[GTO]

Source & Birthday Thread

Wow, our baby is just a year away from getting its driving licence .

The likes & dislikes posted at the start of every Official Review (and now ownership reports too) are unique to Team-BHP. Unique because they set the tone at the start of the review itself, listing in an extremely comprehensive & brutally unbiased manner all that's good and bad about the car. In some reviews, our likes & dislikes list runs up to 25 - 30 points! There isn’t a doubt that it’s the best synopsis of any new car launch.

We've been applying the above to all the amazing beasts that come our way. But what about Team-BHP? How about reviewing our community in the same way? Here is my list of likes & dislikes for our beloved Team-BHP.

Request to please reply with the same flow. You must post BOTH, likes as well as dislikes (not either one). Thanks!

What I like

• A forum that continues to thrive, in a world where web forums are dying. We must be doing something right . And we continue to improve every year. For instance, over the last 6 months, our car reviews are released quicker than ever!

• The incredible people onboard...our member community & the camaraderie between us. Be it newbies & BHPians, or DBHPians & Mods. Thank you for making this journey a truly incredible one with your presence.

• Our top-class content, thanks to active members as well as the very strict + effective moderation. This is a forum I'd spend a couple of hours on everyday, even if I wasn't its Admin. There's nothing I love more than participating on the forum.

• Keeping the forum troll-free, spam-free, porn-free. It’s something even multi-billion dollar corporations like Twitter & Facebook struggle with. Truth is, trolls are ruining the internet & we are damn proud to be troll-free!

• Somehow, Team-BHP invokes a whole lot of passion! People are crazy in love with us & there are many diehard fans on the forum (there are crazy haters too, sadly).

• Living the dream! 80 - 90% of my time is spent on cars + content. I am either driving cars or writing about them. The entire day, I am only thinking about cars & the Indian auto industry. There is simply no other industry I'd rather be a part of, and nothing else I'd rather be doing.

• Team-BHP has given us memories & friends to last a lifetime (more details here (A dozen years of memories...Happy 12th Birthday, Team-BHP!)). Equally important, I don't think there is any other platform that has given us as many special moments (partial list here) as Team-BHP has. It is such memories & moments that make life fun.

• The fact that we’re the only large automotive media in India to refuse car advertisements opens up a lot of avenues. It gives us creative freedom in content (check this one out) & helps keep our reviews brutally unbiased. The independence is liberating! No other car media has the guts to say no to car ads or call out car manufacturers like we do.

• In 90% of disputes reported on Team-BHP, we side up with the car owner. No matter what the cost, legal notices included. We remain a community of car owners, by car owners & for car owners. If we know we are right, we will fight tooth & nail. No matter who is on the other side, even the country’s biggest car manufacturer.

• The sheer breadth of content! Is there anything related to the Indian car scene that we haven't discussed? Is there any other Indian automotive website where you'll read about missing fuel tank bolts, car naming, windshield protection, fishkeeping, historic petrol / diesel prices, big group meets, Royal Enfield books and types of keys?

• That fact that we do things differently (full details on this thread (Celebrating 15 years of doing it DIFFERENTLY : Happy Birthday, Team-BHP!)). This is a community run by the heart more than the head. And we sure aren't ones to do things the conventional way.

• The only large automotive website which gives car owners a massive platform to air their views. Write something on social media and most of the posts out there will be viewed by 100 - 200 people. Write something on Team-BHP and there are good chances that your thread will cross 100,000 views. On a related note, once a customer complaint is posted on Team-BHP, it usually gets solved. In the last year, we've had 1.93 crore unique visitors & 17 crore pageviews! Team-BHP's sheer size gives it a lot of benefits, directly & indirectly.

• The fact that we have a culture & personality. We’re not just another website churning out news & reviews only. We are so much more than that. Team-BHP has a soul. We talk about life in India, we have meets with a hundred attendees, we won't think anything of going out of the way for a stranger as long as he is a BHPian...I also love how the forum has stayed true to its core principles & philosophy.

