I'm really sorry to write this, but I'm truly disapointed with most of our long-time forum members who wrote in this thread.
As many of you may know, I run a portuguese automotive forum, for portuguese enthusiasts and sometimes I find it harder to understand some members there who write in my native language than it is to understand Ali Baba.
There are two behaviour problems in this forums, and they are both very clear in this thread:
1st one:
Lazyness
Everyone here seems to hate minimal efforts. There are those who don't like to read horizontal posts, there are those who prefer to post links to links instead of copying the original adress and finally, there are those who are too busy to read a post 2 times to understand it's meaning.
If I were the only one to get the meaning of Ali Baba's questions, I woulnd't bother writting this, but there were ate least 2 more members who understood the intention. Not easy to understand him? Sure, I totally agree and I believe he can and will improve his writting has his vocabulary is not poor. And Ali Baba should mind that and try to better it. But that's no reason to flame him and to write childish posts.
2nd one:
The joy of flaming.
It's been discussed here many times and even more on the Mod Forums. Everyone here who has more than say, 1.000 posts, thinks he's gained an authority to speak to newcomers as if they were a lesser species. Sure Ali Baba likes to play around a bit with us. But this is not even about him. It's about every new member that happens to make a clumsy first thread. After that, this looks like a kindergarden with a non-stopping row of laughing stone throwers in an exercise of masturbating humour, with jokes to friends and harsh words to the recent arrivals, never minding the possibility that behind the new nickname, there may be a nice person.
Wich one of us here as never wrote a stupid comment or wrote a statemment that wasn't exactly true? So can we blame those who happen to have a bad first thread?
I've seen Ali Baba creating nonsense threads like the one with his car project. But I had a laugh, and did not "bookmark" the member so I could flame him on a second thread.
You guys have to be objective. He may have had some nonsense posts, but he has a point here. And although I can't imagine that documentary museum idea being build up here, the thread has a point. And a good one.
We need to grow up. If possible, together. The principle of a good web-based relationship, is to act like if you're facing the person to whom you're writting to. You guys should try that exercise every once in a while.
I don't know how serious you are with that idea, but it would be a fantastic one. But one that I can only imagine being rased by some sort of foundation and with the help of many contributors uninsterested in profit. If there was such a place near me, I would be glad to donate the hundreds of magazines I own, to be able to share them with other enthusiasts. It's a very interesting idea. But, as I said before, I think it would only be possible with the help of uninterested donors.
But good ideas generate good ideas, and this is what I thought: It would be possible and interesting for us to make a documentary section in UCP forums, using scans of magazines we own with articles of common interest, about classic or special cars. We could even fill it like we do with the Hi-res: someone asks for an article about a certain car and we try to find it in our magazine or book collection.
I'd like to know your oppinions.