I hate it. Just sticking around to see if it gets changed back, otherwise leaving pretty soon.
Please change it back.

 

Yep. I’m done here. Signing out of the ES forum.

Congrats on doing stuff without thinking it through whoever it was.

 

I saw a discussion somewhere, where I am not searching for again (cause of the changes) discussing the reasons.

Well the thread was closed so I will say it here. I really don't want to sit here and figure out which are the 5th gen posts, so it just makes me close the website.

I think I saw it's difficult having multiple sections for a forum for maintaining or something? I've never seen that on any other forum I've participated in. Does the site just have such a low amount of mods? Even then I'm still not understanding, they just exist as directories within the site with different organization structure, no?

 

Even with search I cannot find posts b/c there is no generation specific tag or way to find information i am looking for. It's reduced my visits here by 95%.

 

The older models are dying off anyway, so it kind of makes sense. I have an '04. I am interested in possibly upgrading to a newer model, so it's nice to see how they are faring, all the newer than mine gens. I will put "2004" in the thread title for sure when starting a new one.

 

Hello,

I have created a thread about it on Site Suggestions and Problems forum a little while back, here is a link to it. But yeah, as mentioned by TCoolest2, that thread was Locked Down by mods, the justification that I was provided for this was that "we [members] kept repeating the same complaints over and over again".

When the thread was locked, I was assured, both in the thread and in the Private Messages that I received afterwards, that the mods do see it as an issue, and that they are looking into ways of splitting the forums again, and implementing the structure outlined in the now locked thread, here is a post from that same thread.

The biggest issue that was given to me in splitting the Forums apart again is the same as with dumping a jar of Nuts in a jar filled with Bolts and mixing them together, while it is easy to mix them together, you will have to sort through each and one of the fasteners by hand to split them apart again.

That said, unlike with a jar of fasteners that got mixed together, ClubLexus Forum has been Archived numerous times throughout its time, said Archives are freely accessible through a Wayback Machine. Here is the same forum Before it got merged. There is also a Simplified Version of the same Main Page, and surprisingly, it was archived as well, here is a link to it. It's really not too difficult to make a scraper that would go through each of those pages and retrieve all the titles that were present there at the time, and since the Archive was created way before even a thought of a merger, we can be absolutely sure that every single one of the threads listed there at some point belonged to the respective forum.

I have attached the lists I came up with for 1st-4th Gen, 5th Gen and 6th Gen Forums, first there is a URL from which the data was scraped, and the Date when said page was Archived. The data is structured with a Unique Identifier first, then a Thread Title, and then the URL to said Thread. By my rough math, that alone gets us about 90% of the way there, and after that, there are other ways to automate the sorting procedure for what remains as well. On paper, at least to me, it appears to be a pretty straightforward procedure.

That said, despite being assured that they do look into ways of splitting the forums, and despite sharing everything written in this thread with the mods well in advance, I have not received any replies from them since March 23rd. Seeing that my earlier thread got locked with no prior warning, and the lack of responses, my concern is that no one is really looking into this issue anymore, even if we've been assured otherwise.

I made my stance on the subject quite clear in the thread from earlier, this was a rushed decision that no one bothered to think through. It is still unclear to me what prompted it, but regardless of whether the intention was to "improve user comfort" or to cut costs on moderating so many separate forums, this decision clearly backfired.

I do apologize to the active members, but I don't think that will be around until someone actually commits to fixing this issue. Even if it takes years to sort through this mess, I would be more than willing to do what I can to help. So far, however, that's pretty much the extent of what I can do until one of the mods decides to get back in touch.

 

That generation of ES you have were built with much better build and material quality. Not saying the future newer generations are bad but old is gold.

 

@Arsenii we hear you. do you want the power to start making these changes?

 

Yes, I think it would be helpful.

How do you see the implementation of those changes, and my help with it?

 

Came back to reference a thread on 2nd gen cars to help a friend — only to find the mess that combined gens 1-6. I found it hard enough having Gens 1-4 combined and having an early 2nd gen with a separate motor from most. Only exception was stickied threads. My thoughts are that not having that organized system like before will make it even worse in terms of getting duplicate ask threads simply because the old ones can't be found.

Thank you @Arsenii for looking into this and offering to undo what happened.

