It’s Been Six Months Of The Autopian! Let’s Talk.

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You know what’s something time does better than over half the cars in my fleet? Moves. Forward, even, unrelentingly, unstoppably. Since the Autopian started, that time has been chugging along for six months, a hemiyear, even. Holy crap. How does this happen? So, we figured we should maybe take a chance to reach out and see how everyone is doing, how you think we’re doing, and what we can try to do to make it better. I’d say you can call us terrible names, but I don’t really think we need a special call to do that.

Since we’ve started we’ve grown both our regular staff and contributors; sadly, today Mercedes and Thomas are out, with Mercedes getting ready for her wedding (Mazel Tov!) and Thomas probably on one of those ayahuasca retreats or some shit. He’s Canadian, who the hell knows what he’s doing?

Oh, and David is still in Australia, where I assume by now some determined koala has made him their lifelong mate.

But I’m here, Matt’s here, and lots of your favorite contributors are, too! So, please, ask us questions! Suggest things you’d like to see! Want more spammers on the site because you love both sexy pictures of willing ladies and making so much money at home? We’ll see what we can do! I can complain to you that I need to find more time to write things! You love hearing me complain, right?

We have more videos coming, more stories, more everything, but what matters is you our Autopian community, so let’s talk, everyone.

We’re just getting started.

UPDATE: To address some things I’m seeing a lot, we’re working on images in comments, comment editing, and notification. Same goes for site loading speeds. We see it too, and we want it fixed as much as you do! I’ve already maxed out our servers at 128K of RAM but if it has to, I’m willing to move it to an Apple IIgs, which can have at least a meg of RAM. Also, 4,096 colors!

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Mercedes Streeter

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271 thoughts on “It’s Been Six Months Of The Autopian! Let’s Talk.”

  1. One thing I would like to see also, is real names. It improves the quality of discussion immensely.

    But I think once the discussion is fixed, it really flourishes the communal part of the site.

  2. Made to the article three days late, and readbmost of the comments (I think).
    Thank you for everything you are doing, really appreciate! I’m visiting since April – 32 (maybe longer, my bookmark is still the old landing page, I never updated because my browser autocompletes this url on “th”).
    Some of the stuff I would suggest improvements (and maybe you haven’t read before):
    * Formating on comments. Oh, I would *love* to be able to format the ~stupidity~ ideas in my text in _just_ the right way!
    * Unobtrusive login: every time I log in to respond someone, the page reloads my profile page. Would it be great if it stays on the same page.
    * Related to the above: the page refreshes when I comment. It comes back to the (approximated) point I’ve left off, which shows you care. But still, less disruption, if possible, would be nice!
    * Metric content alongside imperial. I know this is an American site, but any article relying in understanding weight, length or volume units goes over my (presumably communist) head. Liberty is great, but units that increase linearly in base ten are also good! I suggest some sort of script to do it automatically, but by now, even a table of conversion would help!
    * There is a sad smiley on my profile page that I can’t make happy. “There is no content yet”, it laments. Well, buddy, I would try, but don’t know how!
    ** Also related, would be good if I could pin comments in the profile page, or even just create a bio or anything – like we can do on Wikipedia’s user page.
    *** Aditionally, can we favourite articles on site? The “downside” of too much content is that some stuff get lost in the sea… And my browser’s favourites are already a mess, so…
    * Dark mode. Pretty please?
    And, finally, many others said it, but it is important. Allow us to send you money! No pay wall necessary, I just want to send you yokes that can be redeemed for goods and services!

      3. So… Base 17… that’s not too much different from Base 16, so it’s easy!

        Digits: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, A, B, C, D, E, F, H
        (Lucky it’s not Base 18, because then we’d have to worry about using ‘I’. I’m not a fan of using ‘I’ as a digit, so I might skip over to K which is just going to confuse everyone.)

        So a 6 month anniversary is about ~182 days, or Base 17: ‘AC’ if I’m doing my math correctly.

        For a basis of units, we need something more car related. At first I thought we could base length of some car dimension like the stroke length of the Model T engine, but these are all imperial-based values (4 inches). We need something more arbitrary… what could it be?!

  3. “sadly, today Mercedes and Thomas are out”
    Took me a while to realize that they were out for the day, not for good.
    Kindly refrain from scaring the crap out of me, sir.

