Has the sheen worn off a little?

[Steve C. 0]

How many members do we have on here now? last i heard was around 2000 smart enthusiasts. With the new smart released now, and new people getting into it, it seems to me we should be bombarded with tons of new stuff, and excitement about the new model fron new owners...yet, i see a disturbing trend here, and wonder it it's just me, or whether anyone else has noticed this?For starters, with around 2000 members (if thats right). and the elections closing tomorrow, why oh why have only 82 people voted ? Is it because its not really worth doing, or having it? Is it laziness or just not caring about the people who have volunteered to put the effort into it? I dont understand how so many people can not bother to click on a name.The Niagara cruise is waaaayyy down, from 125 cars last year, to, with a week to go, around 40 so far. What up with that? Has the sheen worn off? Do people care less now about the car? I still visit almost daily, and have had mine since Oct '04, and granted, we have some diehards on here, but the rest just seem so, well, quiet...THE smart event of the year, has about a third of it's last years total, of a couple of thousand members, 82 is the most number of votes in a category...anyone else notice this downwards trend, or am i way off somehow? Just wondering. What is the actual member count at now, anyway? Used to be able to see a list with the member # on it, but i cant find that anywhere now. All these new smart owners seem a little quiet, perhaps it's just the classic smart owners who still feel the passion. Do we know how many classic smarts have been sold in Canada, and how many new smarts there are, out of curiosity? How many new smarts sold out in the first year in the states? Anyone else have a thought on this?

[bilgladstone 13]

CsC has 6,100+ members as of today.

Bil

[mcdnjim 0]

As a new smart owner I have found this site to be excellent. It has a great deal of information that helped me make my choice to purchase and also see and enjoy the passion some owners have for the car. One big thing that may be causing people to rethink their involvement on the site is that there are more sites to choose from for smart information. Also the car is almost mainstream which, let's face it, may cause some members to lose their ardor for it.Lastly, while I love this site and the club in general I think the time has come to make a choice. This club/site can be a smart car site or a smart classic car site (ie 06 model and older) but a choice has to be made. I think a conscious decision has to be made by the new BOD. This club cut its chops on the 450 and much of the information is still tending towards that model. US and other Canadian clubs are starting up with their whole focus being the 451. I have asked on a couple of occasions for 451 specific folders regarding modifications, etc. to be put on the site and am still waiting. Now that is probably a result of life getting in the way, however. . . . So what am I saying. I will remain a member of this club regardless of whether it makes a choice as I propose above or not, but I don't think this club will continue to grow unless it makes a decision about what it wants to be. My .02Jim

[yolanda 0]

I am very interested in continuing to involve myself but I didn't vote because I don't think a completely ignorant vote is right. "click on a name." What? Why? I don't know these people well enough to have a clue and I don't understand their jobs either. I don't understand what the BOD does or why we have one or need one or elect one. When I've been here awhile I'll have a better understanding but for now I've got no business screwing up the election process with random ignorance. I'll let the people who know well enough take care of the business. What if 100 ignorant people randomly elected the worst person for the job?

[Les 0]

I am very interested in continuing to involve myself but I didn't vote because I don't think a completely ignorant vote is right. "click on a name." What? Why? I don't know these people well enough to have a clue and I don't understand their jobs either. I don't understand what the BOD does or why we have one or need one or elect one. When I've been here awhile I'll have a better understanding but for now I've got no business screwing up the election process with random ignorance. I'll let the people who know well enough take care of the business. What if 100 ignorant people randomly elected the worst person for the job?

Ditto!

[ValgardForkbeard 2]

To Les and Yolanda; If you don't feel that you know any of the candidates well enough to vote for them, that is fine. One thing you can do though is to click on the "view results", which casts a null vote. That at least shows that you are aware of the election, and does count towards participation. 82 out of 6100 is pretty low voter turnout, even for North America MG

[Gent 1]

It is a low turnout, but it is in keeping with previous polls (unfortunately).

[smart142 605]

I think we have a lot of silent members. I was hoping that there would be a lot more people voting.I've also been on the executive of a nursing union that represented over 1200 members. We were lucky to get 10 people out for a meeting unless there was a major problem or there was a contract to be settled. Looks to be about the same ratio for Csc. People don't want to get involved or are too busy.Some good points were made about how this started as a 450 site and how the new 451 owners don't seem to have the same passion.

