Haymarket agrees sale of PistonHeads to CarGurus
Discussion
janesmith1950 said:
Monkeylegend said:
Blatters, but that has since closed down.
CTF is dead, had a total of 59 posts in a day when I looked last week.
58 of those will be the same person still congratulating themselves via 14 different user accounts over how much PH is sCTF is dead, had a total of 59 posts in a day when I looked last week.
te.
Clockwork Cupcake said:
dhutch said:
- Wouldn't have a nice easy to use image upload facility.
- No single signin with google/facebook.
- No way of 'mentioning' a user.
- No wysiwyg editor.
None of these are of any particular importance or interest to me, to be honest. Speaking personally, I mean. - No single signin with google/facebook.
- No way of 'mentioning' a user.
- No wysiwyg editor.
I use the site a fair amount on an iPhone and can't say I've ever had an issue and I wouldn't use a single-sign-in if it was offered, I don't want all my online things connected, I actively like to keep things separate.
K50 DEL said:
Same here, I couldn't care less about any of those things... an image uploader that auto-resizes images would be nice
That was one of the biggest annoyances about losing the Classic "skin" (sic). With that one, all images were automatically resized to the screen size upon display. However, that bit of code was never ported to the "skin" that is now the only one, and hence the functionality was lost. Lemming Train, again you seem to be focusing on the forums argument. Which has been addressed by PH & CG themselves.
My posts, that you have quoted, were based on the PH site as a whole. However, you seem intent on narrowing them down to fit your forum comparison by only comparing the “forums” of my suggested sites. These sites don’t really bother with forums or comments (with good reason).
What you are doing is the car equivalent of that guy who has spent a fortune to make his car do a ¼ mile faster than a Veyron. That’s wonderful but it’s a pointless comparison. If the owner of the Veyron spent the £Mil+ cost on creating a car to only go fast in a straight line then it would obviously beat the other stbox.
As such, I have not suggested them as a comparison for PH forums.
There is also a reason that car throttle has been seeing ever increasing site visits (now up to half the visits of PH and growing) whilst PH has been dropping. This is despite the rest of the site being “dead” as you put it. Their articles and front page are more modern and simply better.
Petrolicious have over 600,000 subscribers on one of the internets biggest platforms (youtube) compared to PH’s 40k+. They regularly receive over a million views on each video, whilst PH usually only has 10-20k. Nothing to worry about there, the forums make up for it…
Global Rank by visits: PH - 7,084th with 8Mil visits per month / Reddit – 25th with 1,500Mil
At the end of the day, forums and comments do not generate cash. If they did then the internet would still be full of forums. Traffic is the commodity of the internet to be mined, marketed and sold. It brings advertisers and money. The best sites in the world do this by having an ever changing and relevant front page where traffic flows through and away from the site. Clicks, views, likes etc… are the proof that a site or particular posting is popular and more along those lines will earn more money.
It does not matter, to the site owners, how long you spent browsing their forums or how many pages a thread reached. Especially when the threads are just a text conversation between the same group of people. They earn nothing from this.
Your forums will struggle to survive the current generation who expect to get answers by doing a simple search instead of posting and waiting for a response from an unverifiable source.
My posts, that you have quoted, were based on the PH site as a whole. However, you seem intent on narrowing them down to fit your forum comparison by only comparing the “forums” of my suggested sites. These sites don’t really bother with forums or comments (with good reason).
What you are doing is the car equivalent of that guy who has spent a fortune to make his car do a ¼ mile faster than a Veyron. That’s wonderful but it’s a pointless comparison. If the owner of the Veyron spent the £Mil+ cost on creating a car to only go fast in a straight line then it would obviously beat the other s
tbox.As such, I have not suggested them as a comparison for PH forums.
Lemming Train said:
If Car Throttle is done so well and the front page is how PH should be in your opinion, why is the rest of the site dead? The front page is the 'door' to the rest of the site so if everything behind the door is dead that tells you that the front page isn't working as it's not drawing anyone in.
The front page being a “door”, is very much an old school internet mentality. Your hypothesis that “if everything behind the door is dead that tells you that the front page isn't working” is flawed. If it were true then Facebook, news sites, Instagram, twitter would have failed a long time ago. There is a reason for the joke “the best place to hide something on the internet is on the second page of a google search”There is also a reason that car throttle has been seeing ever increasing site visits (now up to half the visits of PH and growing) whilst PH has been dropping. This is despite the rest of the site being “dead” as you put it. Their articles and front page are more modern and simply better.
