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 that he wants people to think of it like opening a bar that “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 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
FELLOW VELOUR ENJOYER TOM LEY! I like that guy more now that I know this.
(Bring it back, luxobarge makers. That is the softness I crave.)
FINE, I GUESS I’LL COMMENT ON THE SITE. I don’t feel guilty opening up this tab at work because y’all do such a good job keeping track of the behind-the-scenes industry movements (pun intended?) in the Morning Dump. Good context, good detail, and the rest of the site is entertaining as hell, too.
(You should consider posting more Puffalumps, though.)
By the way, thank you, Stef. You are a ray of sunshine in our community.
Aw, thanks.
If you ever need to borrow some Puffalumps, you know where to find me.
I only discovered you maybe a month or so ago, when my friends were featured for their car collection. I came for the friends, stayed for the content. (Almost sounds backwards from the usual come for the food, stay for the friends?)
My only minor complaint is I find myself pausing the auto-starting video clip near the top of every single story I read. I could probably let it run, but it bugs me for some reason.
Maybe a problem with your comlink?
He may not be at his post.
Members don’t see ads. The cloth membership tier is pretty cheap and would eliminate the pesky ads.
That can be stopped but I don’t remember how.
I appreciate the neutral political take. Politics is a third rail and has ruined many sites. You do your best to stay out of the fray and explain the actual consumer impact of policy.
Still loving it here. It’s a browser tab that’s always open, and still the only site I’ve ever paid a subscription for.
This place does really feel like the internet of yore before it turned into a hateful cesspool. There seems to be a level of maturity, intelligence, and respect with the commentariat which is very refreshing.
Maybe I missed it, but is there an option to see all comments by someone? A few times I’ve found some people here whose comments and mindset really resonated with me and I wanted to see what else they had to say.
You can click the little wave symbol next to someone’s name and it will put their future comments into your bell.
I can’t help you with past comments though.
You’re doing great. You need a podcast with Dan Roth, though.
Would listen.
Also, if we’re also talkin’ Defector crossovers, I’m gonna need Ratto’s take on cars, too.
Or a Why Your Car Sucks series with Drew
Ray did a piece about a trip to Newfoundland and a brown Zephyr wagon with a 5.0 transplant.
Oh yeah, that was delightful.
No they need a podcast with me.
Us? Us.
I don’t know. Do I know you?
We are not acquaintances – I’m legendary, however.
A legend in your own lunch time?
A legend of the byline.
Me too! How about that?
He is, his mom told me so.
I’d watch that, unless it was about a boring Ferrari.
Are you insutating the Mondial is boring.
Would also listen.
You could MASSIVELY increase both your readership and member activity if you fixed some of the major flaws in this site’s user interface, performance and functionality.
A: Its SLOW.. So slow that oftentimes I simply close the page and do something else as it takes forever to load. Not sure how you guys are handling page loading but whatever is being used now isn’t working well.
B: Its BUGGY. As in, the comments section also takes forever to load but on top of that isn’t very stable.
C: Page layout: The fact that somehow it was deemed a great idea to place video ads in the top right where it interferes with the comments dropdown menu is both annoying and yet another reason why sometimes I simply close the age as I don’t have time to try and get the comments to load. This kind of shoehorns with A and the loading and performance issues.
Anyway, I know I am being picky but this is what I do for a living and this site needs to have some and ideally all of those problems addressed because they are basic, foundational problems that affects everything else down the chain. Fix those issues and you’ll probably see a uptick in traffic.
I’ll second this, not because I’m particularly bothered by it and I just wait/ignore little issues. But I think for broader readership and outreach this kind of thing might get in the way of initially reading articles and getting to know the voice/s of the site and the writers, which is what draws me in enough to ignore the little things.
I use my cell phone it loads very well and I seldom have a problem.
You’re not wrong. Page loads are horrifically slow for me. I am always on cell phone, but service provider doesn’t matter… 4G, 5G UWB, 700Mbs WiFi. It’s ALL SLOW. I too am constantly closing and coming back later.
Page loads are slow. I’m on 500/500 fiber and it’s the only site I visit where load times approach 5 sec.
It would be nice if comments didn’t display last comment page first, and if there weren’t so many story link inserts to places like Instagram etc. that don’t display for me, but <shrug> not the end of the world.
I am super fascinated by the loads of comments mentioning slow page loads as I have never experienced that. Are y’all reading on your phones? Asking cuz I never do, and I’m wondering what the common denominator is.
Yeah, I’ve never had a problem w/ loading speed…and it’s 100% on my phone (have literally never been here on a computer)
Hey Matt…. This site has it all. An engaged community, and staff that the community knows on a first name basis (except for the Bishop… but we’re cool with that).