What I don't

• We'll be the first to say that the new member approval process is imperfect. While 90% of good members are approved, a few do end up rejected. This causes a lot of pain to us. One does have to put in effort to get onboard.

• I wish we would expand our coverage of motorcycles, especially the reviews. Imagine an "Official Review" of every important motorcycle launched in India! Man...

• The forum interface looks okay to us regulars, but it's terribly outdated by current standards. Content is king though & is waaaaaaaaaaaaay more important than the look. Reddit is sailing a similar boat, while Google Search also has hardly changed its interface from the original days. At best, we will make small tweaks to the layout because drastic changes never, ever go down well with user communities (read up on the digg & Jalopnik disasters).

• The "passion" point I spoke of above runs the other way too. While lakhs of people love us, there are a couple of hundred that hate us. Well, it's the price you pay for strict moderation & doing things differently. We have accepted that we cannot please everyone & we're fine with that.

• I wish we had more gender diversity onboard (related thread). Women now make 13% of our viewership, yet merely 1% of members.

• Wish we reviewed more premium cars. Bandwidth means we cannot review all cars, and I prefer to maintain sniper-like focus on mass market cars in the cost range of 1 - 30 lakhs.

• More BHPians should be welcoming newbies in the introduction forum.

• The many members that have been banned. Some of them were good writers & did contribute significantly to Team-BHP, but we cannot compromise on our forum rules, decorum or etiquette. Whatever the reason - all said & done - they were a part of the family at one time & I remember at least some of them fondly.

• It breaks my heart that we lost some truly amazing friends to road accidents (Rtech, Sam & others).

• Our ads can get intrusive, especially on the desktop site!

• We are a small team & hence, cannot do everything that we'd want for Team-BHP. From 10 things that we'd want to implement (improvements, features & the like), we end up picking the top 2 - 3, simply because we don't have the bandwidth or time for the rest of the list.

• Some members left Team-BHP even without being banned. Sure wish that wasn't the case. But again, we will NOT compromise on our expected rules & forum decorum.

A true BHPian family! The Team-BHP love transcends all ages & genders...


The forum rules still apply, guys! No discussion on Mod activity in this thread please.

[Rehaan]

Great list! I'll quickly add just a few more.


Likes

• The spirit of helping other people runs strong - even if they are anonymous and faceless users on the internet. It's such a pleasant opposite of what we tend to see on combative social media these days.

• The sheer passion and enthusiasm that members and even readers have for anything and everything Team-BHP truly surprises me at times!

• Intelligence and varied viewpoints of our members, especially when combined, is a force to be reckoned with. Spend 5 days thinking about everything to include in a thread, and chances are the first few replies will raise additional and fantastic points and counterpoints that didn't even cross your mind. Honestly I can't say enough good things about our the people that make up this community. You're all truly amazing in your own ways.

• When we started, we thought we were building an incredible information base - but BHPians built an even more impressive community, online and offline too. So many BHPians are best friends with people they met here on the forum. Truly enriching people's lives.

• One of the most meaningful things to me is that in some indirect way, we're saving lives. Road accident figures are staggering for India - and I believe that every so often, a powerful sentence in a Team-BHP thread somewhere has positively influenced a reader's driving habits. Safer drivers make safer roads for everyone involved.


Dislikes

• Wish we ranked higher on Google results for more generic search terms (eg. Maruti Baleno), so that more consumers could be armed with the fantastic knowledge that is shared here.

• We thought about it long and hard, but couldn't come up with a better solution to our incredibly strict member registration process.

• Limitations of our old forum platform means limited features, and additional complications to add new ones (eg. @Tagging of members)

• Our essence is misunderstood by many. Some misguided folk I see on social media truly believe that our reviews are paid. Wish they could see the truth somehow.

• Members do an absolutely fantastic job of arranging Team-BHP meets, but I wish we could organize an absolute smasher of nation-wide mega "Official Meet", perhaps at a race track with a few exotics for BHPians to try their hand at


Happy 17th!

[v12]

Happy 17th Birthday to our amazing forum.

Great work Team-BHP Support!

[--gKrish--]

I agree to all the points above, so not repeating them.