 

I'm not entire sure, but we can either add pre-fixes in the new combined forum that would then need to be applied to the threads you've identified. this would enable filtering by prefix in the now combined forum, or there is the more extreme approach of separating the content back into the forums it came from, again using your links to perform manual moves. I would imagine the labour involved would be about equal with both, however it might be possible for me to ask our tech team if they can move things en masse if I provide them with specific sets of URLs that belong in forums that are currently hidden away.

as this is something we've never undertaken, i'm more than happy to take the lead from you.

 

Did autotech13's post get removed again? I was going to chalk it up to website having issues, but now it clearly seems like malice.


That was pretty much the entire idea of generating the lists I linked earlier, they contain Unique Identifier, Thread Title, as well as a Link to it. With simple filters, that list can be turned into a Chart like an Excel Document if needed, I just have no idea what would be more efficient without seeing how everything works.

Seeing how simple it was to dump all the Forums into one, there must be a Batch Move tool available on this Website, if so, it is only the matter of generating a List of Threads to be Moved, which is where those lists from Wayback Machine come in. I don't see how there would already be a built-in tool for this, so it will likely have to be another bot to automate this procedure. Moving 40,000 threads by hand would be an unreasonable endeavor when it can be automated.

As I already suggested to one of the mods, seeing that there will have to be a tool designed to automate this procedure, it won't be difficult to add Tags to those threads as well, similar to how it's done over on Lexus Owners Club. That said, again, you will need to add a way of Modifying those tags After the Thread is Created, otherwise there will be no practical use for it, seeing that people will still keep forgetting to populate it, just like they forget to add it in the Main Body of the thread, as well as to the User Profile.



Below is a screenshot showing several ways of displaying said Tag to the Main Page, all are equal in complexity, the only question is which one would look better. Personally I am more inclined to the 3rd option as it doesn't just stand out like a sore thumb.



Well, you are not the first one who set out to fix it. If you are truly committed to it, then by all means, it would free up a lot of my time, but my concern is that after this discussion is over, everyone will immediately forget that it happened in the first place.

 

comments which were only intended to complain, and not provide additive commentary were removed with a follow-up discussion via PM.

to me, I think attempting to add pre-fixes into this now combined forum, using your lists of threads is going to be the most tenable, future proof and also applicable across other domains within CL. None of this is 'automated' nor does it employ AI. Everything here is human powered and human curated. As to your visual preference for how prefixes may appear, that is going to be limited by what is currently available within the software. It will look the most like #2. Future threads can be enforced to select a prefix, so there will be no further confusion introduced if this route is chosen.

 

Still, it's not like said complaints aren't justified..

I see your point, but I still don't see it as a complete solution.

Again, if my understanding is correct, the crux of the matter is actually generating the list of threads to be modified, but what is done with that list is secondary. So long as there is a list of threads, it shouldn't really matter whether that list is used to Move threads over to a different forum, or to add a Tag to them, or Both.

Personally, I would like to see both option, the threads Moved to Separate Forums, and Tags added to them, the Tags that can later be implemented all across the Website. Seeing that one of the forums will still have 4 Generations merged together, that can also help differentiate between them as well, depending on how those Tags are implemented.

As written in this thread, 2nd to 4th Gen share a lot in common, internally, they are very similar, whilst 5th to 6th Gen are very different cars, their Ideology is different, they really have no reason to stay in one bucket with the others, and that opinion is shared both by the 1st to 4th Gen, and by 5th to 5th Gen owners who were willing to chime in.

If that still counts for anything, all 4 of the listed options were created using Inspect Element, I didn't just draw them using Paint or anything, so it is clearly doable, the only question is how, not if.

I do see the merit behind it, but for how much easier it is to delegate routine tasks, I have to wonder if it is truly justified..

Hope this helps and best of luck!

 

while i have a lot of agency, i also have some lines which i must remain within. my answers reflect those operational realities.

let us not make the perfect solution enemies with the good which can be achieved. my takeaway is that adding prefixes (based on your lists) to the already combined forum as a first step, so that the community can understand how it's operationalized and how content can be sorted within the forum after-that makes more sense than re-moving content back into now empty forums as the first step. There are Google implications which also must be included in the decision making matrix.