[guru_max]

WhatsApp and telegram have taken away a lot of potential users from these forums. News can also be shared easily in these modes.

[sandeepmdas]

In fact, I learnt about the existence of Team-BHP while looking for answers in XBHP I was seeking some tech info about my new Indica way back in 2004, and someone there suggested me Team-BHP.com.

I am not a 2-wheeler guy, I never was. Needless to say I never went back to XBHP.

The purpose of a web forum is to serve information. It is a kiosk where one can ask questions and doubts; it's a stage where another one can express his opinions and experiences. The forum can stay relevant as long as it serves these two dudes well.

I lost thousands of hours and lakhs of rupees since then, after self-discovering the TBHPian inside me. Thank you all.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by Mr.Boss

Every time I hear about the volume increase (not specific to Team-BHP), only this comes in my mind
I don't mean to hurt anyone and I repeat, this is not specific to Team-BHP. These days we get to have a plenty of new threads on diversified topics. But I personally feel some content (especially the poll types) don't have any meaningful take-away end of the day.

This is purely subjective and to each his own. End of the day what we are trying to get out of it is nothing but a web traffic IMO.

And in recent past we had threads on timeless car design and ugliest cars. Every car in the market can be found in both the threads.

PS: I won't be surprised to see a thread elsewhere asking for a suggestion "Please suggest a European 1.0L turbo petrol hatchback in Red color with 15" alloy wheels & 9.92L OTR"

+1 to this. Of late we have had one too many utterly trivia threads that IMHO caters to the lowest common denominator in us. This only caters to artificial volumes at the expense of real quality and depth of content. And I dare say Team BHP has been chasing that empty volume game while still, thank fully, posting several top notch threads. Maybe the composition of members has changed making trivia necessary to keep the crowds happy. I am waiting for a thread on the colour of my ORVMs and another on post a photo of your water bottle in the car!! - don't kill me for saying this. We are not too far away from it.

[GTO]

Noted, Mr. Boss & V.Narayan. We have already curbed some less important threads & kept them in the Assembly Line; will be even stricter with them in the future . If you should have a comment on any thread, please do report it!

Let's not take this discussion off-topic.

[Thad E Ginathom]

India-centric international travel site Indiamike.com is probably on its last legs. From employing developers, it has gone to existing on a slow corner of a donor server, whilst its owner keeps it going for the benefit of a now-tiny group of regulars to chew the cud. Quite a few people here are or have been IM members too, and know that, among the regular nonsense (hey, we're all human) there is a wealth of travel information and record along with a great library of photos.

We live in hope that, one post-covid day, a fresh generation of travellers, domestic and international, may rediscover it. But once one falls down the hill, it is much harder to climb back up again.

I'm glad to hear that HiFiVision is still alive and well! I left it some years ago. I'm too deaf for hifi these days anyway, although I remain an active member of SuperBestAudioFriends which grew up for those who got fed up with HeadFi.

JJMehta Forums has a very small group of regular photographer contributors... and is a good place to buy/sell.

Rasikas.org is a great place for old guys to get together and fight. I'm one of them now

I have joined Instagram, both for my watching-engineering hobby and for photography.

I am not attracted to Facebook or twitter. I like the forums! I'm sorry that they falling away, but glad that T-BHP is yet healthy

[am1m]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

India-centric international travel site Indiamike.com is probably on its last legs.

Sadly true and that used to be an awesome site for India travel info. I 'discovered' Indiamike in 2001 (not co-incidentally along with my first job sitting all day in front of a desktop ) and back then it helped me plan a lot of trips. Thanks to the useful info, was motivated to update the information based on my travel experiences in return.

I think what happened there was that the majority of the users started using it just to get information, and more than that to use it like a sort of free travel agency and without contributing anything/helping with information in return.

I started seeing a lot of posts there that simply went: "I'm planning a trip to xyz place with abc family members for 123 days, please suggest an itinerary/please confirm if this plan that I've made is good." [A trend that's also taking shape on the 'route queries' section of this forum too!] Funnily enough in most cases if those people had read through the previous posts on that forum, they'd find all the information they were looking for! Initially the existing contributors tried to help but eventually I guess they got tired of acting like unpaid travel agents and got fed up of pointing out "check the previous pages in this forum for the information you need."

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by GTO

Noted, Mr. Boss & V.Narayan. We have already curbed some less important threads & kept them in the Assembly Line; will be even stricter with them in the future . If you should have a comment on any thread, please do report it!

Let's not take this discussion off-topic.

Thank you GTO for being open to feedback and swift in response and action.

[Raghu M]

Change is inevitable. There were hardly 2 to 3 sports magazines earlier and people used to wait to get a review and read through. Then came the internet era, people started posting their logs on forums. Now is the advent of vlogs. Type a car name in YouTube and see the no. of reviews you have there. There are reviews in all languages now. Why would someone sit and read through blogs anymore? I for myself went through number of videos before finalizing my car. Of course, Team Bhp was a great source of knowledge but the feel of a car and the running commentary along with it paves way for better optics. When you visually see something, you get to know it better. Type anything that you'd like information on, YouTube has the answer. There is simply too much knowledge there that people hardly look elsewhere. Also, with channels on every topic (from cooking to automotive to travel to even reviews on products like trimmers), it is hard for blogs to survive.

[VKumar]

I won't talk about other forums, but yes, TheAutomotiveIndia has been close to my heart. I have done a few official reviews over there and in fact, before my PGDM, say in 2017, it was an active forum - don't know how things went so much downhill in this time period. 2017-19 was the period when I was mostly away from forums with minimal contribution.