Likes
* Quality of reviews- this undoubtedly is far above other platforms.
* The organized manner in which content is classified and arranged.
* Having members of all age groups : many a times, I have noticed how people from different age groups bring different perspectives into the discussion.
* This is the first place where I found people with the same or even more passion for cars.

I was in 8th grade when I first came across team-bhp. When I was younger, I always thought there was something really wrong with me because of my automobile related quirks. In 3rd or 4th grade, my schoolmates gave a surprised face when they come to know the reason for my random absence from class was because I went to see the cars getting serviced or repaired; The only time I engaged in conversations was when there was anything with wheels involved; Going to the school library everyday at lunchbreak only to check the car ads on Reader's digest and Indian Express etc. After joining this forum, I found people with similar quirks, far higher obsession with cars and so much more OCD that I feel like a normal person compared to them.

Dislikes :
* These days, I feel less technical discussions are happening compared to the older days. There is still quite a lot of new interesting stuff posted daily but I think the ratio of such posts have come down despite the increased number of daily new posts.
* Unanswered queries : I often come across unanswered queries even for simple questions, don't know why they get missed.
* The downtime (Guru Meditation page) in the morning. I sometimes start questioning my life choices when I wait for the maintenance to complete.
I know it is inevitable but nevertheless it really is an uneasy feeling

Happy birthday TeamBHP!!!

[Dr.Naren]

Happy 17th birthday

Likes

1. Content , content and content. I am able to find whatever I am looking for by using the search or advanced search options in most of the threads

2. Official reviews: Unbiased and detailed. I also like the new short and sweet reviews.

3. Long term ownership reviews: It's anyday better and more reliable than long term reports by auto magazines. Another point is writing ownership reviews and keeping it updated is really convenient. If I forget some details about what was done in my car, just refer to the thread. I am also used to sharing the link of my posts to whoever asks me questions or more details as it would be written better instead of writing in brief on whatsapp or Instagram or facebook.

Dislikes:

1. Not going to name any thread, but some of the threads over last few months are disappointing and look silly.

2. No 0-100 / in gear acceleration timings in official reviews. We don't really need an expert / professional to do this.

3. Official reviews of premium cars

[saket77]

Happy birthday TBHP! Due to some other commitments, I was not able to post much in the last few days, but how can I miss this wonderful opportunity to wish TBHP a happy seventeen!

I’ll keep it short and simple.

Likes:

Content.
Moderation.

Undoubtedly the best of these two is what makes TBHP our favourite online place to hangout discussing not only cars and automobiles, but almost everything under the sky.

Dislikes:

It does feel bad when people are either banned or when they leave. I feel like it’s an irreplaceable resource wasted. For example, just reading the’ banned’ label against any member’s name whose post I have read in past hurts. And I read much more here than I write; so I just wish that if people take rules as a guiding force towards betterment and perfection rather than something like an obstruction or hindrance, we can minimise such occurrences and unpleasant experiences.

Thanks to all members, readers, Dbhpians and the moderators for making what TBHP today is. Everyone has had a role and my best wishes to everyone here.

Regards.

[landcruiser123]

Woohoo, congratulations. I spend too much time on Team-BHP, maybe more than I should haha. Great work @GTO and the other Mod team.

What I like:
1. Content
2. Consistency in Quality
3. The current Forum layout - it is actually a good combination of text & images.

What I think can be better:
1. Image uploading mechanism - it takes multiple clicks
2. Have a prominent "FORUM" (Already there, but sometimes easy to miss) & "REGISTER" button which stands out on the homepage
3. I'd prefer Team-BHP doesn't try to replace my Twitter feed trying to tell me what's hot around the world. I understand that search engines will pick the articles on a hot topic, but I'd suggest leaving the - "Coronavirus thread", "RIP Sushant Singh Rajput thread" etc in the shifting gears and not getting them on the homepage.

What I really don't care about:
1. Lack of mobile apps

[Samba]

Happy 17th

Likes

Honest & exhaustive official reviews.