  4. Hey Jason,

    Now I’ll add my two cents worth. Right now it is 6:10 PM CST. I have visited the site four times today just checking for new content. Not too surprisingly, none was forthcoming.

    So here’s an idea. Leave the porch light on, i.e. just leave a check-in page where we can just drop by and say crap.

    Okay, now tell me there is already such a mechanism in place and I just don’t know about it.

    Thanks, Torch

  5. * If someone posted racist garbage, I’m sure you’d find a way to delete it. Why not delete the spam, and ban the spammers? DNFTS only gives them what they want; links from a Web site that (probably) has good Google cred. Ultimately, too much spam will ding you in search engine results, because the bulk of outgoing links from Autopian will be to spam sites.

    If Autopian uses any of the standard content management systems (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc.), install one of the many available anti-spam plugins. You can also block visitors from VPNs, Russia/India/Pakistan/Bangladesh, Amazon AWS, and other malicious IP/CIDR blocks.

    * Allow message editing for 5-15 minutes after posting, to correct typos.

    * That’s about it for now. 🙂

  6. Love the site, been following Jason and David on the old site, and love what they are doing here, perfect platform for me to learn more about car culture across the pond. I agree with the comments above, would love to support the site, would like to have even more historical deep-dives of obscure automobiles, reviews of basic cars, engineering-for-dummies, … And to add: European content following the Torch/Tracy guidelines would be heaven for me ! Outside contributors could be a nice way to expand (Asia, Europe, …). For example: I really like the series about Chinese makes and manufacturing !

  7. Loving the site. Spend probably too much time here but ::shrug::

    I dig the mix of content and am enjoying the breadth of contributors. Personally, I don’t have the bandwidth for more podcasts and while I like videos, I find it hard to make space to sit down and watch them, so neither are ever going to be a focus for me.

    Coverage-wise, I know there’s a lot of excitement around new, big, fast cars generally, but I am finding my interest to be pretty inversely proportional to the sticker price of the thing being discussed. Love the alternate histories and engineering/design deep dives and trench tales (e.g., the 3d printing article yesterday or the SW Gossin stuff).

    Infrastructure-wise, the only thing that really bugs me is how comments seem to display in random chronological order. Replying to a comment as I’m reading through sometimes shuffles them and it’s hard to identify comments that have come through since I last read. Being able to see if a comment got a reply to keep the conversation going would be awesome!

    Keep up the great work!

    1. “Trench Tales” is a fantastic moniker. I’m totally going to integrate that going forward.

      Thanks for the kind words and the comment!

  8. I love the site. The commentariat are where keep me coming back. Load times have been fine on my end.

    1. Comment moderation or a report feature to get rid of the spammers.

    2. More motorcycle content! Please don’t bring Bradley Brownell over, though, as I found him incredibly negative/toxic.

    3. Would Zak Clapman (sp?) consider writing?

    Keep up the good work!

    2. I doubt Brownell is ever coming here. Besides not being a good culture fit, he completely left the journalism side when he left the other site, IIUC.

      And did you mean Zach Bowman? If so, big +1 from me.

  9. You’ve got “car culture” nailed, and it’s very good – which makes the site highly worthwhile. “Car technical”, however…. That side of the equation needs development. As much as I enjoy tail light aesthetics or bus histories, for example, that’s not technical. Tell us how the answer to everything is “Miata” right up till the ND’s glass transmission grenades, why it grenades, and what the fix is, with schematics – and then dive into the controversy (Miata owners are a high-strung bunch), and I’ll applaud a technical feature with cultural overtones. You’ve published some good ones; more!

    And… thanks for The Autopian. SBRC

  10. I don’t post a lot but I’ve been reading this site since day one. The writers are entertaining as well as informative, and the diverse subject matter has been a surprise and fun to read. Sometimes the level of detail and technicality is beyond what I thought would be casual reading, but I find myself reading through it and learning about things I thought I would never care about and enjoying it. That’s a mark of good writing.

    As others have said, improvement to the website would be welcome, but it’s understandable that comes with growth and experience.

  13. Site needs stronger indicators of the indent for replies. Sometimes the conversation gets jumbled in my mind. Need to be able to sort comments by most popular. Do away with the newer comments link and just load ’em all.