[Kimberly 2]

Hey Steve My own thoughts - Niagara Cruise- to be expected when it's over Thanksgiving weekend. A lot of us are spending that weekend with family. In terms of the site I read a lot less often and post a lot less often. My own personal feeling is it used to be a small Canadian site (mostly) which I thought was so cool. Most sites out there on every subject imaginable are generally full of US info and this site was Canadian specific and awesome! (no offense to non Cdns please) Growth is good and something you can't avoid but for me it's just not as close to home anymore. I'm sure some people find that exciting and great, and then some of us don't. You can't please everyone.

[Guest tidalfury]

In response to our environmental consciousness we will respectfully abstain from the unnecessary consumption of fossil fuels and will not participate is what appears, by all accounts, to be a no cost marketing campaign at the expense of the environment. As ECOHILICs we purchased a smart car for all the right reasons.

[Kitty 0]

Lastly, while I love this site and the club in general I think the time has come to make a choice. This club/site can be a smart car site or a smart classic car site (ie 06 model and older) but a choice has to be made. I think a conscious decision has to be made by the new BOD. This club cut its chops on the 450 and much of the information is still tending towards that model.

The site seems to have made the choice - it's a Smart car site. It's just that most of the members bought the 450 when it came out, so there's way more of them than there are people with the 451.

However, the forum itself has swapped to being mainly 451 related. All the main forums are 451, which the old 450 forums are subforums within the main ones. The 450 subforums still get a lot of posts, but again, that's because most of the current members have a 450. Give the 451 more time to be purchased; the 450 had 3 years to get to the current saturation level. More people with the 451 will come, and more people means more answers and more discussion!

I am very interested in continuing to involve myself but I didn't vote because I don't think a completely ignorant vote is right. "click on a name." What? Why? I don't know these people well enough to have a clue and I don't understand their jobs either. I don't understand what the BOD does or why we have one or need one or elect one.

I specifically asked about the purpose and roles of the BoD when the election first started. The replies are here:

http://clubsmartcar.com/index.php?s=&s...st&p=201430

http://clubsmartcar.com/index.php?s=&s...st&p=201794

I did vote in the polls, but at best I voted for the people whose names I recognized as being helpful around the forums. I don't know what their individual skills are, per se, but I've seen them helping people consistantly, which shows a dedication to the forums. I ran on the assumption that as there had been a nomination process, people would be running for positions

I don't really see the need for a BoD and formal elections, personally. A regular forum, with regular mods would work fine, at least from this newbie's perspective (admittedly, a newbie here who runs, Admins, and Mods on a handful of forums). I can see where the BoD would come in handy, like when fundraising to offset the costs of the server, someone has to be in charge of the money, and it's best if it's someone chosen by "the people", as it were.

I wasn't here for the original forum-splitting drama, so, yeah, there's some apathy at work there. Newbies are not shown a reason for the BoD when they arrive, and thus don't really have a vested interest in voting for a new BoD.

82 out of 6100 is pretty low voter turnout, even for North America

Don't forget, there's not really 6100 people here. Forums rarely measure membership based on the number of accounts created; only active members are usually counted. There's 6100 members on the forum, but over 2425 of them who have never even posted (and the vast majority of those have never even returned to the forum after signing up - for many that was over 2 years ago!). After that, there's another 519 who posted only once (again, many never returning since that time).

That's 2944 people right there - almost half of our membership won't be voting since there's a low probability they even know there's an election going on.

That said, 82 votes is 4% of the remaining 2006 members, which is still an abysmal voter turnout. Then again, I don't actually know the actual number of active members, so my 2006 number is merely an educated guess based on a quick perusal of the memberlist, and I have a feeling it's a high estimate to what the forum software will say.

EDIT:

Wait a second - checking this, there's only 198 pages of members registered. At 25 per page, that's only 4950 people (making the inactive members account for 59% of membership). Where is the 6100 coming from, please? If that number includes people who have never been on the forum, well, we can't blame them for not voting can we?

Edited July 4, 2008 by Kitty

[Overkll 0]

Hey Steve My own thoughts - Niagara Cruise- to be expected when it's over Thanksgiving weekend. A lot of us are spending that weekend with family. In terms of the site I read a lot less often and post a lot less often. My own personal feeling is it used to be a small Canadian site (mostly) which I thought was so cool. Most sites out there on every subject imaginable are generally full of US info and this site was Canadian specific and awesome! (no offense to non Cdns please) Growth is good and something you can't avoid but for me it's just not as close to home anymore. I'm sure some people find that exciting and great, and then some of us don't. You can't please everyone.