If it wasn’t for the ability to interact with everyone via the comments, this might look like any other automotive site.
I’m also thankful that, for the most part, the comments are quite civil, and people here genuinely enjoy hanging out with other petrolheads.
That sort of community wasn’t fostered overnight. It was built with hard work and great engagement with us.
So to sum it up for the Autopian team: no notes. Keep doing what you love.
I love this site and I love Defector. Over there I comment as S.H. Itposting. I’m fairly certain a few folks have an idea of who I am IRL but if you think you’re on to something on that front please keep it to yourself 😉
Anyway I love this site. I love the articles, I love the writing, I love the discussion, and I think you’ve achieved the goal of making it feel like The Old Internet. I appreciate that there’s content for everyone and that this site has people that are uniquely qualified to write about it.
Do I read every single article about campers? No, but I still read a lot of them because Mercedes writes them. Do I care deeply about taillights? Not really, but I’ll sure as shit read about them if Torch has an unhinged article ready to go. Etc.
This is one of the few websites that feels like home for me and it gives me that little pang of joy and whimsy I’ve long been chasing since The Old Internet gave up the ghost. So basically…I have no changes to suggest, I love the site, and I’ll continue being a member and spreading the good news wherever I can. I always try to wear an Autopian shirt to anything car related I go to.
I also feel like you all have made the atmosphere very friendly. While I haven’t met any authors or commenters IRL (yet) I do feel like I have a great relationship with everyone and it’s neat to be able to interact with the authors and everyone else behind the site pretty directly. You don’t get that everywhere, and it’s cool!
This… Do I read every post? No. Do I comment on every post? No. Are there posts that I’m not interested in? Yes. Do a feel a sense of community? YES.
I love when a writer engages with me (or others) in the comments. This is real life.
Like this? Hello! And thank you!
Hey Torch I know you want the site to succeed but remember you are a married man. You can’t go getting engaged with some random person on the internet
Gold.
Torch is a modern day alchemist, turning lead into gold.
boss makes a dollar, I make a dime
that’s why I Itpost on company time
(…hi, former coworkers)
> Do I care deeply about taillights? Not really
?!!?¡?!¿¡!?!¡
It depends on the taillight for me. If I ever meet the guy who put the Hyundai Tuscon’s blinkers low down in the bumpers, you might have to break up a fight.
Break up a fight? Or grab a bucket of popcorn and cheer you on?
Yes.
Good opportunity to say again what a great job Griffin is doing on the video content, as well as his articles!
Love the site! Only niggle is I haven’t found a way to show comments oldest first.
You all are great, kudos! Thanks for the great site
I really really want to use the Night Panel, but I like that teal text color about as much as the chartreuse 76 MGB my dad had. Any chance it could just be a muted white?
I like that there is a night panel, but I find the Autopian nightlight green to be hard to read. Would you consider using an off white for the text and the nightlight green for links?
Interesting thought, we’ll talk about it!
The real win would be when you change to night panel, keep the green, but change the font to 1980’s ASCII green.
As a happy Velour member, I think this is a great place. I don’t read everything on the site but what I do read is pretty darn good, and the comment sections are generally acceptable. 🙂
I was going to ask that the team take a whack at figuring out which features were going to be regular and then maybe somewhere down the line potentially possibly maybe looking into making them regular, but the irregularity is part of the site’s charm.
Also I’m glad Griffin is on full-time! It’s good that Brian is on-board as well: David is now less buried, which is handy because his Jeep isn’t going to assemble itself. 😀
If you are having problems with irregularity try Exlax
Thank you A Barth! You’re the man
I spend more time here than on any other website! I’ve been a member of a lot of forums over the years and this reminds me of the kind of community you’d find on the best ones. And I appreciate how y’all reply to folks in the comments as well, it’s always nice to have a little conversation with the author.
Also night panel is fantastic, and I love the font color y’all chose!
I keep seeing posts about night panel… where do I find this?
It’s up in the upper right corner of the page. Right above the bell.
I think you’re all doing a fantastic job and this is my favorite place on the internet. I promise I’ll get around to buying a membership one of these days.
It’s all good, we’re just happy to have you here!
Bob you don’t seem as angry as you once were?
Any tips/suggestions welcomed.
Congrats to Griffin for the promotion! And I’ve been reading Brian’s stuff too, both great hires!
I second the wish for a “newest comment first” setup, and if there could be some way for previous comment pages to load without reloading the whole article too.
Now that I think about it, please don’t bury comments in deeply nested threads like the old place!
What we have a Brian and a Griffin but we don’t have a Family Guy tie in? If you ever want a Marketing Guy you know who I am.