    1. One thing I like on other sites is when they color-code the nested replies, which makes it easier to figure out visually what level they’re at. I know colors can create accessibility problems for some people, but even some light shading for every other layer of replies would likely help.

  15. Been reading since day one and have to say this site is amazing. I’ve noticed the increase in content and for me the, I have no issues with pages loading. The articles on automotive history/factoids/taillights are fantastic and fun! I LOVE the layout, and that there are no pop ups/banners or other terrible content that get in the way of reading the articles. Not a fan of subscriptions or paywalls but I would be a supporter of “daily deal” articles where y’all get a cut of the proceeds; there’s another site that I used to frequent that had that and I would often buy from there knowing it supported the site. That other site took it way too far where it’s become annoying and unreadable, so maybe don’t go too far. I too rock my Autopian t-shirt (actually wearing it now at my kids baseball game) and would get other stuff like stickers/decals. Toss a support us button on the site so we can give you money as others have posted as well :).

    The new quiz format for shitbox showdown is a huge improvement. Hopefully you can also do smothering to kick out the bots, thought maybe I should see how I too can become rich by clicking on a link???

    I was a bit bummed that I couldn’t attend the event in LA last August because I was out of town but hopefully you have something like that again.

    I really look forward to reading the articles and will admit that I visit the Autopian site almost daily. You all doing an outstanding job and can’t believe it’s only been six months of Autopian Awesomeness (copyright hashtag that lol)! Thank you and keep up the excellence!

  16. Jason, DM me if you need some free consulting on the site load timing. Director of Software Engineering here with multiple decades of experience and it’s neither difficult nor expensive to move to a better hosting environment.

    2. MSFT Engineer here – I believe this is a back end code problem, not a server problem. I did a bit of analysis and the major issue is a slow (700+ ms) TTFB root doc response time. The rest of the page resources are actually fairly fast (now that could be the CDN (Akamai, CloudFlare, etc kicking in – I didnt check IP’s to see if they are using one).

      Time to First Byte (TTFB), also known as server response time, is the time it takes for the browser to receive the first byte in response to the browser request. Reducing TTFB is critical to your visitors’ page experience as it affects every resource referenced in your HTML, and directly influences how long it takes for your page to load.

  18. Alright, been here since day one and have loved all of your work since. I’ve been busier on my end, so haven’t made it to every story still, but hovering around an 80% completion rate, so you know my commenter qualifications have at least some relevance.

    A few thoughts:
    – Yes to a subscription! A patreon, a sketchy CashApp with your name misspelled, a monthly subscription box with a random rusty flake off of David’s jeep mailed to my door, a robbery at gunpoint followed by the slowest get-away by the world’s cheapest electric car…I don’t care, but I want to give you all my money.
    – I’m almost entirely a mobile user, and I’m running decently fast internet, so maybe it’s just me, but I don’t have problems with slow loading of the site. However, the new commenting format where I can only see one page of comments at a time is a huge pain on mobile, and really needs an option to ‘see all’. I wouldn’t mind it being collapsed by default for site loading speed, but right now I’m missing a big part of what makes this site so good because it’s such a pain to click through the pages.
    – More stickers! Merch! Automotive party supplies! Custom LEGO minifigs of the team!
    – I’d love more motorcycle content, just on general principle.
    – Long-term EV build processes or evaluations/modifications (see: David’s EV conversion, the Changli series) are great for me, a certified ‘youth’ who wants to learn more about EVs. Plus, the more I learn from you all, the more I get to scare the shit out of my electrical engineer friends by describing your processes (is corrosion a hazard with high voltage equipment? I don’t know, but David will find out for me!).
    – Repeating the ‘see all’ comment button need, it’s really my biggest challenge for reading right now.

    However, all that aside, just keep doing what y’all are doing. Inspirations, every last one of you.

  19. First, just want to say you are doing great work and I hope you are able to keep doing it for as long as want. I can only imagine the work behind the scenes to keep this going on top of producing the content.

    Question 1: How much time do Jason and David work on things like managing editor type stuff versus actually writing articles and working on projects to write about?

    Question 2: Is there still a plan for David to do the EV truck build he started on the old site?