Lemming Train said:
Petrolicious is another site that's dead. Gimmicky layout with too many 'like' buttons and Facebook style commenting. Checking a handful of articles the average number of comments is 3 . That's some real progress in 2+ years! PH should definitely watch their backs.
Again the site was not the comparison point, nor was the “comments”. The videos are the asset of Petrolicious, but you are right that PH need not “watch their backs”. This would be pointless as Petrolicious is way, WAY out in front.Petrolicious have over 600,000 subscribers on one of the internets biggest platforms (youtube) compared to PH’s 40k+. They regularly receive over a million views on each video, whilst PH usually only has 10-20k. Nothing to worry about there, the forums make up for it…
Lemming Train said:
PH has become more of a 'life' forum than just about cars.
OK, if you insist on making this solely about the forums and that nothing else matters to PH, then let us do a direct comparison to THE “life” forum:Global Rank by visits: PH - 7,084th with 8Mil visits per month / Reddit – 25th with 1,500Mil
At the end of the day, forums and comments do not generate cash. If they did then the internet would still be full of forums. Traffic is the commodity of the internet to be mined, marketed and sold. It brings advertisers and money. The best sites in the world do this by having an ever changing and relevant front page where traffic flows through and away from the site. Clicks, views, likes etc… are the proof that a site or particular posting is popular and more along those lines will earn more money.
It does not matter, to the site owners, how long you spent browsing their forums or how many pages a thread reached. Especially when the threads are just a text conversation between the same group of people. They earn nothing from this.
Your forums will struggle to survive the current generation who expect to get answers by doing a simple search instead of posting and waiting for a response from an unverifiable source.
phoenixz said:
Your forums will struggle to survive the current generation who expect to get answers by doing a simple search instead of posting and waiting for a response from an unverifiable source.
And yet I was shot down for making exactly that suggestion in the "things you always wanted to know" thread. It seems some people really do prefer to post a question and wait for a response. Besides, the resulting discussion can be far more interesting than the dry facts that a google search will return. I don't disagree with the rest of your post (which I haven't quoted) - site traffic is more than just forum visits, of course. But I think forums have their place too. I think it would be a great shame if we lost the Gassing Station. Not least because it's been part of my life for 17+ years and I have made a lot of friends here. And I mean real actual friends who I have gone on to meet in "real life", although there are also a lot of people here who I haven't met but who I always enjoy interacting with in threads. And, of course, some that I don't.
Anyway, all this is pure conjecture. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating - ie. what CG choose to do with the forums.
phoenixz said:
Lemming Train, again you seem to be focusing on the forums argument. Which has been addressed by PH & CG themselves.
My posts, that you have quoted, were based on the PH site as a whole. However, you seem intent on narrowing them down to fit your forum comparison by only comparing the “forums” of my suggested sites. These sites don’t really bother with forums or comments (with good reason).
What you are doing is the car equivalent of that guy who has spent a fortune to make his car do a ¼ mile faster than a Veyron. That’s wonderful but it’s a pointless comparison. If the owner of the Veyron spent the £Mil+ cost on creating a car to only go fast in a straight line then it would obviously beat the other stbox.
As such, I have not suggested them as a comparison for PH forums.
There is also a reason that car throttle has been seeing ever increasing site visits (now up to half the visits of PH and growing) whilst PH has been dropping. This is despite the rest of the site being “dead” as you put it. Their articles and front page are more modern and simply better.
Petrolicious have over 600,000 subscribers on one of the internets biggest platforms (youtube) compared to PH’s 40k+. They regularly receive over a million views on each video, whilst PH usually only has 10-20k. Nothing to worry about there, the forums make up for it…
Global Rank by visits: PH - 7,084th with 8Mil visits per month / Reddit – 25th with 1,500Mil
At the end of the day, forums and comments do not generate cash. If they did then the internet would still be full of forums. Traffic is the commodity of the internet to be mined, marketed and sold. It brings advertisers and money. The best sites in the world do this by having an ever changing and relevant front page where traffic flows through and away from the site. Clicks, views, likes etc… are the proof that a site or particular posting is popular and more along those lines will earn more money.
