A new thread gets started 12 times a week on the same subject.

Somewhat hopeless crusade.

Given the dynamic, alive and vital nature of Prius Chat....as far as automobile forums go, it's one of the most active I know of...

I'm more impressed with the lack of duplication of topic than I am discouraged by the replication.

Plus to a great extent it's just going to be the nature of the beast. You will always get Newbies asking questions about aspects or realities that have already been discussed or answered...

You can ignore, answer...or just chuckle to yourself when you discover the guy that just bought a used 2008 and is asking why in the middle of winter his gas tank capacity seems to have decreased....

 

The problem is they all are started by mwok.

 

The wiki page should be within Priuschat, for sure - not a separate entity. And wiki could contain links to threads that have good information, pictures, etc. And because the content we write about here on the Forums does change over time, so will a wiki (the same concept of Wikipedia, if you think about it) - moreover, if somebody says something completely untrue (to most), an edit saying "some users reports this and that, while some others this and that" with references to threads whenever available, it will be up to the user to choose his view of the world.
As more facts will come up, the wiki will become more accurate.

Regarding the fact of "how come I don't get 50mpg?" question, a wiki could address such kind of questions with a list of possible ways/suggestions on getting higher mpgs. If a reader is not satisfied with the list of suggestions/answers, he can always post on the forum, but likely we will avoid seeing the question on "what does ECO" do, again and again.

Also, when I wanted to write my review about the Prius, which I posted on my blog, I had a long time searching for references, sites and so on, simply because I read about it here (e.g. how the HSD works and a video showing how the planetary gearset works) but could not find it anymore.

There is a Priuswiki.de website, but it is in German (and I am not; I have a hard time writing in german, so I cannot really contribute) and it is lacking a lot of the information found here - it's simply not good. There is *so* much qualified information, charts, tests, measurements in here, that it is a pity that is lost in thousands of threads. There are some posts, for example, from Ken in Japan, that are already wiki articles by themselves, just to name one user's contribution.
Some of the information from the Gen 2 applies also to the Gen 3 with minor differences, hence it would be easy to crossref - in the threads it is a randomised, cross referencing that gets lost in the jungle of posts.

One other example - it took me a *long* time to just find the post of the guy showing pics of using LED vs halogen headlights (he was comparing his and his father's Prius 2010). But boy, it was good to find it after a long time and to share the information to a blog poster I got asking about it - I could point him here, but could not simply say - "Go to the Prius 2010 priuschat wikipedia...it's the best on the internet"

Another example of why a wiki is good - here you get trolls - they start a thread and people might believe that what is written is true. After several posts somebody might come and say "this is a troll" and the thread might stop there because users know the user's importance and how relevant his judgement is, or the thread gets closed from the moderators. On a wiki, a troll would not live 2 seconds as he would get an edit saying "references needed here" or "facts necessary here" and he/she would have to reference and post sources on his claims - otherwise he would be edited out (deleted! ) by several users in a row after a short while. It would be the "Wikipedia effect" - the moderators could also track where the most edits happen and decide to put a lock on edits that make no sense (trolls). I am not too sure that the forums are immune to that in a better way.

The wiki page could also be more focused on functioning of the car, rather than having information on where to buy the car, what accessories I can find here and there, how to clean it with product X and so forth. Not to mention personal comments and chit chats between users that make threads often overly long without adding information. This is IMHO the problem of the forums (in general).

 

Actually I find starting a new thread faster than searching. What i mean is just today i was going to start a thread titled "EV mode useless". I LOVE the feature in this forum, where the forum shows you previously similar thread titles to the one I was about to posted. So i clicked on those links and whaddya know I found my answer and canceled the thread.

 

I request that Judgeless place his posts in the appropiate forum areas. I fail to see how this pertains to the Gen III.

 

On the above, in Gen II Prius Fuel Economy - PriusChat Forums, there is http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-ii-prius-fuel-economy/14701-new-owner-want-mpg-help-read-first.html and it has a link to http://priuschat.com/forums/knowled...ussion/37214-why-don-t-i-get-epa-mileage.html.

 

On my old Murano Forum...the Friendly Moderators were very active in combining threads and creating a link to the old thread for a day or so then deleting the duplicate thread...It was a lot of work but then you know the Moderators have nothing else to do...

 

Tony - I cannot access link 1 since it says I don't have enough permissions.
Link 2 shows a lot of moved threads, and the thread is Gen 2 specific - is there a gen 3 available?
Link 3 surely shows a lot of useful threads, but it's 11 (!!!) pages long (20 threads each) with no structure whatsoever (and apparently gen 2 specific only) - that is why I don't like the forum structure to find information - it not really organised: you find posts about how to change a windshield wiper blade, next to a post on how to align wheels, close to one on voice commands. I know it is huge work to reorganise this amount of data, but as it is, it is not really accessible.

So - I see still a lot of information, and a lot of potential - but I don't think a forum software platform is the best way to benefit from it.
If there is an easy way, and a wiki was just an idea, to organise and make easy access of all this wealth, I think priuschat.com and its users would benefit from it.

Otherwise we'll just keep on searching...

 

You were being teased, for the most part - I didn't get the sense that anyone was genuinely upset. As for posting the same thing in different forums, that's generally not how things are done here. Choose the forum you think suits the thread best, post it once, and let it go where it will. I didn't hear anyone suggesting you had to stop posting completely.

 

don't do a 'wilson' on us bro! we need you. and want you. sorry if we offended, no harm intended.

 

I have now been on this forum 13 months and have learned many things to make my Prius experience more enjoyable. In those 13 months I have noticed the following repeat threads posted in the Main Forum.

Here are my top repeats:

Hi Newbee here! (I guess they don't notice the Newbee forum I didn't eigther)
My milage is too low! (I am pretty sure I am guilty of posting one of these too)
Wheel ornaments off or on (I know I posted one of these)
Lower rear hatch window gets dirty (well duh).
The always interesting 15vs17" wheel debate...
Red color in the Hybrid display (Just don't use that useless screen anyway)
And my favorite...
Looking to purchase a new Prius (in one of many permutations).

I don't resent any of these duplicate postings...I read them all and sometimes respond since I know I too am guilty of not using the Search function when I should.

 

Tony ...

Your first link is not automatically open to everyone.

The second and third links are nested under GenII ... Why would one use them for GenIII?