    Commentary: I am not really a car guy. I like cars, they’re cool but I never found enjoyment in working on beaters or maintaining them myself. I do like reading/watching reviews about cars but what drew me to the old site was the spirit in which all of you celebrate everything about the automotive world. I love watching David explain tiny esoteric pieces of engine design while he is waist deep in grease/oil/mud/whatever. I love that Jason finds beauty in every tiny aspect of car design. The breadth of stories you all tackle keeps me coming back and is the reason I followed ya’ll over to this endeavor. You keep finding the right people to collaborate with who can also tell good stories about stuff I may never have given a second thought. Emily and Mercedes are a couple of good examples. The lot of you are really fantastic.

    Suggestions: I’d second the support for a ArsTechnica style sub model. I am a subscriber to Defector precisely because I want to make sure the writers making the content I most enjoy can keep doing it.

    I want more David working on cars content. He mentioned in one of his articles he spent part of day doing his day job while also spending long hours working on cars. Im not sure what control you have on the time-space continuum but maybe find a way to give him more time to make the things I like.

    StefthePef needs work. She wants to hoon. I would love to see some content around that. Or whatever else she wants to write about.

    Very happy to have more of Jason’s non car content especially around the old computers and electronics in his garage.

    In truth if you just kept doing things the same I’d still be here for it so at the very least, KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

  20. I’ve been reading Jason’s work since BTA (before The Autopian) and enjoy most of the articles, writers, and even most of the commenters. I’m learning all the time and being entertained. How this web site can sustain itself, I don’t know, but appreciate the altruism when I find it. What else can I say? Thank you all from a retired and lapsed physicist/materials scientist with a voyeuristic interest in automobiles and related things.

    1. Is it realy that bad? It takes ~8 seconds on mobile for me, which sure is a more than other sites but but I appreciate the content and writers on this site more than any other. Can it be quicker? Of course it can, but I appreciate the minimal ads (look no pop ups!) MORE and find a bit of patience in life for what, a dozenish articles a day? It’s akin to getting on an onramp behind a Karmann Ghia – mildly frustrating if you can’t appreciate the beauty that’s right there.

  21. Slow page loading is my only major complaint. But it’s huge and responsible for me using the site much less than I would otherwise.

    I used to check in several times a day to catch new articles as they come up. Now I check in every couple of days and cherry pick just the articles that look the most interesting.

        2. I didn’t grow up with dial up internet because when I grew up there was no public internet. However, Usenet became available after I graduated from college and I spent many happy hours watching nekkid pictures appear line by line over a 9600baud (and eventually 14.4k) modern. So I do understand slow internet.

          But back then text appeared nearly instantly. Since I am not here to see nekkid pictures that’s the appropriate benchmark.

  22. The 411 illustration indicates you should snap up Stef Schrader right now. Also, in the multiverse of possibilities, we are lucky to live in one where the Autopian exists.

  23. Stickers. We need stickers. I will settle for decals though. I’ll festoon one to my e30 M3 and drive it places. The world will be a slightly better place and I’ll get a 2-3HP bump too.

  24. When I realized your RSS feed had the full, ad-free content of each article (placing you among the ranks of the saints), I immediately looked for a way to send you money, only to realize there isn’t one. Please offer some kind of subscription program or some other way we can support what you’re doing, so I can continue to enjoy your fantastic writing guilt-free.

    I love Mercedes’ motorcycle and RV content as well. Hope she gets the 1200GS of her dreams.

  25. I’ve been here since day one, and this site is a huge step up from what Jena Optik ever was… That being said, I think more two wheel content would be cool (Mercedes writes semi interesting articles about them, but they’re not always the most technically accurate/she’s already writing about a bunch of other niche things).

    The writer from the blue groove might be someone to consider, he occasionally writes for advrider.com, but I’m sure he could come up with weekly/biweekly content that seems to fit the editorial style, without being excessively technical.

    More in depth/historical articles would be cool, like for example, the history of Walter Wolf in F1, or the development of the Jaguar straight 6.

    I liked the mini review of the Jetta, it was enough to get a sense of the vehicle without obsessing over minutiae to make a word count.

    Occasional outside contributors might be interesting, having guest articles. Just some ideas from my end, I actually have an idea for an article, but I’m afraid it might be too niche.

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