It does not matter, to the site owners, how long you spent browsing their forums or how many pages a thread reached. Especially when the threads are just a text conversation between the same group of people. They earn nothing from this.
Your forums will struggle to survive the current generation who expect to get answers by doing a simple search instead of posting and waiting for a response from an unverifiable source.
My posts, that you have quoted, were based on the PH site as a whole. However, you seem intent on narrowing them down to fit your forum comparison by only comparing the “forums” of my suggested sites. These sites don’t really bother with forums or comments (with good reason).
What you are doing is the car equivalent of that guy who has spent a fortune to make his car do a ¼ mile faster than a Veyron. That’s wonderful but it’s a pointless comparison. If the owner of the Veyron spent the £Mil+ cost on creating a car to only go fast in a straight line then it would obviously beat the other s
tbox.As such, I have not suggested them as a comparison for PH forums.
Lemming Train said:
If Car Throttle is done so well and the front page is how PH should be in your opinion, why is the rest of the site dead? The front page is the 'door' to the rest of the site so if everything behind the door is dead that tells you that the front page isn't working as it's not drawing anyone in.
The front page being a “door”, is very much an old school internet mentality. Your hypothesis that “if everything behind the door is dead that tells you that the front page isn't working” is flawed. If it were true then Facebook, news sites, Instagram, twitter would have failed a long time ago. There is a reason for the joke “the best place to hide something on the internet is on the second page of a google search”There is also a reason that car throttle has been seeing ever increasing site visits (now up to half the visits of PH and growing) whilst PH has been dropping. This is despite the rest of the site being “dead” as you put it. Their articles and front page are more modern and simply better.
Lemming Train said:
Petrolicious is another site that's dead. Gimmicky layout with too many 'like' buttons and Facebook style commenting. Checking a handful of articles the average number of comments is 3 . That's some real progress in 2+ years! PH should definitely watch their backs.
Again the site was not the comparison point, nor was the “comments”. The videos are the asset of Petrolicious, but you are right that PH need not “watch their backs”. This would be pointless as Petrolicious is way, WAY out in front.Petrolicious have over 600,000 subscribers on one of the internets biggest platforms (youtube) compared to PH’s 40k+. They regularly receive over a million views on each video, whilst PH usually only has 10-20k. Nothing to worry about there, the forums make up for it…
Lemming Train said:
PH has become more of a 'life' forum than just about cars.
OK, if you insist on making this solely about the forums and that nothing else matters to PH, then let us do a direct comparison to THE “life” forum:Global Rank by visits: PH - 7,084th with 8Mil visits per month / Reddit – 25th with 1,500Mil
At the end of the day, forums and comments do not generate cash. If they did then the internet would still be full of forums. Traffic is the commodity of the internet to be mined, marketed and sold. It brings advertisers and money. The best sites in the world do this by having an ever changing and relevant front page where traffic flows through and away from the site. Clicks, views, likes etc… are the proof that a site or particular posting is popular and more along those lines will earn more money.
It does not matter, to the site owners, how long you spent browsing their forums or how many pages a thread reached. Especially when the threads are just a text conversation between the same group of people. They earn nothing from this.
Your forums will struggle to survive the current generation who expect to get answers by doing a simple search instead of posting and waiting for a response from an unverifiable source.
TL;DR
Clockwork Cupcake said:
phoenixz said:
Your forums will struggle to survive the current generation who expect to get answers by doing a simple search instead of posting and waiting for a response from an unverifiable source.
And yet I was shot down for making exactly that suggestion in the "things you always wanted to know" thread. It seems some people really do prefer to post a question and wait for a response. Besides, the resulting discussion can be far more interesting than the dry facts that a google search will return. Also on PH we get first hand experience and facts and stories and insights from people from all kinds of backgrounds and a range of opinions and expertise. It’s a much much richer experience than just doing an internet search.
phoenixz said:
Lots of stuff.
OK. A slightly more serious reply now. I thought that the dislike button was wholly appropriate given your claims that forums are dead and it's all about clicks and 'likes'. Also noting that you're clearly part of the younger generation demographic who have the attention span of a goldfish I thought that the TL;DR was pretty good too, especially seeing as "your lot" like to spam them everywhere there's more than 2 lines of text to read. 
