Best way to save a dying community/forum?

Even in my short stay, it's been readily apparent that MX6.com is dying.

New members are not common, and it always seems to be the same people posting, and not much volume. The alternative seems to be ProbeTalk, which... has an extreme amount of noise:signal.

Anyone have ideas, or dealt with this before?

How to rejuvinate a forum? I know it's hard with a somewhat obscure car in this time period, but it IS a car with about as much potential as any good front driver.

My suggestion was to field one or two cars in the GRM Challenge, with huge MX6.com vinyls on them.

What else? Nobody wants to see it die, but it seems that most don't have realistic ideas to keep it alive. (Let's all chip in and build a cover car for a major import magazine!!!!)

If it dies or not, doesn't really affect me a whole lot, i've already learned what i need to know about my car, but... i don't know. Hopefully you all understand what i'm trying to say.

Unfortunately the livelihood of a niche car is planted firmly on a foundation of merchandising. You need to find some way to showcase what you can do with these cars and how you can do it. Find some other Mazda forums and try to draw a crowd. You can talk to Sam at crossoverauto.com about what parts he can get. Protege Garage is another tuner that deals in Mazdas and their name is huge in the Mazda aftermarket but be weary of them. I've bought from Ken and he is less than lax when it comes to customer service unless you're a friend.

Mazdas247.com has a huge member base but the guy who runs the forum is a complete tool. There are a couple of cool MX6s there you just have to search for them. You can try toprotege.com too. There's a few guys up in Cananda that are doing KL swaps into Pros and have a good bit of knowledge about performance. And with that I'm spent. Good luck.

3geez.com, a forum for 1989 and earlier Honda Accords seems to be on the same path. I've realized that enough people use them for racing to hopefully get some people interested in them. Again, solid FWD cars. They lack the aftermarket that the MX6 has, but they're not too bad out of the box.

Good question. I'm a member, but haven't been there much since the MX6 was sold a couple of years ago.. I found a lot of good answers there myself. Where do MX6 people go otherwise? Probe talk?

The best way to save the forum would be to persuade Mazda to resume manufacture of the MX-6.

As that isn't particularly likely to happen, as the cars get less common, there will be less interest. It's inevitable.

Even a car with the enthusiast following of the RX-7 is doomed to the same fate.

We are born. We suffer. We die.

Hey! I've had a great day! Anybody else feeling as happy as me!?

Boobs. You need photos with some scantily clad 20-year olds, gazing lustfully at some 20-year-old mid-market Mazdas. Okay...that's not going to happen.

Get some coverage of MX-6 and Probes competing in crapcan racing, where they seem to be competitive. There was a Probe that I believe set the fast lap at Lemons at CMP a couple of weeks ago.

I don't know much about these cars, but they seem to be in the armpit of the depreciation curve. Too old and worn out to serve as a viable DD for 'normal' people, and not old enough or significant enough to garner a large enthusiast community.

Failing all that, you need to come up with some kind of epic internet meme on MX-6.com. You can run and tell that, homeboy. ;)

Sorry, but all obscure 80's performance car forums are meeting the same fate. The RX-7 is about the only one with "staying" power that's not still in production, as most forums are all-rotary. I'm seeing the exact same thing happen to Thunderbird's/Cougar's, early non-Mustang fox's, Probe's, Escort's/EXP's, Turbo Fords, Turbo Dodge's, V6 Mopar's, early Honda's, Celica's, etc, etc, etc as what's happening to your MX-6's. The non-mainstream stuff just won't last unless it pulls into a much larger group (think RX-7 into all-rotary, fox Mustang into all-Mustang, 3G Camaro/Firebird into all GM F-Body, etc, etc).

a good example of a forum with a fairly limited member-base (albeit bigger than the MX6) is maxima.org, where I've been a member (and moderator) for about 7-8 years - first it was independent run by a guy whose servers crashed every month. Then another guy with better servers. Then sold it a big company that runs a bunch of car forums and started adding alot of advertising.

But go check it out. For a car more often seen as a grocery-getter, there is alot of activity there with alot of people doing shows, drag, even some autocross and trackwork. It's a pretty active community.

IDK what to look for, but maxima.org seems to work really well and even though alot of the old members (like me) have moved on from the maxima, man OG members from the inception in 1999 still show up on occasion. Maybe you can get some ideas, who knows...

www.maxima.org

another thing to keep in mind is that car forums are mostly frequented by younger folks....who have grown up on the internet, and who have time to be on it all the time. When you're talking about older cars, the owners tend tobe older and/or not as interested in internet forums and/or have families/kids/jobs/not as much time to be online.

