Car blog rant

[Mr Whippy]

I have enjoyed using it both actively, filling in about my cars service/maintenance which it appears to have always been used for by 99% of users, hinted at by the vast selection of service/cost related items in the drop-down menu...

...and passively, reading others entries as a useful lookup of TVR running costs


Right now there is no way to differentiate someones blogs about their car generally, and their running cost blogs.



I'd happily blog about my car and ownership week to week, I WANT to do that, but the mechanic offered means I mess up my nice tidy service blog with interspersed general blogging with no way to filter it, and no appropriate choice in the drop-down menu.



So to sum up...

I'm happy that some people have used their initiative and used the blog outside the box it was clearly intended for, but at least make it so those that have spent time maintaining a nice blog for costs/service ONLY, can ALSO take part in the new blogging, without having to now pollute their nice costs/service blogs with general blog entries.

Thanks

Dave

[Mr Will]

If you want to run a more detailed blog about what you do in your car (rather than the running of your car) then why don't you start a thread in the readers cars forum?

[Mr Whippy]

Mr Will said:

If you want to run a more detailed blog about what you do in your car (rather than the running of your car) then why don't you start a thread in the readers cars forum?

Truth be told, I want to enter the compo, but to do so I'll pollute my nice tidy service/costs blog.

Adding a thread also isn't easily seen by others unless you link to it from your cars profile. Why it can't just sit on the overview page of the car screen, where you currently have your overview text/photo and overall running costs matrix.


I don't see why everyone is so against an elegant thoughtful solution that retains the benefits of the costs/service system, and makes the new blog system look it's best and makes it more accessible and more dynamic like a proper blog.

Hey ho.

Dave

[Mr Will]

Mr Whippy said:

Adding a thread also isn't easily seen by others unless you link to it from your cars profile. Why it can't just sit on the overview page of the car screen, where you currently have your overview text/photo and overall running costs matrix.

There is nothing stopping you from writing a blog on the summary page. It's a free text/image/etc field where you can enter whatever you want.

Mr Whippy said:

I don't see why everyone is so against an elegant thoughtful solution that retains the benefits of the costs/service system, and makes the new blog system look it's best and makes it more accessible and more dynamic like a proper blog.

Your ideas are welcome, but there are not going to be any changes to the "My Garage" section while we have a competition running, so I'm just trying to suggest the best ways of working with what we have now.

If we want to add a proper blog system then we will add a proper blog system, it doesn't need to be wedged into the pages that already exist in the way you are suggesting.

[Mr Whippy]

That sounds cool.

Basically, I want to enter compo.

Compo rules state I have to put blog entries in with my service entries, which messes those up. I don't want to do that.

I'd feel a bit of a git to add entries now, then remove them after the compo to tidy things up.


True, too late with the compo running, just a shame no one thought about it first...


I know I can add a blog on the first page, I've considered it after seeing others having done it, but eventually it would become not so nice to look at for others. A good blog promotes the top five entries to the top say, and the rest are archived neatly.


Just a bit gutted this compo is going to make people start using the existing system badly, imo, ruin the old service/costs blog clarity, and then confuse people when a proper blog is intruduced.
Badly organised and implemented imo. PH usually gets this kind of stuff really right, hence me not ranting about it

Dave

[Mr Will]

Mr Whippy said:

Compo rules state I have to put blog entries in with my service entries, which messes those up. I don't want to do that.

No it doesn't

We are going to look at it as a whole, it doesn't matter exactly what is on each page as long as it is clear and readable.

Mr Whippy said:

I know I can add a blog on the first page, I've considered it after seeing others having done it, but eventually it would become not so nice to look at for others. A good blog promotes the top five entries to the top say, and the rest are archived neatly.

But this is not any different to the strictly chronological service history blog. I know it's a bit of a faff to do, but there is nothing stopping you re-organising the order of "posts" on the main page

Mr Whippy said:

Just a bit gutted this compo is going to make people start using the existing system badly, imo, ruin the old service/costs blog clarity, and then confuse people when a proper blog is intruduced.
Badly organised and implemented imo. PH usually gets this kind of stuff really right, hence me not ranting about it

The intention is to get people using what we have, not to try and make it into something it isn't. Your (and other peoples) requests for a fully featured blog function are interesting and will be considered fully in time, but "Readers Cars" is the place for that, it is not what we are trying to do here.

[Mr Whippy]

Ah sorry, I read the T&C's for the rules, and it said the blog had to have a minimum word count.

[quote=T&C]Step 0 – independent exclude all entries that have less that a 100 word blog or more than a 30 word answer to why they should win the car.

Step 1 – Independent to read through all ‘my garage’ entries and score each out of 10 against the following category and create a shortlist of 100.

1. Pictures
2. Interesting content/intro
3. Running costs
4. 100 word blog
[/quote]

I asked what blog was, and it was said to be the specific blog where service/costs are entered (Garlick said that?!). Mine probably doesn't reach 100+ words yet, because it's just bare service related entries.

So now if I add a blog layout of 100+ words to my http://www.pistonheads.co.uk/members/showcar.asp?c... car summary page, and leave my ACTUAL blog (service part) as it is, then my entry will count?


Sorry, just it's all a bit confusing and unclear now.

The blog is actually just descriptive entry, and counts anywhere on your car profile entry. It doesn't have to be in the actual service/costs blog part?

Dave

[Mr Will]

The 100 words is the running costs, shown on the tab titled "Blog". 100 words is a very short amount, which can easily be reached without polluting the running costs with other waffle by adding a very small amount for description to each entry.

For example, my 190E (which I haven't filled over for the competition) has comfortably over 100 words on that page: http://www.pistonheads.com/members/showServiceHist...

Your Z4 that you linked to is already up to almost 200 words, without any description in most of the entries.

[Mr Whippy]

So the 100 words is for the running costs blog.

If you then choose to blog in the summary field, OR the running costs blog, that is up to you.


That is now clear.

However, I think it's not ideal to use what is clearly the blog for running costs (noted by the selctions in the drop down menu), to blog generally.

Can it be easily formatted later so that running costs blog entries without a 'type' defined can be defined as 'general' and then a query used to seperate them for nicer viewing (possibly on the summary page last 5 entries kind of thing)

Hmmmm

[Mr Will]

Mr Whippy said:

However, I think it's not ideal to use what is clearly the blog for running costs (noted by the selctions in the drop down menu), to blog generally.

I agree, putting it in the summary is best.

Mr Whippy said:

Can it be easily formatted later so that running costs blog entries without a 'type' defined can be defined as 'general' and then a query used to seperate them for nicer viewing (possibly on the summary page last 5 entries kind of thing)

It's technically possible, but it's not something we are going to do any time soon. As I said before, if we include a blogging mechanism it will be done properly, rather than bodging one together out of what we already have.

[Mr Whippy]

Cool, I'll go on your logic there then.

Blog for now in the summary section, and leave my service/costs blog as it stands, nice and clear and useful for referencing those items it's intended to blog!

Thanks

Dave