Congratulations to us and Lotus Joe for hitting a new milestone!

[BDA]

I've been a member of the Yahoo group for a long time. It's a pretty active group and there is a lot of great information there - not least because of its long history - and good information continues to pile up there. I think it is important that Europa owners who work on their on cars join that group. However, IMHO the forum format we have here is far superior to the Yahoo format and this forum has been collecting great information. Hopefully, the "center of gravity" of Europa information will continue to migrate this way.

[LotusJoe]

I encourage any new members to also join the Yahoo Group. Still lots of great information there as well.  I also have a link to the knowledge base on "Lotus-Europa.com" on the main board here, which, as you know is a compilation of all the post from the Yahoo Group. I use the knowledge base quite a bit as my memory is failing on a daily basis. Lots of great information concentrated on just a few sites.

[BDA]

We did it again! Well, actually ProntoPhil did. He is the 650th member of this forum!!! 

[Certified Lotus]

 :trophy:Congrats!

[Roger]

It would be good to merge with the Yahoo group, I think. It's  a horrid medium compared to a forum.

[Certified Lotus]

That is an excellent suggestion Roger. Although I am new to Europa's I rarely go to the yahoo group as the old style application is not very user friendly.

[BDA]

The Yahoo group has a long history of posts that can be searched which makes it very valuable. On the other hand, this (or any) forum makes it more convenient to follow conversations, follow links, and see pictures.


As time goes on, there will be more history on this forum that can be searched and that will increase it's value in that regard, but they are both valuable assets for the Europa owner. Another valuable site is http://lotus-europa.com/.


This reminds me of a time when I was looking into some electrical issue with a friend who was a big Corvair enthusiast. When I pulled up a color pdf of the wiring diagram, he was astounded! Apparently, something like that isn't available for Covair owners even there are probably many more Corvairs and Corvair enthusiasts than Europas and Europa enthusiasts. I guess my point is that in spite of our limited numbers, we have a lot of great technical information available to us and Joe, Dan (maintains lotus-europa.com), and whoever started the yahoo group (as well as others) deserve our thanks.

[Roger]

I don't  know the ins and outs, but the Elan forum managed to load all their Yahoo history. Perhaps the same could be done here? I guess Jeff Cocking, the guy who runs the Elan forum, would know.

[BDA]

On the main page of the forum is a link to the "knowledge base" which is an interface to searching the yahoo group. The knowledge base lags the group's realtime activity a bit. You can also search the yahoo group directly though you might have to be a member to do that...


Can you provide a link so we can see how the Elan folks did their interface?

[EuropaTC]

Can you provide a link so we can see how the Elan folks did their interface?

Jeff (or someone) incorporated the mailing list posts but the only way I can find them is via the search engine.  For example;

http://www.lotuselan.net/cgi-bin/search/search.cgi?zoom_query=brake+conversions&zoom_per_page=15&zoom_and=1&zoom_sort=0

If you get this page (search on "brake conversions") you can see there's a comment by some of the search results to indicate that post is from the mailing list archive.

Personally I would like to see this happen for several reasons but given that not all of the Yahoo group post here I think it would be wrong to simply go ahead and copy without permission. It wouldn't bother me to find my internet posts stored in someone's database because the act of posting on the internet is putting your thoughts into the public domain, but it might annoy some folks.

There are positives in this way forward because the knowledgebase was created via a VB6 program and requires on-going maintenance to keep up to date. VB6 is supported in W10 but even so it's 1990s software and at some point it's going to fall over. Even I have converted my VB6 progs to the current Visual Studio format, and I suspect that will be required at some point anyway.

Another reason is that I'd guess if you're a new Europa owner and are searching for like-minded enthusiasts then the first thing you'll come to is this forum, which is easy to join and work your way around. You'll also find the Yahoo group as well but the format is very much 1980s text based emails and harder to find what you want. We point people at the Yahoo group and I guess many join, but would they do so if not prompted ?

Going back to LotusElan.net, I've a lot of respect for Jeff and how he runs the forum. One thing he's toyed with is the idea of a Lotus Elan "wiki" and after looking into how such things are done I could see that being the updated knowledgebase. The snag is I can't see that happening until we have one main community and that's not happened yet.

Brian

[BDA]

That's pretty interesting how lotuselan.net incorporated posts from both a yahoo group and itself in a seaL I feel like you that anything I post on the Internet is available for someone -anyone- to either appreciate or deride later. It wouldn't occur to me to expect anyone to think his posts would be protected from view by "outsiders" but then there are all kinds.


I also like the idea of a wiki! (What do you think, Joe?)

[EuropaTC]

That's pretty interesting how lotuselan.net incorporated posts from both a yahoo group and itself in a seaL I feel like you that anything I post on the Internet is available for someone -anyone- to either appreciate or deride later. It wouldn't occur to me to expect anyone to think his posts would be protected from view by "outsiders" but then there are all kinds.

I also like the idea of a wiki! (What do you think, Joe?)

It's probably just me being ultra cautious but I've personal experience of people getting irate when they think their work is being used without permission. I'd once taken some facts from a book I'd read (and quoted the reference at the page bottom) but some guy saw it and was convinced I'd pinched it from his own website. Threatening all sorts at the time, completely unhinged IMO and it took a scan of the appropriate page with the suggestion to sue the publisher instead to calm him down. Hence it's the "once bitten" approach on such things.

On to more interesting things like the LotusElan.net wiki.

That's a slow progress job, probably because there's only Jeff working on it and he's a busy guy. We did have an Elise wiki which started around the time of the S1 over here and that's helpful. I think the trick is to get the chapters/headings right and then allow multiple contributors to chip in with someone (or a small team) monitoring input every now and then to prevent duplication.

It's no different in reality from this forum and the search engine, the main advantage seems to be that the data is filed in a more logical place; for example all the brake stuff is filed

....wait for it... 

under "Brakes"   

So it's easier to get to.  There's loads of data in the knowledgebase but getting it out is hit and miss. Search works fine but often you get either no results or a page full and the only way is to check every entry. For example last year I was looking for the relationship between rear shim and tracking, mostly just to see if others had similar to what I was finding. The data is there but it took a few hours to condense out, whereas if it had been in a section marked "rear suspension" or "Alignment" then it would have been instant.

(that's not a complaint BTW, just an observation of how things have changed)

[BDA]

Your experience reminds me of the experience some bloggers over here had. A company who claimed to hold the copyright of all sorts of material would threaten to sue the bloggers unless they paid a usage fee. They got away with it for a while since the poor blogger normally didn't have the money (or didn't think they did) the money to fight it. Then some started fighting back and in the end, it turned out that they didn't have the copyright to the material they claimed to and then the whole scam unwound and those in the company were sued instead and they lost badly.


All that being said, I understand your reticence after your experience. Why go through the hassle? As you say, a wiki would avoid situations like that. I didn't know anybody had enough spare time to do a whole wiki on the Elan by himself!!! It makes much more sense for it to be a collaborative effort. That's one of the great things about wikis. It's likely that there will be some editing issues but most of those can be resolved in the forum and maybe a final editor. You've spelled out many of the benefits. I think I'll lobby Joe to look into this.

[andy harwood]

Don't know if this is of interest, but there a very good wikis on the BMW forums. As example -
http://www.bimmerfest.com/wiki/index.php/BMW_E46
It was a great help working on the daughters BMW, easy to use

[Roger]

I didn't think the Europa knowledgebase was kept up to date nowadays.
Certainly, when I've used it in the last few years I've only got old posts. Maybe I ask the wrong questions!