Try some of the old brit car forums. I don't think half the owners even know what the internet is, lol....the best shops have websites updated once a NEVER...lol. Like someone set them up in 1997 and nothing has been updated yet!

The way to rejuvenate forums is to get the younger crowd involved, who WILL spread word of mouth if it's cool to hang out there, and get their friends to get into the car if it's a good car. Of course, when you invite the younger crowd in, you bring in some other issues, lol...

irish44j,

There's a BIG difference though, and that is that Maxima's are still being made. Current production (even in a wholly different form) ensures staying power in teh intarwebz.

red5_02 wrote:

Beautiful, MX6. Have more pictures online?

On the forum idea, I don't think there is much that can be done. Without an influx of new owners interested in joining up or modifying their cars the community is gonna dwindle. Lots of people have automotive ADD, changing needs, etc few of us can hang onto the same car and ideas for years on end.

Are there other Mazda forums that are in the same boat as MX6.com, like an MX3 forum, or a 626 forum or something? If there are, could you combine your forums into one super-forum? MX6.com, MX3.com and 626.com would all redirect to the same main forum page (MX6-MX3-626.com) where there would be separate sections for each individual model. That might drive up traffic by sucking in members from the other forums, possibly inspiring an MX3 owner to go buy an MX6. Not only could participation possibly go up, but you could share bandwith costs allowing MX6.com to survive with fewer participating members.

I guess my question is, other than nostalgia, why fight to keep MX6.com going if Probetalk is doing so well? They're basically the same cars, so why not combine all of your efforts and keep Probetalk going strong. I'd be willing to bet that most MX6.com members already have Probetalk accounts, much like most NewCougar.com members also have Contour.org accounts since they're basically the same cars. See if Probetalk will let MX6.com combine with them.

Bob

irish44j wrote: another thing to keep in mind is that car forums are mostly frequented by younger folks....who have grown up on the internet, and who have time to be on it all the time. When you're talking about older cars, the owners tend tobe older and/or not as interested in internet forums and/or have families/kids/jobs/not as much time to be online. Try some of the old brit car forums. I don't think half the owners even know what the internet is, lol....the best shops have websites updated once a NEVER...lol. Like someone set them up in 1997 and nothing has been updated yet! The way to rejuvenate forums is to get the younger crowd involved, who WILL spread word of mouth if it's cool to hang out there, and get their friends to get into the car if it's a good car. Of course, when you invite the younger crowd in, you bring in some other issues, lol...

www.chevelles.com and www.camaros.net both cater to owners of older cars that tend to have older owners, and they each have over 30,000 members and are going strong. a lot of the most prolific posters are in their 50's with a few into their 70's. there are even some European, Australian, and Japanese posters on those forums.

of course, Chevelles and Camaros are pretty popular cars with a base of owners that ranges from the really young to the really old with car prices ranging from well under $1000 to well over $100,000.

honestly, i'd never even heard of an MX6 until i saw it mentioned on this forum. granted, fwd imports aren't really my thing, but i've at least heard of most cars that were available for sale in the last 40 years.

when i had a 1978 Ford LTDII Sport Coupe, i had a hell of a time finding a site that could help me out with the little oddball things that made the car unique. it was one of 500 or so made that year, and the closest i was able to find was a forum dedicated to early 70's Torinos and 77-79 Thunderbirds and Cougars that had a sub-sub forum dedicated to the LTDII.. that forum died a slow death about a year after i found it. but that's what happens with forums for oddball cars- they fade away.

its been a long time coming. mx6.com was not much more than a couple of dedicated guys and a bunch of kids that would show up and ask what body kit fits their car only to get flamed and leave. OR - they'd ask how to make the car faster and they'd get the "use the search turdhead" or "do what you want, just let me know what junkyard your car goes to when you blow it up"

other than gavins suspension/crazy autocross project stuff, there really wasn't even much cool content back then. and that was 4-5 years ago.

