One of my favorite comments I get from PR people, journalists, other publishers, et cetera is that they can’t believe the community we have here. That’s what the Internet used to be about, but too many publications got sold to people who didn’t understand that a site like this can only thrive with readers who care. It’s why so many of our peers look at the quality and number of comments we have and express some mix of shock, envy, and disbelief.
This is a good week for media in general, because we celebrate the fifth anniversary of Defector. While this site may have formed under different circumstances and with slightly different goals, the success of Defector was encouraging to those of us who felt there had to be a way back to websites that didn’t suck.
In his celebration post, Tom Ley (who was the one who encouraged us to do a Velour tier, btw) wrote the following:
I often tell people that I think about being a co-owner of Defector the same way I would think about being the co-owner of a bar. Nobody opens a bar because they are hoping that one day Viacom will come along and try to purchase it for $250 million, and no bar becomes a fun place to hang out by hiring bartenders who for some reason won’t stop telling customers that starvation is no big deal when it happens to sick kids. Part of what makes Defector work is that it aims to accomplish much of what a good bar aims to accomplish: It welcomes patrons into a place where they might have a few laughs, learn a few things, and pass the time a little more pleasantly than they otherwise would.
This isn’t to say that Defector harbors no ambition. One often overlooked aspect of the media industry of yore is how it was built to drain itself. It was simply understood that as bigger audiences were courted and larger valuations were achieved, the more degraded and compromised the actual editorial product would become. It was like having a vampire in your own company, feeding itself on the very thing that originally provided any life or value to the enterprise. By contrast, these years spent working at Defector are the first in my career in which the future is not something I feel bearing down on me, but rather something to be chased after. We’ve already grown a lot as a company, and I want us to continue to grow, but not recklessly. If you’ll allow me to return to the bar analogy: I don’t want Jon Taffer coming in here and turning the place into a 9/11-themed sports bar with fire truck alarms above all the urinals. I just want more and different customers, so that we can offer a more adventurous drink menu and, I don’t know, turn the back room into a music venue. OK, that’s it for the bar analogy.
This feels right to me. I want this place to be a fun place to “pass the time a little more pleasantly” than you otherwise might. At the same time, I think we all have an ambition to grow this place and make it more than it is right now.
To that end, we’ve made two strategic hires:
- Brian Silvestro, our new News Editor, who is already making a huge difference when it comes to keeping us up-to-date on what’s happening.
- Griffin Riley, our Video Manager, who is continuing to expand our video offerings.
These last two weeks we’ve experimented with increasing our daily production a bit, while also improving or adding some site features (Night Panel, Glovebox). We’ll also be replacing the current Consent Management Platform (CMP) that a few of you didn’t like with one that should work a little better and be a little less intrusive.
The site’s looked great to me this week, but I’m curious what everyone else thinks. How are we doing? How are you doing? What could we do better? What should we do more of?
Photo: Ford
As a grumpy old ,member of the Jones Generation occasionally something pisses me off, but hell it is always outweighed by something wonderful or just plain fun.
Keep up the good work!
Keep up the technical articles, like the deep dive into suspensions.
Whoa boy other than the kudos please don’t take any tips from Defector. Love the Autopian and super happy with my membership but I pay primarily to hear your takes on cars and occasional car-related policy/political topics. Tom Ley working Gaza into a paragraph ostensibly about how Defector is like a bar (?) is a perfect example of what not to do!
Anyway, the content blitz has been good so far. Not too many misses. Didn’t like the brief experiment in weekend clickbait by Ms. Braga but that went away as fast as it arrived so I’m guessing no need to talk about that further!
I know you guys know about the site slowness and occasional gateway timeouts and frankly I don’t really care in this case, I can wait.
As for a constructive suggestion, I’d like to see the podcast return in a primarily audio format (rather than the audio track of a video) so I can listen to your dulcet tones when I’m driving!
All is pretty good. Only nit pick here is about the same articles that get republished 2 or 3 times. I would hope you can get some more writers so we don’t have to deal with the redundancy, it gets old fast.
Thanks to the hard working writers here.
I’m a pretty happy member. The article that Adrian wrote earlier today is a great example of it. If I’m going to hang around and read the articles, I want to learn something or have a chuckle. And with that article today, I’m pretty sure I learned something about car design. I haven’t figured out what yet, but it’s something.
I consume all blogs via this ancient tech called “RSS”, and to your credit, Autopian works brilliantly in my RSS readers. I just come into the full site when it’s time to comment (so don’t see any of the performance problems people seem to report, but I’m on Safari on a Mac).
Been a member from the get-go and still very happy to be. I saw a comment expressing a wish for more meetups, and I think I’d like that, too, but I’d also be curious just to meet local fellow members even if it’s not an official Autopian event. I suppose I should dive back into the Discord and see if that sort of thing is happening there; seems like that might be the forum for it…
This is the only site on the internet where I interact with some regularity, and also the only site where I look forward to reading the comments to see what people have to say on a topic. I like that everyone has their own voice and is given the leeway to speak with it. At the same time I like that everyone works within a clear set of guiding principles and editorial standards. What you’re doing works, and is really refreshing.
The glove box is cool! For new hires like Brian, it would be cool to do a bio focused article weekly for the first month or so so we can get to know them better. I like that you have experts in car related fields like kligerman or not us based content like tycho. SWG is my favorite occasional contributor.
I know I say this every time we do these, but I really enjoy the occasional motorsport content. Hearing from those involved is amazing and really deepens my enjoyment of it.
I know it’s not the most popular, but it’s my brown diesel station wagon damnit!