I do agree with you about how this is the current trend for companies to make money - it's all about the clicks, the 'likes' and page view numbers etc. But I don't think this was ever in dispute, at least not by me anyway. What I disagree with you on is your 'one size fits all' template for how all websites should be. Why should a demographic of mostly middle-aged and older blokes be shoehorned into using a layout that caters for youngsters? It's wonderful that it will make the owners loads of money from the clicks and 'likes', but there's the small matter of people not liking being forced to do/use something that they don't like, with the end result usually being that they don't bother returning and seek out alternatives.
The forums are the life blood of this site. Any change to them beyond perhaps a move to an established bulletin board platform will see traffic numbers tumble. A complete change to something like Car Throttle, Petrolicious or Reddit will kill them dead within weeks. I would even go as far as betting money on that. As CCWC and Stovey have said above, we generally like to have discussions about various car and 'life' matters and share some stories and anecdotes along the way. Saying that none of this matters because people can just use google for whatever they want to know simply demonstrates a total ignorance of the type of people that frequent this part of the site.
The only reason why forums are claimed to be dying is because companies have recognised that clickbait layouts like "25 must-read things that will change your life" with one sentence per page and the rest of the page chock full of ads with 'like' and 'share' buttons are what makes money, so they're hoovering up every website and forum that has high traffic numbers and are converting them to layouts like Car Throttle, Petrolicious etc where they can fill your screen with tiles of short articles and videos that all take less than a minute or two to read/watch, then you click on the next one, and the next one, and the next one. It's all about the clicks, the 'likes' and the 'shares'. The comment box is just there for decoration.
If you ignored the money-making requirements, forums haven't died at all and they are still the best platform for online written discussion. Companies don't like them because 1 click can see a user sat reading a page of 20 or 40 posts for maybe 15 minutes or more and that doesn't make them any money at all when their model is based on constant page clicking. Even if you fill every post with ads (as HM have done), it still doesn't make much money and of course with the ever increasing numbers of people installing ad blockers in frustration to combat the ad spam it's a fight that you'll never win, hence why HM have thrown in the towel.
OP said:
There is also a reason that car throttle has been seeing ever increasing site visits (now up to half the visits of PH and growing) whilst PH has been dropping. This is despite the rest of the site being “dead” as you put it. Their articles and front page are more modern and simply better.
No. No, they really are not. The articles have been written to a set price point and are completely lacking in detail and 'meat'. It's the absolute bare minimum required for people to click the article and have a quick skim read to see if it's worth reading, aka clickbait. It's the same for the videos. Shouty, exaggerated faux excitement over some new car but no actual 'meat' to any of it. Again, deliberately done to a price point and the bare minimum to get people to click on it. The articles on here often come in for criticism as - in more recent times at least - they have essentially become a copy and paste of the manufacturer's press release blurb, but they're still a better read than the trash found in the articles on CT, PL etc.OP said:
At the end of the day, forums and comments do not generate cash. If they did then the internet would still be full of forums. Traffic is the commodity of the internet to be mined, marketed and sold. It brings advertisers and money. The best sites in the world do this by having an ever changing and relevant front page where traffic flows through and away from the site. Clicks, views, likes etc… are the proof that a site or particular posting is popular and more along those lines will earn more money.
It does not matter, to the site owners, how long you spent browsing their forums or how many pages a thread reached. Especially when the threads are just a text conversation between the same group of people. They earn nothing from this.
Yes, I completely agree and have said as much myself above (should have read this bit first!).It does not matter, to the site owners, how long you spent browsing their forums or how many pages a thread reached. Especially when the threads are just a text conversation between the same group of people. They earn nothing from this.
OP said:
Your forums will struggle to survive the current generation....
(Taking your comment slightly ouf of its original context here admittedly...) They will struggle when under the control of a company out to profit from the content - YES. But that doesn't have to be the case, does it? If CG decide to nuke the forums or convert the layout to clickbait trash there is nothing preventing a member setting up a copy in a noble attempt to retain the great community of folks and knowledge here. People have already said earlier in this thread that they would be happy to chip in towards the running costs so no need to have any media company overlords repeatedly trying to kill off the forums because they're unable to monetise them. If the beardy discussion of the best log burners, electric gates and how to fix our broken TVRs is not to your liking then you are free to move along to any number of Facebook-esque sites where you can watch endless cat videos and talk about the best selfie sticks. 
Wait... TL;DR, right?
Edited by Lemming Train on Friday 14th December 02:32
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