LONG: Something to think about - and a challenge to you all!

[Guest Anonymous]

is for!! We are going to be creating THE resource for info on these car on the web- period!! Ive written on this a few times over the last week we have been "open" here. We are all contrubuting our efforts here by writing articles, indexing them and making them available via the FAQ and index page!! Take a look our launch tomorrow night. Its not going to be much at first, but over time it will be filled out by contributions from the community to eventually provide info on EVERY major aspect or issue of 02 ownership! And even plenty of minor ones. I want this to be a TRULY community-based site in that we all contribute and all benefit from its exiistence and vitality! You are right on Keith, and we are already well on our way to making it a reality!! Stick around and lend a hand!! 02 for Life!!!

-Rob

[Guest Anonymous]

listen to the man. We have the technology lets use it so the little german car can be around for another 30 years. make it easy for anyone to find the information easy to access, in an intelligent manner.

74 tii that would love easy info

[Guest Anonymous]

Gang,

On the eve of February 2nd, 2002 – I ask of you my friends in this little 2002 world of ours to ponder this thought that’s been bugging me for over a year.

I've been thinking about this whole 2002 BMW “learning from the archives thing” for some time.

Ok, I'm an IT guy by trade. I've had multi-million dollar checks in my hand in the past to make big corporations to do one thing...

Use enabling technologies, to allow people to be more effective at their workplace.

So damned if I can't stop myself from trying to apply what I do at work to my hobby.

So ever since I’ve been cross-pollinating the Internet and a BMW 2002tii, I’ve been observing what goes on.

I've seen this happen in corporate America: "if we just buy a search engine, we can make a Corporate Yahoo! and we'll all be Smarter"... WRONG!!!!

Guys... putting a search engine on all our posts of information really really dilutes the true value of it.

A year ago I started looking at all the websites I could find on 2002s before I started my little site.

What I found was that about 70% of them are basically a biography of a person and their car at a certain point in time and then they haven’t been updated since 1997. Nothing wrong with that – we all need our shingle out there and explaining a hobby or fascination is part of that.

There were FAQs about 2002s that appeared on some websites. When I compared notes, some information was redundant, some was different, some was conflicting. Who to believe?

There was Roadfly, which for the most part is a very low grade technology way for people to talk about 2002s on a daily basis and stay mostly on topic. I think that the information that’s captured had value.

Where the idea RoadFly idea probably went South in my opinion was trying to build a business around the buzz of what goes on for all those car types. Don’t get me wrong – my hat’s off to Charlie and Alan, these days anything you can attempt to rightly do to try to move a free Internet phenomenon into a pay business has its caveats. I don’t thing the 2002 world is the right forum to mess with – it’s a business problem – we aren’t realistically the right demographic for that business model to thrive in – people with $40-$60,000 cars who have money to burn on what big auto parts businesses are looking for. Are we really going to change muffler systems 3 times in one year? Are we really going to buy 2 sets of Ronal wheels a year? Gimme a break.

Ok, off my soapbox.

Technically speaking, the one thing I hate about the archives on Roadfly, or any topic anywhere that's searchable for that matter (insert Yahoo!, Google, Lycos, AltaVista, you-name-it-here) is that they are at times trying to make sense out of a big pile of redundant, highly unstructured information. You get a pile of URLs that link to what? How can you make an intelligent decision based upon a bunch of posts to a website?

ANSWER: We all don't need a search engine that really shows us that Rob S. has responded to every question ever posted in 2002 (and Rob S. don't get me wrong I enjoy your passion, I want to harness it for my own purposes and everyone's here)

What we need is a knowledge base that is well organized. Given the fact these cars ceased production 26 years ago, little has changed since. Owners of those cars asked, like we do, the same questions then as we “newbies” do now.

The MOST excellent part of this idea is that the universe of knowledge needed for these cars is easily defined - they haven't changed since the last one rolled off the line in 1976!!! It's a non-moving target -- unlike corporate America. It’s relatively easy to seal up all the data about our cars, piece by piece, agree to it, and lay it out logically so that anyone, now or in the future, who comes across one of these excellent cars can follow a common, proper path.

For example – how many times have people posted the same question about what tires fit inside the wheel wells of an 02 without rubbing? How many times do we have to cover that subject?? Depending on who responds to the question, how many times does it need to be answered wrongly before it costs somebody money and you think the person who said it’s an idiot?

MY CHALLENGE TO YOU FRIENDS IS:

Pick among ye the subject matter experts (going forward, call them “SMEs”) of the car. For example, who can argue that nobody knows more about the 2002 cooling system than Curt Ingraham?

Slice and dice up your expertise of the car like a Thanksgiving turkey and compile it into text format. Word, Excel, plain text, JPEG, GIF, bitmap, etc. Just keep it standardized computer formats.

Compile everything you can.

Synthesize it, analyze it, make it correct.

Then, let’s compare notes and see what we have.

When we get done, what we’ll have is the on-line, one-stop, bible of all bibles of this car, with the ability to take that bible “off-line” and put it into our cars and drive down the road and refer to it when necessary.

If I want to know what washer is needed to be installed before I bolt something back on, it should be there.

If there is an upgrade from a 320i or an E30 in the place you’re an expert on, it should be right there – no questions asked.

