I love Toyota/Lexus products as well, and I put my money where my mouth is by 30 years of Toyota ownership (two Corollas, three Camry's, 2 Sienna's and an IS350). If I ever criticize Toyota/Lexus, it's out of love for them only wanting them to do better

 

In the summer of 2009 I was searching for a car to replace my falling-apart 97 Grand Am. My parents really didn't want me searching for a car without their help. The first place I went to was a Toyota dealership about 50 miles from the house. I checked out a 2008 Corolla at first. Nice but I felt it was a little small and I didn't want to pay $333/month for 6 years for it. I asked if they had anything else more affordable and he pulled out this beautiful blue 2005 Camry. It had just 50k miles and it looked brand new inside. Since I had never done this before, the staff was more than helpful in arranging the financing for me and all the paperwork. As a 20 year old kid with no prior credit, I got a 9.6% interest rate ($283/month for 5 years financing) so looking back that wasn't a bad deal. I got home with it that night and my parents were beyond proud. Literally not a day in the shop for anything in 10 years of ownership. If I wasn't a moron in the snow in 2019, it'd still be on the road today although likely with someone else since I was looking at replacing it at that point.

We got my wife a Scion at one point. Fun car that was like a go-cart.

Then that 99 Camry I had was good. I knew I could just get one with a ton of miles because they never break. Well, unless you're me and dump in a bunch of oil to ruin the engine...

My sister had a 99 Corolla after high school that she drove everywhere. She was god awful with maintenance but it still ran, going to Vegas, Texas, all over the place. I think those years she drove more miles than I currently do (about 30k a year). Cousins, uncles, etc had various Toyota's over the years, all without issues. I was the first to get a Lexus and I don't see me buying any other brand. They're just too reliable. I got spoiled with that 05 Camry all those years. Reliability is such a nice thing.

 

Much of the off-topic issues stem from threads concerning EV's and EV adoption policies, which inevitably end up becoming political. It's almost impossible to have an EV discussion here because of that.

 

Agree, I’m working in an approach to help that.

 

Doesn't sound very open minded to me.

I get that...which is why we suggested that there be a separate thread or area for more natural conversation that ebbs and flows and naturally changes topics.

Thats not fair. I have been nothing but kind, offering my own time and energy to try to help come up with a solution that works for everyone. I don't like being told what I can and can't talk about, as do many others, its not that "I don't like the rules", and if I didn't care about and value this forum, I would just stop posting here as opposed to spending the time and effort I am spending here. I spent over 2 hours last night working on guidelines for this thread at Dave's request, thats time I could have spent relaxing or preparing for today or with my family. What I get met with is belittlement from you. Not fair.

Why does something have to be of value to everyone else? Why can't it be enjoyable and of value to the members who choose to participate in it? Not everything has to create outward value.

The thread if it works the way I think it will will ebb and flow, it may get no posts for a while and new conversations will start. In a thread thats getting off topic, maybe we say "Lets take this to the conversation thread" or you as moderators will move off topic posts from another thread into there and let the conversation continue.

When a group of people have a conversation, when does someone else jump in? The answer is theres a natural opportunity to do so which arises.

I moderated forums for years, I know that its not easy. BUT, you volunteered for this job...and a big weight of making the forum a great place falls on your shoulders...

And I am volunteering to help in whatever capacity you want me to help.

Its not clickbait, it was a fun picture I wanted to share with my forum-mates. Had a general conversation thread existed, I would have just posted it in there and not started a thread. This is an example of the issue with your directive "just start another thread", well, I started that thread, you didnt like it and you closed it as soon as you saw an opportunity to. That will happen all the time if we "just start new threads", they wont make any sense, the topics will be weak and you're going to close them all.

We just want to have fun Paul.

And? Thats what the members in the thread wanted to talk about. Let us have some place to have an open and evolving conversation. You would think I was suggesting we have a thread for satanic worship or something...

Wouldn't you like us to stay here on CL creating content, getting views, driving engagement and using advertisers products?

 

This post is a great example of an opportunity to simply move it into the conversation thread, or say "Hey, lets continue this in the conversation thread"...

 

And a great illustration of the exact issue we are talking about and trying to solve as well!

As I mentioned above once threads get to a certain size they cause forum errors and issues when moderating so we are going to rely on you (that’s the royal you, as in everyone here) to self moderate and recognize a) where off topic car rambling goes and b) when legitimate new topic threads should be started. We may end up closing the chat thread and starting a new one occasionally due to size. Will give it another shot, but if it ends up being a catch all for new discussion topics or requires a ton of moderation I’ll give a couple redirections before closing it down.

Sw when you are done send me the draft in pm please. I think this thread has served its purpose

ps swajames I am still interested in your list if you want to go through and send me your feedback, shoot a pm