The Niagara Cruise is this upcoming weekend (the date was changed). I hope it is at least, since I'll be there are Sunday I agree about the 450/451 disconnect. With only a 450 audience the boards will dwindle. Maybe it is just an ebb and flow from winter to summer?I did not vote, I feel that if a person was nominated that they are most probably suitable for the position. Probably should vote considering I am a mod though... D'oh!

[Gent 1]

The Canadian 451 owners don't seem as car-crazy as the 450 owners were. SCOA is seeing the rush of enthusiasm for the 451 that we had for the 450 when it was novel to us, and the have a much larger population base to draw from than we do.I remember a lot of the European forum members watching the Canadians go crazy over a car that had already been around for the better part of a decade. They commented on how nice it was to see the enthusiasm renewed. We are in a similar place now with our cousins to the South.It'll be interesting to see what the long haul brings...

[darren 192]

I think there was a missed opportunity to market the site to our American neighbours. Yes, we do have a lot of USA-based members, but the BoD didn't seem to do much outreach into the US market.

http://www.smartcarofamerica.com/forums/

Smart Car of America has over 15,000 members.

Personally, i'm participating a lot less, mainly because my "relationship" with the car has progressed out of its "honeymoon" stage and has settled into its more comfortable and practical day-to-day existence. Yes, i still love the car, but i don't have as much need for the knowledge and support this forum provided in the early days of ownership, and i view the car more as an appliance for driving these days than the fun toy i viewed it as in the beginning.

Heck, i haven't even updated my spritmonitor entries in months, because i know how the car is doing on a tank-by-tank basis.

:shrug:

Edited July 4, 2008 by darren

[darren 192]

Wait a second - checking this, there's only 198 pages of members registered. At 25 per page, that's only 4950 people (making the inactive members account for 59% of membership). Where is the 6100 coming from, please? If that number includes people who have never been on the forum, well, we can't blame them for not voting can we?

On the main forum page, there are forum statistics right at the bottom.

Board Statistics

Our members have made a total of 186,293 posts

We have 3,946 registered members

The newest member is superloula

Most users ever online was 399 on Apr 4 2008 - 03:01 AM

I'm puzzled as to where the "6100" figure comes from, as i wasn't aware that the only form of membership in CsC was to be a registered member on the forum.

[MikeT 744]

The sheen is not off for me. I'm still as smitten as I was in 2002 when I first drove one of these things....but I think this is not a normal reaction of a long-term owner.The low level of activity is perhaps a case of familiarity breeding contempt, or maybe indifference.I see the 450 site versus 451 site as a false dichotomy. The French Peugeot forum doesn't spinoff a new forum when a new model is introduced, so why should we? The website design could be a lot better, granted. I think that's the main issue right now, sucky forum functionality.With 1200 cars on Vancouver Island, how can it be that we only get maybe 7-10 cars out to an event? That is normal, I am afraid.....

Edited July 5, 2008 by Mike T

[mcdnjim 0]

Yes, unfortunately the car seems to be going "mainstream" more and more, which may cause new owners to not want to be in a "club".

[Gent 1]

I think the last time I checked California had a bigger population than Canada. :DI'm not surprised that their forum is larger; however, SCOA gives me mixed messages. There is a lot of push to donate money over there, but I've also been given the cold shoulder a few times. I suspect because of my Canadian/450/CsC affiliations.A car club should be a support as much as a social networking site in my opinion. The marmots have it nailed, I just wish we could seed that enthusiasm back into the other areas.

[bilgladstone 13]

... I'm puzzled as to where the "6100" figure comes from ...

My bad. I took that from the member number for the most recent joiners. E.g. "smart smitty" (who joined this morning) is Member No.: 6,135. So I guess that's not actually the number of current members, but the number of all those that ever were...?Bil

[Kitty 0]

On the main forum page, there are forum statistics right at the bottom.

Board Statistics

Our members have made a total of 186,293 posts

We have 3,946 registered members

The newest member is superloula

Most users ever online was 399 on Apr 4 2008 - 03:01 AM

I'm puzzled as to where the "6100" figure comes from, as i wasn't aware that the only form of membership in CsC was to be a registered member on the forum.

My bad, I was calculating 198 pages x 25 per page; there's actually 20 per page so I was over-estimating too.

My bad. I took that from the member number for the most recent joiners. E.g. "smart smitty" (who joined this morning) is Member No.: 6,135. So I guess that's not actually the number of current members, but the number of all those that ever were...?