Honestly, I think that if ran into any writer on this site at a bar, we would hit it off and gab until close. I truly look forward to an Autopian meetup that I can attend in person.
Job well done.
If they ever have one near me I absolutely want to go. (TN/KY border here).
Can you guys pick up my dry cleaning?
I know it would be/could be detrimental to your page views but I would find it quite helpful to be able to add an article to my glovebox from the home/main page.
My use case for the glovebox is largely in saving an article for later so I don’t lose it. If I see something really interesting and don’t have time for it, adding to GB is a great way to circle back on the weekend and read it. But clicking into the article then backing out is not ideal.
Very small issue. Overall I don’t have much to complain about.
That’s a great idea! I haven’t been using GB at all, but I frequently don’t have the time to read all the posts I want to.
You guys just confused me. There is no reason you can’t read all the articles each day. Eliminate your wife/girlfriend use your lunch hour and breaks forget about your children. Also you are working 8 hours a day who can’t read every article twice in 8 hours? C’mon people set your priorities. JK
Open the article in a new tab, add to glovebox, close tab.Takes seconds and you don’t lose your place on the original page.
You can do this on a computer, a smartphone, or a tablet.
You guys are doing great so far, in my opinion!
I’m really glad that Night Panel finally exists; I think the next step is to have it turn on automatically if a user has dark mode enabled on their device/browser.
For other suggestions: I’d like to not have to refresh an article when I want to go to the next page of the comments section. Better sorting options would also be welcome!
I’ve started creating passkeys for my accounts on services that support them, so I kind of want to see that here, too.
Have the comments navigation (previous, page 2 etc. when there’s more than one page of comments) at the top and the bottom of each comment page. Sometimes I want to read the comments in order from oldest to newest. It always plops you on the most recent & you have to scroll all the way down to hit the button to get to the start of the comments.
I agree with this. If I read part of the comments and come back I can never figure out where I left off / what’s new / what the order of the comments is
At least for me, when in Night Panel mode, some things are unreadable (e.g. the Mark as Read for notifications).
Also, I am old (not that much), really dislike Discord, would like to have an alternative to it, but, ok, probably I am one of the very few that would care about this.
The rest is good. Keep doing this great work!
I’m baffled by discord too, tried to use it, but was total lost. I’ll have to get my kids to explain it to me
I’m old. I figured out Discord. My kids were shocked that I use Discord.
If you’re shocking/embarrassing your kids, you’re doing something right!
It’s going great. I’ve made new friends though this site and the Discord, and even encouraged one person from the Discord to change jobs and come work with me. Plus the content is great and I’m always learning something from the articles (and often the comments).
I really like the content. My only complaints are pretty minor niggles with the comments and notifications. I wish both were a bit more featured (collapsible comment trees maybe? posting images? notification history maybe opposed to never seeing them again when you clear them?) But, they are just small complaints and with the site regularly being improved, probably on some roadmap already.
Improved comment nesting too. Once you get beyond a reply or two, it’s really cumbersome trying to read a conversation that happens in comments. Personally, reddit it does that better than anything else.
Notice and appreciate the difference in output!
Some ideas- davids done a couple recent articles on a foam cannon and impact. What about some recurring but on car related things and products that could be nice garage/house additions? Tools and detailing supplies alike. Mercedes battery thing also comes to mind. (On that note, random tool time, like the swench from the old site)
Brian needs a turn to be hazed, ala DT in the Aztek and Adrians ssangyong.
Love the return of onlyfanbelts!
And the glovebox- whats in yours?
Yes, we know more about Griffin than Brian (a name I know from C/D I think?). Griffin stared death in the face on a road trip with David to procure a GMT400. Let’s not leave Thomas out either.
I still have nightmares about that trip.
Essential tools and equipment for the car lover at home would be great so long as it’s tools the staff uses AND it doesn’t into the usual commerce posts on blogs like that g/o media, arstechnica, the verge, and the like that’s just a barely curated collection of affiliate links to the gadget du jour they’re paid to promote even though they haven’t used one.
Miss (Mrs.) Mercedes has (had?) a feature called Cool Tool, or it might have been on the old site? Anyways, it was always interesting and I would gladly welcome an Autopian version of that. Or a slight increase in the frequency of posts of said column if it’s actually an Autopian Original.
Still wish the comments wouldn’t randomly decide to go to multiple pages, but other than that I have no strong complaints.
I, too, sometimes wonder what the formula for that is.
What hope do the rest of us have then?
Definitely noticed the increased output and as someone that spends more time pressing F5 on the Autopian than actually being productive it was greatly appreciated.
But increasing page views for this crew is infinitely more productive than anything you might accidentally do at work.