I like it too, and for an odd reason. I was force-fed NASCAR at an early age (I’m from Mississippi, originally) and when I moved away from home, I swore I’d never watch another car race again. But that was 25 years ago, and I’ve found other sorts of motorsports I do enjoy but know so little about.
I grew up in the midwest, and when NASCAR simply wasn’t a thing there at all. But I’ve since come to really enjoy it, appreciate superspeedways, etc. But I enjoy IndyCar and IMSA just as much.
As you allude to, there’s so many different forms of racing that something’s sure to catch your interest. And in a sense, racing is a way for automobiles to be truest to at least one part of their essence.
You guys are doing great, this is the best place on the internet. No notes really, just wanna say thanks for creating such a wonderful place!
Okay, one note: What happened to the merch store? Sometimes I get hankering to buy a hat, license plate frame, or truck nuts.
Defector and this site rule – love you all!
I’m guessing people in lots of corners of the world might wish for more in-person Autopian meet-up opportunities….I love LA, but it’s eight-plus hours away (and I’m not usually into the cost/crowds of dealing with Car Week), so it’s tough that those are the only places in California that y’all ever seem to go to. It’s a big state!
Also, P.S. to whoever it was earlier today who used “Cali” in the Hellcat article: Don’t call it that.
You are 100% right, we want to do more meetups in 2026. We tested it with our cross-country drive and it was a big success.
I’m up to three shirts so far, but still no pants.
Just pointing that out.
PANTSTOPIAN!!!!
Damn… pants
Genius
Are you Winnie the Pooh?
Oh bother.
Um…pretty sure 70% of Autopian readership are not of the pants-wearing variety.
As others have said I’ve enjoyed the Autopian since day one, having followed several of the founders on the old site. I subscribed to be part of those market forces that reward content I like, and since I use adblock.
About the only thing I can complain about is the page load times; loading this page took just over 4 seconds before the rest drew in. Using a wired LAN with gigabit fiber WAN, with 7ms ping times to Google’s servers, yours is one of few sites I frequent that’s noticeably slow to load.
I don’t know what consent management is ( in this context, anyway) but I’ve never had issues with the site operations.
This site is 1) the only web subscription I’ve ever had and 2) as close as I’m willing to get to social media anymore. Whatever you’re doing, you’re doing it right.
I’ve noticed a couple of attempts to troll people in the comments and I love that no one engaged them. It’s up to we commenters to help keep that sort of thing under control by not feeding them, and if you did anything as operators of the site to censure them then it was done subtley and without fuss. Nice work on that front.
Keep it up!
This is the only site where I post comments. I’ve told some people IRL that it blows my mind that the most civil, open-minded, and thoughtful corner of the internet I know of is a friggin car blog.
Credit where credit is due: I remember reading something DT wrote about the goals for the site. Honestly, I thought it was a bit overly aspirational for a humble car blog. Y’all took an absurdly big swing and that’s why we’re here.
The comment section is the way it is because, ultimately, it reflects the priorities and values of the folks who created this community. Y’all are good people and it’s a joy to support and celebrate when good people succeed in doing good things.
As a reader starting with the site launch, I have remained super engaged and enjoyed the site since it’s debut. The only detracting comment is one I made earlier today on the article about the new Toyota thing, can we find some middle ground on social media based articles? Those of us behind a corporate firewall can’t always view things like Instagram or Facebook posts, and that article specifically was almost entirely focused on the Instagram post(s), where it became just a bunch of words about pictures I could not see.
Given the years(HOW?) I’ve spent on this site, I think it’s pretty good that I don’t have more constructive criticism.
OH! One more, can we add to glovebox from the main page instead of clicking through to the article?
Love you work here!
The Autopian is a source for learning, laughter, and love. Long live The Autopian!
Will add my take to the comments on ordering comments. Be good to have a toggle/drop down menu/whatever for “Newest First” or “Oldest First”.
Be nice to be able to put photos in comments.
Also, I’d prefer to just be able to add my own picture file for an avatar rather than going through yet another web service like gravatar.
This and Car & Driver are the only car sites I regularly visit. I love it so much.
I meant to add a suggestion – is there an ad free membership tier? If not, if there is one I would go to it because I do use ad blockers but also want to support this site more.
Yes! If you turn off your ad blocker you won’t see ads (if logged in and everything is working properly).
I have been a C&D subscriber for over 30 years.. It frustrates me how bad it’s gotten, but I just haven’t found a good alternative yet..and they still have a few good writers when it comes out every other month..
Ok now THIS site… it’s the only site I have a login on, it’s the only site I pay for, it’s the only place I comment, it’s the only site that I showed up at a gathering for.
Yeah, it’s slow, but the writing is top notch and the perspective is really unique. I would love more videos and an easy place to find them. I really think part of magic sauce here is the writing talent..
I thought at one point you guys were trying to speed up page loading? What happened with that? It’s still slower than any other site I visit.
Any plans on redoing the comment section? If I come to an article after it’s been up a while, comment sorting seems completely random. Even if I toggle between most reacted and hottest. I would comment more and be engaged if I could understand it.
Would you consider adding read time, or maybe something to denote article length? The passion everyone here brings to their articles is awesome, but I often open an article, see the scroll bar shrink to a sliver, and just close out of the page. I don’t always have time to read 3k+ words on a topic.
Yes! Now that we’ve rolled out most of the features we’ve been looking to add, we’ll be re-focusing on site optimization, loading speed, et cetera. Our new CMP, hopefully, will help with that a small amount.
I second the reading time request. I love Tycho’s articles from China, but man, he must be getting paid by the word…
Sorry I love the sound of my own voice so it takes me three thousand words to get my point across.
As long as you guys keep it light on the politicking, I am a happy camper. Just don’t turn into what the Lighting site has become.
Amen.