Post 2019, everything felt like it's changed - but not the Team-BHP. It has been same as before, equally vibrant, equally active, and yes; there is an air of enthusiasm associated to this forum.

It takes a GTO to build the Team-BHP, and a long list of hard working moderators to run the forum. I won't get into name calling as the list is really long. But yes, thinking of it, getting it over the web, and then maintaining the quality with such a colossal membership base is a remarkable feat.

• It feels good to see that GTO is active every morning, religiously (7:30 to 9:00?). It matters, especially when it's 15 years now!
• It feels good to read the posts of V. Narayan sir, which are always crafted in a very precise manner. In last 3 years, I have probably read every post of him. In fact, at times, I click the thanks button first and then read later
• It feels good to read Thad, especially the light humor that is inside every post of him

Many more such examples. Never met a few people, but feel connected to them - I do thank the Team-BHP founding and managing team for maintaining this platform. Example: Recently came a thread about Yamaha RX and immediately I wrote there that Mr. Boss shall have been here!

Why Team-BHP is thriving? IMO, three reasons:

• A very hard working team: Appreciations for everyone behind the screen.
• Knowledge bank: This forum has slowly and steadily become the ultimate knowledge bank in Indian auto scene. Hence more and more people want to be a member now, and the members do miss T-BHP now, we have found the answers to many tough questions over here with time. Isn't it?
• Tight Moderation: Most most most important aspect IMO. Initially I used to feel like it's kind of excess. Later I realized that it't the most important part. Especially when I controlled my own fingers and feeling a few times, thinking of the forum rules. Freedom can be properly enjoyed 'by all', when it comes with reasonable restrictions, here I have felt it properly.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Thank you GTO for being open to feedback and swift in response and action.

Indeed!
Even I too felt like a few threads were there, which would have added value to the existing ones. It's not for no reason that I put threads in assembly line only, simple solution to the issue - if mods deem fit, they can send it live, or merge it with the existing ones where needed.

[condor]

I think one of the reasons for Gearheads going down was some sections being open to members only. This limits viewership. They would have had their reasons to implement that, but what if they had good content behind the closed doors ?

[Hayek]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

To stay relevant for tomorrow Team BHP needs to get onto - Video, Voice and Vernacular. I'm not mentioning superior mobile experience as that is now a given; but yes that too.

Even though I am monolingual in English and strongly prefer reading to watching videos, I have to agree with Mr Narayan - we have to find a way to survive in the video world. It is harder - how do you moderate a video? And ensure quality content? And that if the video is in Hindi, it is in good Hindi, and in English, in good English rather than Hinglish? But to attract the next generation of car freaks such as my 13 year old son, that will be essential. It is easy to raise issues - tough to find solutions. But I do hope that GTO and the Mod Team will find a path here too.

[pandey.jai]

I don’t know if this is an appropriate question to ask here but curiosity killed the cat
(Hope it doesn’t get me banned)

I have tremendous respect to the moderators of this forum and I know how difficult it is, given my history of being a mod on a different, comparatively smaller forum.

What I want to know is, are the moderators here paid for their job? Or is this more of a volunteer work? If latter, then my respects go up much much more. If former, all I can say is keep up the excellent job.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by Hayek

Even though I am monolingual in English and strongly prefer reading to watching videos, I have to agree with Mr Narayan - we have to find a way to survive in the video world. It is harder - how do you moderate a video? And ensure quality content?

But I do hope that GTO and the Mod Team will find a path here too.

Thank you Hayek. Well said. Quality, moderation and ability to ensure that the widest possible range of literacy and language levels can understand a video is a challenge all internet businesses striving for excellence are struggling with. Voice is at a whole new level but there technology, software and hardware will soon be readily available for Team BHP to interface. But videos are a huge hill to climb.

Originally Posted by pandey.jai

I don’t know if this is an appropriate question to ask here but curiosity killed the cat

What I want to know is, are the moderators here paid for their job? Or is this more of a volunteer work? If latter, then my respects go up much much more. If former, all I can say is keep up the excellent job.

I don't know the answer to your question but even if they are paid handsomely they all have a full day job/business and what they do here is a labour of love of the highest quality. I for one believe they deserve a handsome monetary reward/honorarium for their services.

[Eshan Joshi]

It is a shame.

I really like reading other peoples thoughts and opinions, on stuff. That's why I always read the comments on all videos I see and articles I read.

I would like to thank all of the moderators for their amazing job in maintaining the quality and standard of the forum. And I would like to thank all the members for their amazing quality posts and content.

Originally Posted by pandey.jai

What I want to know is, are the moderators here paid for their job? Or is this more of a volunteer work? If latter, then my respects go up much much more. If former, all I can say is keep up the excellent job.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

I don't know the answer to your question but even if they are paid handsomely they all have a full day job/business and what they do here is a labour of love of the highest quality. I for one believe they deserve a handsome monetary reward/honorarium for their services.

As far as I understand most of the Moderators have regular jobs. They moderate Team-BHP voluntarily. GTO would send you an invite for becoming a Moderator. If you accept it, you get the privilege to moderate this site.

[navpreet318]

So since we're talking about forums, it's a community. Content is put in by members. Moderation is done by members. Even non- moderators contribute to the upkeep of the forum.
Things go south when the forum owner starts thinking of himself to be larger than the forum. When he removes people who don't agree with him. When he even removes moderators who don't agree to him and let's in influx of his personal fanboys.
That's when a forum goes down.
I know of atleast 1 forum which has gone down this path.

Good intake control. Strong moderation. Agreeing to the disagreement amongst the admins and moderators is key to a successful forum.
We can all agree to disagree when the goal is common. Good clean healthy discussions and gaining more and more knowledge and sharing maximum information. Simple.