There is a dedicated section for all your searches, be it long term ownership report of a car, travelogues, technical issues, 4x4 section and many more.

Though its an automobile forum, still you get information's on almost everything.

I actually like the scrutinized membership policy. This helps the forum to maintain a certain standard.

The moderators/admins work 24/7.

Got many true friends through this forum & definitely it enhanced my knowledge on automobiles.

Even the pandemic failed to stop Bhpians from having a Team-Bhp meet (all proper precautions were taken).

Dislikes

No mention of speeds! Hey, we are all enthusiasts.
But, I do understand, safety comes first.

Off-late many keyboard warriors are posting a lot. Knowledge based on Google/internet is good, but coming from experience is better.
Now again nothing can be done on it.

A 0-100 video along with the top-speed of the car could have been added in the official car review. It wont matter for the most, but it will matter for few.

A small video of the engine sound/exhaust note can be added in the official car reviews.

[blackwasp]

Just another year to get a driving license .

Likes
• The collective stance on road safety is definitely making an impression out there. At a showroom once, I overheard a new car buyer asking crash rating of a car + how many safety features the car had and was scrolling through the Team-BHP website on his phone.

• The sheer amount of information on the forum. Most days, a search on the forum suffices. Even older thread are sometimes replied to in the interest of giving updates / new information.

• Diversity of members. We have everyone from students, to CEOs to retired folks, and across countries too.

Dislikes
• Would have liked the government to invite Team-BHP for some of the initiatives like road safety, safe highway driving and more.

• With the advent of social media, the Generation Alpha (born 2010 onwards), are not very keen to participate on the forum. We need a way to make Team-BHP attractive to them.

• Wish we would cover all the car launches and not just the most important ones. Also, would love to see reviews of commercial vehicles like Super Carry, Ashok Leyland Dost, all the way upto the larger Tatas and Mahindras.

[daredemon]

Happy 17th Birthday Team BHP

Likes:
Plethora of information for auto enthusiasts.
Biased Reviews & personal opinions of an Individual.

Dislikes:
As of now NONE.

Can Improve:
Need to have more items in T-BHP store.

[Vikram Arya]

Heartiest Congratulation Team-BHP!!

Likes:

1. I have been/continue to be part of many automotive forums that are brand specific but I must admit that for the most part, the quality of discussion/input/suggestions that are put forth by the forum members is class-leading by far.
2. Moderators' insistence on following the forum rules especially for maintaining decorum and the quality of language/grammar. I myself try to be careful and don't like the use of urban dictionary/shortened version of different terms and also not a fan of emojis as well.
3. Forum contributors' willingness to agree to disagree without raising the pitch of the discussion for the most part. I believe that healthy discussion should/must at times invite disagreements as that brings out the precious pearls of technical wisdom most of the time.
4. The quality of comprehensive official reviews beats what I used to read in some of the Indian automotive magazines back in the day both in terms of depth/breadth of coverage as well as the technical detail.

Dislikes:

1. Dislike is a bit of a strong word but sometimes the forum contributors take it personally what someone might have said in good humour but then it is bound to happen once in a while and that's okay.
2. I wish there was more video content as the visual medium is much more arresting and the new generation sometimes may not have the attention span to read the comprehensive official reviews.
3. As has already been mentioned earlier; the diversity of forum members from a gender standpoint has a long way to go. We would like to hear what girls/women have to say about all things automotive.
4. As has been mentioned by GTO already; I would like to see more motorcycle reviews (I'm not an active motorcyclist anymore though back in 1994 I had the pleasure of owning a Suzuki Shogun and terrorize the residents of my neighbourhood).

I wish the entire team my best & congratulate them for maintaining what ostensibly is one of the best automotive forums in the world!!

Take a bow guys/girls!

[vigsom]

Happy B'Day Team-BHP, and a big shout out to the founding team, Mods, all members on board, and the viewers !!

