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
I didn’t know about Defector until this article. They seem to be beefing with perennial third-tier try-hard VC barnacle Jason Calacanis. That’s a good sign.
Please please please actually update the platform. The site is frustratingly slow to load and has been from day one.
You’re doing a really good job for a lean and mean outfit.
If I had an area I’d like to see covered more, it would be driving infrastructure. How are roads built and maintained and funded? How are parking lots and garages designed? How do these things go wrong? How do all of the pieces get coordinated? You definitely cover these things, but I’d like even more.
Streetlights, stoplights, signs and speed bumps are all a huge part of the driving experience, and I think there’s more that can be mined from these things too.
Excellent idea!
Your website is a nightmare for me. On my home desktop, after deleting cookies/cache for a separate issue (no, it was not to delete porn search history), Autopian now asks me for an email address so I can get a confirmation code. Multiple attempts and I never got a confirmation code. I am still logged in via my work laptop, but I have a replacement laptop waiting at my hotel that I will arrive at on Monday. I assume that I will not longer be able to log into Autopian once I get my new computer.
On my soon-to-retire work laptop, I cannot vote (as in the voting panel never shows up) on the shitbox of the day. I cannot vote on my desktop, even though I can see the the voting box, because I cannot log in.
This will likely be my last post on Autopian once I get my new laptop due to log-in issues. I’m guessing that most people won’t care, but there could be someone with comments that are worth reading that are in the same boat as me. Something is wrong with the Autopian website. PC user running Firefox.
Email Matt – he can help, I’m sure. Don’t give up yet!
I will do so. I love the community.
Since I just figured out this week that Mozilla’s Pocket has been shut down, I’m very excited that the Glovebox feature has been added, as a good chunk of the things I was saving over there were from The Autopian.
I’ve really been having a blast with the overall membership experience, even though I feel like I’m still lurking. That one’s on me though. ^_^
I’ve been having a blast with the member ship experience too! I’m lurking mainly because I don’t want DT to find out I own a Jeep Liberty because I know how he feels about them.
This is by no means a priority but if you could implement a “sitemap” it would be super helpful to find old articles.
The old site had one where you could sort by year the month and day and see every article published that day.
Keep up the great work, you have built something special here and it’s an honor to have been along for the ride ever since the beginning. It’s a pleasant respite from most of the other content these days that is just designed to provoke or outrage. When you wonderful people try to provoke and outrage, it’s all in the name of good fun or laughable absurdity, and I love that.
I’ll be the contrarian and say don’t allow photos in the comments, because it’s a whole other level of moderation required and I’d much rather have all of you spending time on developing content, rather than checking whatever photos our juvenile minds might be inclined to post. I also love the fact that I can occasionally send a message directly to the staff and actually get a response.
Noticed Night Panel and like it. Otherwise, all is well. Enjoying month 6 of my Smurf blue Civic hybrid hatch, and pleased I made a good choice.
Those are nice cars and you got the good color
This is the main site I visit, when I was 15-19 I would go to the library and read all the car mags they had, and popular science/mechanics. This seems to fill that same interest hole as those magazines did, so thanks for that.
Also the comment section and other members remind of late 90s/early 2000s era internet forums where people were chill and engaged in having good discussions.
I like the night mode, site performance seems ok to me.
I guess it’s been a while since Jason posted one of his regular series articles, like on a new topic, he’s keeping up great with the old ones. 😀
I look at it the same way – this is like the car magazines I’d obsessively pour over in my youth, but with the added bonus of being able to talk to the writers and other readers. Instead of “didja see the article Car and Driver had on the Testarossa?” “No! Someone else had the only copy damnit.”
It seems like this is one of the last remaining places online where people leave all their bullshit at the door and do what we came here to do, and what it basically says on the door: just hang out and talk about cars, man. There’s no shortage of other places on the internet to cut each other to ribbons over all that other nonsense.
But here? If you’re car people, get in here. You’ll probably run into some other weirdo who likes what you like. It might even be me. It doesn’t matter what else we may disagree about – if you like burned hydrocarbons and tire smoke and flinging mud and exhaust notes and admiring design and learning cool stuff about cool rigs you never heard of, you are my people. Or at least, you can be my people while we’re in here. Because that’s the agreement.
I may have mentioned it before but the ability to mark an article read so it no longer appears in the regular feed unless new comments are posted.