Schmidlap wrote: Are there other Mazda forums that are in the same boat as MX6.com, like an MX3 forum, or a 626 forum or something? If there are, could you combine your forums into one super-forum? MX6.com, MX3.com and 626.com would all redirect to the same main forum page (MX6-MX3-626.com) where there would be separate sections for each individual model. That might drive up traffic by sucking in members from the other forums, possibly inspiring an MX3 owner to go buy an MX6. Not only could participation possibly go up, but you could share bandwith costs allowing MX6.com to survive with fewer participating members. I guess my question is, other than nostalgia, why fight to keep MX6.com going if Probetalk is doing so well? They're basically the same cars, so why not combine all of your efforts and keep Probetalk going strong. I'd be willing to bet that most MX6.com members already have Probetalk accounts, much like most NewCougar.com members also have Contour.org accounts since they're basically the same cars. See if Probetalk will let MX6.com combine with them. Bob

Probably because Probetalk SUCKS. (seriously. it's filled with imbeciles.)

There is a lot of great information buried within MX6.com, actually... the problem is that the "heyday" was back in... 2002. If you have the patience to search, you'll find that Gavin's DSP car really wasn't the most insane or "neat" project by a loooong shot.

MX6.com has already been bought by autoforums.com or whatever that company is that runs dozens of these forums and fills it up with adds. It's not like the site itself is in danger of disappearing, it's a matter of trying to keep members active, or recruiting new ones. The site is going nowhere.

I'll delve deeper into this when i have more time maybe tomorrow, just wanted to pop in and say that i appreciate the responses.

For the moment, i leave you with a more current picture of that second gen LS that was posted above, and a pic of my car.

Javelin wrote: Sorry, but all obscure 80's performance car forums are meeting the same fate. The RX-7 is about the only one with "staying" power that's not still in production, as most forums are all-rotary. I'm seeing the exact same thing happen to Thunderbird's/Cougar's, early non-Mustang fox's, Probe's, Escort's/EXP's, Turbo Fords, Turbo Dodge's, V6 Mopar's, early Honda's, Celica's, etc, etc, etc as what's happening to your MX-6's. The non-mainstream stuff just won't last unless it pulls into a much larger group (think RX-7 into all-rotary, fox Mustang into all-Mustang, 3G Camaro/Firebird into all GM F-Body, etc, etc).

Mmmmm.... let's see what's in 93celicaGT2's garage:

Escort.... CHECK.
Celica.... CHECK.
MX6.... CHECK. MX3.... CHECK.

Yikes.

Javelin wrote: irish44j, There's a BIG difference though, and that is that Maxima's are still being made. Current production (even in a wholly different form) ensures staying power in teh intarwebz.

true, but the major bulk of the people active on that forum are for the 4th gen and 5th gen, which ended in 2003. I was just using the analogy as a car with little aftermarket support form major companies.....and a relatively low proportion of owners who are interested in modding, etc.

when it comes down to it though....it's pretty tough to revitalize any forum if the platform it's about and owners are shrinking in numbers, in my opinion, unless you can somehow make the car some kind of "cult classic" or "popular with the kids"....

novaderrik wrote:

irish44j wrote: another thing to keep in mind is that car forums are mostly frequented by younger folks....who have grown up on the internet, and who have time to be on it all the time. When you're talking about older cars, the owners tend tobe older and/or not as interested in internet forums and/or have families/kids/jobs/not as much time to be online. Try some of the old brit car forums. I don't think half the owners even know what the internet is, lol....the best shops have websites updated once a NEVER...lol. Like someone set them up in 1997 and nothing has been updated yet! The way to rejuvenate forums is to get the younger crowd involved, who WILL spread word of mouth if it's cool to hang out there, and get their friends to get into the car if it's a good car. Of course, when you invite the younger crowd in, you bring in some other issues, lol...

www.chevelles.com and www.camaros.net both cater to owners of older cars that tend to have older owners, and they each have over 30,000 members and are going strong. a lot of the most prolific posters are in their 50's with a few into their 70's. there are even some European, Australian, and Japanese posters on those forums. of course, Chevelles and Camaros are pretty popular cars with a base of owners that ranges from the really young to the really old with car prices ranging from well under $1000 to well over $100,000.

I think that's the thing though...those are CLASSIC cars with wide appeal, whereas the MX6, though a great car, was still pretty much a niche vehicle when it was made to some extent, and not widely known even when new.

The forums are active for the large-community vintage cars for sure. But there's alot bigger pool and those cars are actively restored and saved, whereas a wrecked or rusty MX6 probably went to the scrapyard.

It's been said here already.

Every marque-based forum starts w/ a ton of "I love my _ / the ___is the best car evAr"

...and eventually hosts a bunch of "sold the _____" threads--then it ends.