I'm here on the forum for 15 years and have the following to share:

The lovely

1. Content - no other forum has the quality of content that this forum has, across automotive and otherwise
2. Classification of sub-forums - content is well distributed for ease of access
3. Camaraderie- I've met some very fine people through the forum, and this transformed me from an introvert to actually wanting to meet

OFI(Opportunities for improvement)

1. Moderation, although there, needs to be stepped up. I understand the constraints in view of the sheer volume of posts, but maybe the mod base could be expanded

2. Technical stuff isn't there at the top as good as, say, Team BHP reviews. Car ownership is all about peace of mind and thrill, and given the huge increase in problems/no. of new vehicles and fast changes in technology, more solutions to teething issues must be shared so that members/viewers are able to sort them out themselves than having to depend on RSA or the Service folks.

3. Like meets, or even at meets, we could invite an expert member to deliver a pep talk. The meet is about fun but this would add a lot of weight !!

4. A provision should be made to upload short videos of, say, 15 seconds with a file size cap directly rather than paste links from YouTube. Some problems and solutions can be better expressed through a movie than through pics

5. Views of all members, from 14 to 84, should be viewed objectively. The human being is a very complex animal, and if some members, though high on capability exhibit behavioral issues, some effort could be put in by other members to iron out these issues 1-0-1. If the approach of the member changes even by a bit for the better, it is worth the effort. That will take camaraderie to an altogether next level, and the members' capabilities can be tapped well.

Looking forward to gooder times on the forum !!

[gkveda]

Many many more happy returns of the day T-BHP

And cordial congratulations to GTO, Moderators and all staff who maintain the site

Likes
Mostly, people think this is just a portal for auto enthusiasts. But, according to me, this is a university which teaches the subject of life through Auto World.

Here, We have Subject Matter Experts talking about Business strategies, Mergers, Technologies, Philosophies, Driving, Human behavioural sciences, social science(through blogs), literature through describing nature's beauty, legalities, and what not.

Therefore, I wish to call this a university for learning life rather than simple site for auto enthusiasts.

Getting admission to this university is tough. Post entry, retaining it without getting infraction and banned is another equally big challenge in this university. There are many teachers who correct the mistakes once or twice, including spelling mistakes. But, if the students do not show improvement in their studies, they will be suspended temporarily till upto 6 months.

So, Hearty congratulations to all of us to celebrate 17th Anniversary of our University. Happy to continue studying in this university for many more years.

Thanks to all the fellow members who gives different perspective to experiences, and helps others to expand their thinking abilities.

It is only YOU who give different perspective who makes us think and see the other world which was never visible to us first.

Thank you for your patience to tolerate our thought process and arguments that may sometimes be wrong.

Its all in the game. Let's continue to learn the life more and have fun.

Opportunity to improve
Well, recently, I have started seeing few posts, especially by new members are immature in terms of actual analysis of the incidents, bashing of dealership, Formation of English sentences, going offtopic too far, to name a few.

Few senior BHPians have been highlighting these issues as well. If we need to retain the quality and reputation of our site, Moderators need to start giving infractions not only for grammatical mistakes or violation of TBhp rules but also for the maturity of the contents.

[batladanny]

Likes:
In a generation of short-form content, the detailed content is very much appreciated.
The members here really know their car stuff. I’ve learnt a good deal here in a short time.

Dislikes:
While moderation is very necessary and the backbone of what has made this a great forum, would appreciate some more transparency in this regard so that it doesn’t feel like censorship.

[V.Narayan]

Congratulations to the founders, the moderators and all of us members of Team BHP for this happy and proud occasion. To find a social media platform that is troll free and abuse free is well nigh impossible. Infact I'd say social media has caused difference of views to acquire a status of difference of cults! But not on Team BHP. My sincere thanks to all moderators and Team BHP support team members for their selfless and outstanding work - day in day out 365 x 24.

I do notice that on some controversial topics - taxes, prices, government action for example many of us tend to become an echo chamber. That is why on topics like this I often offer a different perspective which many appreciate but it gets the bile of an equal number :-( Contarian viewpoints and tabling of fresh facts is viewed as heresy by some. This is after all a platform to exchange views and data to enrich our perspectives. Let's not make it a forum that only reinforces an existing point of view we already hold dear.

Onwards and upwards.