was cooling off from posting for a while, and then I had a reasonable request to state my opinions / ideas, so I did.

NOS2Go4Me,Jul 19 2005, 03:03 PM Wrote:It's funny, really. I never truly realized why I was having such a hard time coming to grips with this, until it dawned on me: Focus Canada isn't a car club.

I've said before that I believed that Focus Canada was a car club when I "joined", and by joining I mean registering for the board. It always felt weird to me to consider Focus Canada a car club, but I had believed it was indeed possible... I was the minority member from North Bay, and I struggled to get other members from the area as being "just me" on the forums and around North Bay got boring in a hurry. Thankfully Oscar TG and ThraxXx were converted in a hurry :)

Agian, I guess it's MY mistake. I've gone and mistaken FC.net for a car club. We're a gathering of Focus owners and something of an online community. We share knowledge, opinions, and Anthony's mad PS skills.

I'm sorry you feel this way Adam. I beleive were a very closely knit car club if anything. Where else are you going to build a Turbo kit from scratch, Have it running and doing long drives in less than 36 hours. :huh: ;)

What about all the installs you did on your car? It wasn't Andthony's PS skills that gave you that information ;)

Quote:What would I do? Create regional chapters in the forum. Appoint mods for each chapter, with obviously cross-over responsibilities in case someone is sick / on vacation, etc.

This idea was brought up before you joined.

As mentioned, we do not have the populace to have seperate forums right now. We would need more than 20 regular posters to make this idea succesful. I'm down with regional forums as it would make it feel more like 'home' but as said...we just dont have that kind of membership.

Mod for each chapter? All 20 of our regular posters would be mods then :lol:, Imagine the EDITING/SARCASM that would go on.

Quote:Within each regional forum, have FS/WTB forums, a G2G forum, and a local sponsor forum wherein the regional sponsor could do as Mitch does now. Simplify the entire Sponsor Forum to one sub-forum from the current three... it's too busy.

We have enuff issues/bickering about the current for Sale section, we do not need 10 more.

Quote:Have one Focus Talk forum, and one OT forum for the entire FocusCanada community as it is right now. The OT forum should be left alone, and everything within should be assumed as NSFW.

Agreed

Quote:Keep the Site Suggestions / Issues forum. Make it easier to have members' rides featured on the front landing page. If nothing else, have a FF.com-ish Monthly Featured Ride contest, featuring 3 winners. I'm sure other members would come together on this.

Strongly agree, especially with the ride of the month idea!!

Quote:Appoint members to work on other FC apparel and vinyls. The initial stuff is great, I'm not kidding, but more variety too could be appealing to others. Again, I'm sure others wouldn't mind.

I have a focuscanada.net sticker on my laptop. No sticker or vinyl will ever get near my car. :ph34r: :P

But its a good idea for the shows for others that will rice their car. :P :lol:

Remember people.

We're nothing but a group of people that own the same cars.

Nothing else.

We were never a "car club"

Once again, there's no clear indication of what your expectations were, and what has you feeling so persecuted now...

i'm going to boil this down to the goods and the bads

the good
transferring how-to's to PDFs for posterity
Posting your how-to's on all mods no matter how 'trivial they may be' - great for noobs and non-noobs alike to read up on.
enthusiasm for the board, showing up to the meets and generally representin' North Bay.
posting suggestions for improving the board.

the bad
taking EVERYTHING too seriously and too literally.
failing to take criticism for ideas you don't see eye-to-eye on, and failing to keep a level head and reasoning logically about your position.

It's never my intention to persecute anybody away, since that's the last thing we need, but I also do my best to provide a reality check when it's needed. Don't take my, or anyone else's opinion personally... because 'quitting' the board isn't going to change anything...

Now, it's summertime, why the hell are we back on all this drama NOW? get out, enjoy the sunshine, and have a pint.

p.s. sometimes we all need a vacation... even from here... no matter how many times people leave, they're always welcome back....

And had I known that, I wouldn't have tried to become so involved.

I do concede the point that I've learned a lot from here. In fact, I've said that elsewhere too. THAT makes this more of a club. The How-Tos make this something of a club, in my eyes. Otherwise it's a piss-and-moan forum and we all just drive the same cars.

Nate - keep the single FS / WTB forum then. I agree it's more administration, but figured that it might be easier to locate products in your area. Shipping is cheap these days, so that might negate the benefits.

Puppet - I try not to take everything so seriously, but when I keep getting shouted down like crazy over something as simple as a "recognized member / donor" idea - it becomes infuriating.

Also, I'd be willing to sponsor a contest that operates as Nate's Stanley Cup pool did... something shipped to the winner. Now we need something to base it around.
Only problem is I can't come up with much in terms of car parts... but I can do computer stuff :D

What about a bi-monthly / quarterly contest by our sponsor(s) for something fairly inexpensive that involves active member involvement? It would spur interest and increase active membership. Also, what about a new "member" drive that allows you to be entered into said type of contest if you register 3 new members? The only downside to this is the possible fraud of not actually registering new people.

Just some more stuff I've come up with.

NOS2Go4Me,Jul 19 2005, 03:40 PM Wrote:Nate - keep the single FS / WTB forum then. I agree it's more administration, but figured that it might be easier to locate products in your area. Shipping is cheap these days, so that might negate the benefits.
[right][snapback]123454[/snapback][/right]

No doubt it would be easier to find local parts.

But if you saw how many memebers PM me about some guy not having the required posts to sell s**t, you'd understand ;)

Then we get the bitching of people ripping somebody off or not following thre with a deal (see 2003svt's thread)

Imagine that X's 10, at leats right now its in 1 spot for us to easily keep an eye on.

i could'nt have said it better my self anthony.
i got ur back !

focuzedn2o,Jul 19 2005, 03:45 PM Wrote:i could'nt have said it better my self anthony.
i got ur back !
[right][snapback]123456[/snapback][/right]

I dont, I beleive were VERY much a CAR CLUB

Flofocus,Jul 19 2005, 03:47 PM Wrote:

focuzedn2o,Jul 19 2005, 03:45 PM Wrote:i could'nt have said it better my self anthony.
i got ur back !
[right][snapback]123456[/snapback][/right]

I dont, I beleive were VERY much a CAR CLUB


[right][snapback]123459[/snapback][/right]

You're wrong man.

We are not a club, we are a bunch of guys who drive thse same cars........

Clubs, donate to charity, Drive country wide to represent shows, PAY FOR WEB USE.....

we do none of that.

We are not a car club.

lol....its to bad your saying this stuff man....I would expect more form you. If you want to improve/save this place, change the mentality of 'Were just driving the same cars' first. Oh and keep hosting BBQ's :P

-Focuscanada.net does food drives. Rememer Dan BBQ? :rolleyes:
-Many users $$ to jay when he needed help, granted not all of us, but some did.
-I go to as many shows as I can, with the little time I have I pimp out focuscanada.net as much as I can.


So everybody is wearing focuscanada.net t-shirts just because we drive the same car? I dont think so....