Yeah, the software would still take into account any test accounts, or spam accounts that have been created and then deleted when assigning member numbers.

[Razorback 0]

I come here almost every day but don't post everyday. I read what interest me then move on to SCOA and other smart forums "do the same thing there". Yes I agree that it seems to me that SCOA is more commercially and monetarily orientated and yes it does have more active 451 base of people. The forum at SCOA is more restrictive in it's setup for it's membership and offers perks when paid for 'there' that I get here for free. The best thing that I can say about CsC is that it is for people who truly love the smart for what it is and a friendly bunch of folks who are always willing to help other smart enthusiasts with no strings attached.A lot of information can be found here that is related to the 451 and at SCOA members are basically going through the same growing pains and enthusiasm that members of CsC did. One thing I would like to see changed here is the forum structure between the 450 and the 451 I'm not sure what that change should be but I do think a change is needed.I like it here at CsC it's just more like 'Home Sweet Home". Now if the 451 population came here then......

[deezle 0]

Insofar as the voter turnout goes, keep in mind that this election is only deciding relatively minor positions on the board. The President, VP, and Webmaster positions were won by acclamation, so I think this turnout is actually pretty good. As far as our membership and readership tally goes, there are probably many things that we could look at to promote the club more: cards for windshields, notices in local newspaper car club listings, links from other sites, promotions with dealerships, press releases about special events, etc. I think those type of activities have fallen by the wayside, and there is now a huge opportunity for our promotions in the U.S. Perhaps we should have a marketing team to brainstorm new PR campaigns and strategies to inform new owners of our club.

[mimota 0]

I am a new owner of a 451 and am thrilled that this site exists as the car is not yet mainstream enough that answers to questions are readily available. I am looking forward to attending the Pitt Meadows get together on the Aug. 1- 2 weekend to meet some of you that have such an enthusiasm.That being said, I don't feel that I know members enough to vote. It wouldn't be fair for me, a member for 6 weeks, to decide on the leadership of this club. I look forward to continued use and ideas from the site.

[B Tisshaw 0]

Guys,

smart has enjoyed the perfect timing of being a premium small car at a time when fuel prices are going through the roof. Small is no longer "bad", and countless manufacturers are bringing their euro offerings stateside when five years ago it would have been laughed out of the board room discussion.

Yaris, Fit, Versa, Accent, and countless others.

As a result, some buyers jump on board because it is a trendy look at me car, discussed in the media daily; smart pictured next to an Escalade.

Perhaps not hard core smarties, but smarties none the less.

The early adopters saw and understood what the smart represented in terms of alternative personal transportation, embraced it and defended the choice before countless coworkers, brothers in law and gas (diesel) jockeys, and before economics and mainstream media made smart cool.

CsC was the meeting place for buyers in the maritimes, Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, BC and all the other places across Canada where the few gathered, shared and found solidarity in a forum to exchange stories, concerns, joys, tips, advice and most of all a common love for all things smart.

I do not share the view that the honeymoon is over. The reality is that the core group on the site cannot be expected to shepherd newbies through every little hiccup and problem they encounter along the way. There is a pot of gold here folks, so much practical information for any smart owner it makes the head spin. As we say, sharpen the shovel for the digging.

The original gang and moderators can't possibly respond to each and every query within 4 minutes. No one is paid here, just folks helping others where they can. It is also normal that as the numbers of members swell by thousands annually, the volume of information rises exponentially, it takes some work on the part of those looking for information. Be patient, and you will find.

We have challenges before us as a web based car club; how do we we bridge two distinct models, and how do we deal with rapid growth.

I am confident there are so many bright enthusiasts reading these pages that both issues will be dealt with and CsC will continue to be THE site for all smart car enthusiasts.

My son and I are counting the days 'till we drive back from BC to Quebec in Orange Crush, with the price of fuel, cross continental trips may be a thing of the past; cepia memories.

That said, I am counting the sleeps 'till our day at the THE PITT, my new Red Dot racing discs and pads came from England...(lets out Homer like squeel of delight)

Passion need not wane, but rather like a fine dinner, wine and evening of ...activity with your chosen one, may not the same as the first time,

but need not be less memorable. The honeymoon is never over IMHO

(wish I were paid by the word!)

Edited July 5, 2008 by B Tisshaw

[mcdnjim 0]

B Tisshaw Well said!!Jim