Look at it as an interesting era. Honda-tech used to be all about performance and those who were only concerned with appearance were scoffed at/shunned. Now it's all about hellaflush/stance.

93celicaGT2 wrote: Mmmmm.... let's see what's in 93celicaGT2's garage: Escort.... CHECK. Celica.... CHECK. MX6.... CHECK. MX3.... CHECK. Yikes.

I know about those cause I've mostly owned them!

Escort, EXP, Turbo Coupe, Cougar 5.0, Thunderbird Sport 5.0, fox Fairmont Wagon, MX-6, Turbo Probe, V6 GT Probe, FB RX-7, FC RX-7, etc, etc

Sigh Gotta love obscure 80's stuff

Sixthsphere.com is alive and well, but then again Saturns - the S series in particular - is at rock bottom of its depreciation curve, and young people snatch them up as cheap daily drivers. Then through the internet they come across sites like Sixthsphere, where people are actually souping them up a bit, and get involved themselves.

Saturns are much more common than the MX-6, and Sixthsphere has the critical mass of users necessary to keep it going. Because that's part of it, too - if there aren't enough people posting, people won't bother to add more posts. It takes a bit of a chain reaction to get that going sustainably.

I really think that the best thing a forum can do is retain the first-timers who drop by looking for information.

That means having readily available FAQ info and important stuff stickied up or otherwise easy to find. If its not DAMN EASY to find with the search function, stop yelling SEARCH. Most of the time good info is difficult to find in search functions unless you know the jargon of the community.

Also, post restrictions and other kind of paternal treatment of new members is a good way to run off a lot of them. How about threads that say "NOOBS POST HERE FIRST!"? Here's an idea: GET OVER YOURSELF. I will almost never get into a forum if it treats new members like babies. I also wont stick around if people on a forum call me a troll just because i dont own one of the cars (yet/currently). I think people need to be open to the idea that SOMETIMES people might wander onto your forum with experience and credibility that dont have anything to do with the subject platform but that easily apply to it. Personally, im an ASE Master-Certified mechanic who's owned 40+ cars, done numerous swaps, etc, and i can wander onto any given forum and generally be more able to actually modify ANY platform than 90% of the user base, simply on those facts. But if i get run off by people who think a guy who owns k-cars is somehow defined by that and has no credibility or is a troll, well, it's hard to say just how much that 90% just missed out on.

So, i would say its all about atmosphere. Forums that treat new members like babies/idiots/trolls are going to run off the people that are actually smart/experienced enough to drag the curve up.

That being said, i havent been to MX6.com or Probetalk.com in a long time. I sold the only probe and mx6 ive ever owned before getting so far into them that i needed help from forumers. lol.

Also, i dont think the turbo dodge forums as a whole are dying. Ive been perusing one or the other for a solid decade and if anything's dying it sure isnt impairing me in any way. Turbo-Mopar.com imo is only getting better over time. I think the knowledge level of the user base is very high compared to most forums and new users get their questions responded to in a very high quality way.

I don't think there's anything you can do. Once the interest is gone, it's gone. The turbo 3 forums died about 6-7 years ago, and never came back, even though the cars have a loyal following. Teamswift would be a shell of what it is now if it weren't for the Metro. Between the GT's (last sold in N.A. in 94), the Metro's (01), and the turbo3's (91 in Canada), there's still enough to keep the forum pretty busy. We can thank the price of gas for that.

My employer is a sponsor on MX6.com (and Probetalk as well). I'd have to say the biggest challenge facing these forums is simply that the MX-6 has been out of production for 13 years and good ones are getting harder to find. (The same applies to Probes as well, but they seem to be a bit more common.) I'm not just a sponsor's rep; I have quite a few fond memories of running a G/Stock Probe GT and bringing it to the $2004 Challenge.

There isn't much that can be done about the supply of MX-6s, so the only option is to fight for a larger slice of a shrinking pie. There are two options - one, you can get more people interested in building MX-6s, so more of them are in the hands of enthusiasts. That would be best served by something like the Challenge car or other media exposure with cars that show off their potential. Two, add more content for things an MX-6 owner would want to know. Unbury the information in there and turn it into articles, whether it's on KLZE swaps, how to get the suspension dialed in, or a buildup for Chump Car or LeMons. A good set of articles and links to "discuss this on our forums" can go a long way.