Searching and navigating that information is something I’m a SME on.

Let’s enable this knowledge once and for all… and argue about other things that a forum like this board provides – like where to take your car to get it worked on, what you can and can’t fix as a novice, what are the paint colors to lust for, best places to drive, things we do with the cars… And not keep reinventing the wheel of the car over and over with bad, misleading information about things that haven’t changed since 1968.

My own site is a bit of the social experimentation of what I think you all are looking for. I'm ready to take us all to the next level if you'll allow me to help manage it.

What do you think?

Keith Kreeger

Stella's Dad

1974 2002tii

http://www.my2002tii.com

[Guest Anonymous]

Sorta inline to what Keith said (great post Keith, btw), what about doing this through the board as a group effort? ie... this week Rob or Trent or Steve or whoever picks 'what wheels/tires/offset' can i put on my 02?' Well, everyone either posts to this forum their experiences.. or theres a separate 'faq building' forum, and after a week, the 'board guys' take all the info, compile it, and make THAT the 'wheel faq'. I would think that would cover more than simply 'one mans writeup' on any given subject.

2 cents

matt

[Guest Anonymous]

my role here is to take the submissions and indeed consolidate one or two articles, or those and a search through the archives, things like that. There will never be a case where an article is written and thats the final say in the matter. I invite you all to read the articles (obviously ) and then submit your own feedback, corrections, etc either via email or on the message board. There are no egos here, only a desire to communicate good information to 02ers, from 02ers. There is already so much info out there, it is simply a matter of consolodating it, editing it, and then posting it. For example, in the five-speed conversion article that Trent wrote, I added considerably to his submission because he used a Dave Varco kit while I used the different "rail" methods. We will eventually add info on special considerations when converting an automatic car to five speeds, etc. There will ALWAYS be more info to add, synthesize, correct. What you have all mentioned is essentially what we are after. Getting the good info up and out there to help people maintain and upgrade their cars. We are absolutely relying on the collective wisdom and creativity of the wonderful community of 02ers out all over the world! I am VERY much looking forward to your writeup on your M20 conversion as well!! There are a LOT more interesting things in the works, and like I say we will continually be adding and improving the info on the FAQ site. I do appreciate all the suggestions and input!! We are doing this ONLY to serve the community. When we do get sponsors, they will only be asked to cover our hosting and bandwidth costs, etc., so there will never be a case where a sponsor feels like they are in control or should have control of the content here. More to come on this part of our strategy as we work it through! Again, keep the ideas coming!

-Rob

[Guest Anonymous]

Sorry - to clarify - I never meant to say that one person should be the last word. Each of you has a particular area that you are an expert of and should direct your brainpower and experience at those areas.

At a high level, the concept is similar to the way CompuServe or AOL uses moderators for particular subjects. It keeps the information "sanitized" for accuracy and duplication of effort.

We spend a lot of time here repeating the same information over and over and over.

How much smarter can we be if we move on and work on things we never talk about??

Keith

[Guest Anonymous]

You have a great concept, and I'm looking forward to it coming to about. I can't agree with Keith on the selecting of a single idividual for each area. That seems to be the exact opposite extreme. Hell if you had 5 articles covering the same topic under 100 topics, that still is easily accessible information (with just a little thought in formating). I have faith in your ability to put out the info in a meaningful way, and my ability to select the info I need.

[Guest Anonymous]

"How much smarter can we be if we move on and work on things we never talk about??"

With the FAQ, we can easily document procedures, and have them in ONE place that makes them easily accessible -- so that we CAN move to to learning more and doing different things about our cars. Instead of answering the same questions like, "I need a new alternator, any upgrades?" That information will be EASILY found in the FAQ.

Trent

[Guest Anonymous]

Lets see how the first batch of articles are recieved and then proceed from there. Perhaps I can post a draft article here and people can comment on it before its posted in the FAQ, and variations thereon. veddy veddy innnnteresting!!

-Rob

[Guest Anonymous]

our collective attention. This seems to me the sort of huge project that runs best if broken into manageable chunks. Posting a topic/system or two per week would do two things: direct our thoughts toward the particular rather than the general, and periodically remind us of the ongoing effort and our roles in it.

[Guest Anonymous]

URL: http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Autos/Makes_and_Models/BMW/2002/

You described a system in which various volunteers maintain different sections of the FAQ, which would be their areas of expertise. This is a very good way of organizing data, but it's not a new idea.

The dmoz Open Directory Project has been organizing the internet using volunteer editors for quite some time. I'm the editor for the BMW 2002 category:

http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Autos/Makes_and_Models/BMW/2002/

I haven't had much time to add many links in there, but if everybody wants to go ahead and submit their sites we'll have a good collection. Right now this is just a pile of links, so it's pretty tough to find any specific information, but we can setup the structure to organize all our FAQ articles into an easy to maintain directory. Using the example that Keith suggested, I could create a Cooling System category that somebody like Curt Ingraham could become the editor of to maintain and fill with links to FAQ articles we've prepared.

...and we wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel by rewriting the directory system. If we are all in favor of using a dynamic system, this would be the way to go.

Keith, is the dmoz directory similar to the system you imagined?

Dan