Dudeman's lament
Hi all,
Here’s a bit of my background on this forum and these cars.
Waaay back in the day, 1990 or so, I came to Sydney for a holiday, rented an MR2 from some dodgy car rental place in Kings Cross, and drove up to the Blue Mountains for the weekend. The car didn’t want to stay in 5
th on the main drag, burnt my arm trying to check the oil, but he car left an impression the mountain roads.
A few years later, 1994, I read about the ADM GT, wow, sounded awesome, six speaker surround sound cassette deck with a CD player – all for $62000 or so. Wow, imagine having that sort of money for such an exotic!
Many years later, forgetting that impractical car dream, now having a mortgage and my own family, riding a motorcycle as a commuter, I have a close call on the bike, I’d prefer to keep my legs working for a bit so I think car again.
That week I’m at work and I see an MR2 – that’s it, I’m going to buy one of those! One more seat than the ex police bike BMW I was riding, not much of a bigger motor, and as I was to find out – slightly better wet weather protection than a motorcycle.
So I looked for a bit. No luck. Searched for some on-line help and found a forum. Found Glenns’ Mr2 Australia. Gee, a login in name? No idea, just need some help and advice to find a decent car then I’ll be outta here. Hmm, name, no idea dude, whatever, ‘Dudeman’ so stupid but its not like I’ll be using it for long.
So, after some good help from a few members and looking a few cars I found a 94 GT ADM. Perfect inside, very good outside. Bought and driven home. Nice car.
Sort of made a few posts on the forum here and there, not a mechanic, no good knowledge or advice to share, just some carp jokes and warped sense of humor comments made to a few posts here and there. Not too popular as this free speaking awful joking newcomer. Gee some on the forum are pretty serious!
Some are pretty normal too, so end up going to a couple of meets in Sydney, meet some decent people, 2hardtop, Jaemus, Dylan, Jay, the excitable Surok and the reserved Darius not to mention others. Nice crew, come along to a meet now and then.
I’m no wall flower, like I say, I don’t have any technical knowledge to offer – if I don’t write gibber, well I wont have anything to write. Turn up to meets without having said anything on the forum? – I guess you’d be half expected to sort of edge your way around a meet, listen in, but not say anything. So bad jokes, bad puns, whatever. That’s me.
I did take exception to people being relentlessly targeted on the forum and got involved in some fantastic keyboard warrior moves. None of this scored me any points on the popularity stakes but I don’t believe in kicking someone when they are down and give a hand to the underdog.
I even offered to take this keyboard battle to the carparks in a no holds barred challenge of ‘scissors – paper – rock’ to decide on ultimate keyboard warrior. But it didn’t happen. (I was there!)
Buy myself one of those fancy JDM type cars, no glass in the roof and a funny hairdryer thing slapped on the engine. With some hands on help from 2hardtop, Jas, parts from Dylan, DB8, SRK, the car is being rebuild and should be on the road soon! (Yeah! 12 months + soon!!) Anyway, couldn’t have happened without hands on help and words of advice from these people and more. Once that car is up and happening I plan to put a 1mz in the ADM GT.
Anyway, back to the forum. Theres a split in forums, 98% of the Sydney crew run off to different pastures. Grass over there tasted funny so I stayed here.
Forum owner then asked for new moderators. I put my hand up and seemed to get in by default. Now that put more than a few noses out of joint, lots of protests, lots of pm’s to the forum owner. He persevered and I kept the position. Not one complaint after the first couple of weeks had passed (lots of complaints initially.)
So for over the last 14 months or so I had been a moderator here. Resisted any urge for nonsense commentary (After the first week or so anyway) and just did what I thought a moderator should do.
I put in a silly amount of time here, the vast majority of what I did was unseen. That is what I think good moderation is about, just keeping it running smooth without anyone feeling any bumps.
Flicked some spammers, had to haggle with a group of trolls to find someone else to annoy (ban the user ID? Yeah well that sets them a challenge, a group can invite more and just destroy a small forum like ours so just annoy them to go away – it worked)
I have spoken with more than a few members on a personal level with any dramas they were having here and more importantly – how they would prefer to have the situation dealt with. That and giving advice to anyone who asked me for that type of stuff I know of.
So, pretty well much, keeping my head pulled in, spending too much time here, probably annoying the other moderators by jumping on anything before they had the chance to.
Until last week.
I dealt with a member of the forum and wanted to buy something. I thought he was rude and unreasonable. Pretty obnoxious really. Then a did something I now regret, I went to some old postings of his and
gave him thumbs down!! On about 6 posts. Yeah, pretty silly and petty.
So, whatever that ‘score’ thing meant, I decreased his by six! (Oh yeah, then by another six or so a few days later – but by that time there was a small backing chorus of downward thumbing by some others but don’t go there…)
Now this ‘thumbs down’ thing, well, it has been pretty soundly abused against some people here. I let the forum owner know when it was happening and I tried to delete the downward thumb from that persons profile (Not the obnoxious persons one, the person who had a troll problem) but I couldn’t change the members ‘thumbing’ to be more upward.
So I didn’t really think the thumbs counted for much at all. But really I should have been more forward and instead and sticking a few sneaky thumbs I should have been more forward and said, “Steve, I think you are obnoxious and unreasonable” (and apparently you have quite a comical squeaky voice and enjoy riding on bandwagons)
Then there was the ‘someone has been giving me thumbs down’ conspiracy thread and my subsequent fall from the great lofty heights of
Moderator to those of member.
So.
I’m not a moderator any longer. I did like being a moderator and thought I did a pretty decent job of it. No over-editing of threads or postings, no random or unwarranted deletions. People booted yes, posts deleted yes. Complaints 0. Thumbs down? Too many!!
Anyway, for me it’s about the cars, always has been. They are great to drive, and I’m looking forward to my turbo being a very nice car (It better be with the amount of $$ in it now) The NSW club is great and Darius and the committee are doing a fantastic job keeping it alive and DVST8R plans great trips. (Can someone let Dylan know when the runs are on??)
Love you’s all (Not you squeaky)
DM.
