I'm not inside the moderator's head, but I have a feeling the descent into tit-for-tat lay legalese threats, anatomy-measuring, and personal insult was a big part of how another recent thread got closed. And maybe if the same thing happens here, given the whole thread title is "For the trolls", this thread might be no great loss. But it would be unfortunate for the same kind of thing to keep happening. I don't expect Azusa to show any increased restraint (not after getting what he wanted once, silencing a thread where someone he disagreed with was posting). So it may be on others to aim higher in responding (or deciding when that's even worthwhile).
PriusChat is for helping people keep their Prius and Toyota hybrids on the road and sharing expertise so we're all more proficient at caring for Toyota hybrids. This malicious descent into targeted campaigns to attack and destroy the reputation of each other to the point that lawyers on all sides are getting involved is not, nor has ever been, the purpose of PriusChat. Justifying this behavior in the name of "safety" when no one has ever had their vehicle destroyed or been injured is a weak and getting weaker excuse every day. I'm all for intelligent fact finding and honest discussion, but the level of exaggeration, hyperbole and innuendo has gone way too far and is not something our moderator is going to put up with much longer.
Im not the one continuing to bash Jack and refusing to obey a C&D letter. I will respond to anyone with the same respect they show me on here, only difference is my comments hit different. There are plenty of tester here that have used Jack's batteries and there have never been dangerous issues or fires. Mudders constant attacks on Jack's products and they way he goes about sourcing prototypes is suspect and he has only ever been on here but to attack Jack and his company plain and simple. The truth will come out soon..but the damage has been done and he does not care what he says and responds in childish ways when there is any response he doesnt like.
PriusCamper has used different tactics elsewhere to achieve the same results. With the current moderator presumably not even passively involved in day-to-day discussions, I don't imagine their reaction would be any different if they were to wake up to a similar report. Is there anything stopping any member from casually threatening legal action against PC for not taking down a post they dislike? I get the feeling that the overwhelming majority of members here do not stand to profit financially from what they post on this site. Those that do, as evidenced by their constant use of affiliate links and codes, are quick to get dissenting voices drowned out in a sea of bilge and in threatening to lawyer up when they see something that might hurt their ability to commercialize their posts. PC already has rules in place for preventing this but they rarely seem to be enforced. Either that, or these members have the blessing of an administrator. ... If the goal is to encourage helpful behavior rather than devolving into a platform enabling money-grubbing, maybe the answer lies in just enforcing this existing rule?
I've had it with the behavior and attitudes that seem to revolve around mudder recently. He is getting the very rare temporary ban from PriusChat so that perhaps he can step back, reflect on how his activity here has been in stark contrast to that of the rest of the community, and come back with a different approach. Let me be very clear: Private messages are private. Posting screenshots of confidential material is just about the lowest thing you can do on a message board. Anyone who behaves this way, whether posted on PC or other sites, will be.permanently banned. Additionally, I will not continue to allow PC moderators to be berated or harassed by members. Mods put hours of volunteer time into PriusChat to make this site the amazing knowledge repository that it is today. We are all thankful that the Prius community has been of high integrity and measured behavior that PC has not required nearly as much moderation as other sites. As our legacy moderators have had their interests move to other things over the years, @Tideland Prius has been here, serving the community. @Tideland Prius is literally the nicest person I've ever had the pleasure to meet, and his kindness is only exceeded by his deep knowledge of the auto industry. I'm proud to call him my friend. It is my fault that I have not gotten him additional help, and my hope is to rectify that soon. In the meantime, behave like adults and quit harassing the people that keep the lights running.
I think that although the approach may not have been to everyone's like, there are objective items that have come to light that are worth discussing regarding the Nexcell products. PriusChat seems to be the correct platform for this seeing that replacement battery packs are regularly discussed on this site. The public looks to PriusChat to be a trusted (neutral) site when it comes to information like this. I can't imagine how many times a day the question "I think my hybrid battery is failing, anyone have suggestions on what my options are?" comes up. Unfortunately, I'm still not clear the best path forward to have that discussion occur in a way that doesn't involve ongoing moderation. There are people defending Nexcell products that financially gain from promotion of said products. (For example, PriusCamper had (has?) affiliate links to Nexcell products, both the lithium and sodium packs.) Therefore it makes sense that they may have a financial incentive to ignore any objective criticism, and quash criticism of Nexcell. I've joked about having a simple cheat sheet showing the breakdown of the varying things such as (Not sure I've summarized either party's opinions quite right, but hopefully you get the idea.) Worldview - mudder | Nexcell - Sodium needs cell level monitoring | Sodium does not need cell level monitoring - Soldering is not recommended for automotive battery packs | Soldering is ok for automotive packs - Signal soother bridges HV disconnect and is unsafe | *I'm not sure if the4re has been a rebuttal? etc, etc And maybe the parties could share more data or citations to back things up? I know That's what mudder was starting at one point. Anyone else have some ideas?
I like that cheat sheet as it focuses on the technical. Clearly there have been posts that failed to steer away from the personal, and those were on both sides of the |. Steering away means both: not taking it there, and not going there if somebody else takes it there. I'm pretty sure I heard Tideland's dad-voice saying "I don't care who started it! Who's big enough to know better?" I think it's good to be aware of potential conflicts on both sides, in just the same way that a published journal article usually has a disclosure of potential conflicts. Some members here have known financial interests aligned with Nexcell, and mudder has openly disclosed being a possible future battery competitor. I don't think those conflicts on either side should be used to dismiss either side's technical claims out of hand. I think it's better when technical claims get compared and evaluated on evidence.
With the new sodium HV battery being the future tech, the soother was discontinued a while ago as there is no need for it. I never had any issues with the soother in place, no smoke no fires and it passed any codes through that were critical. Thousands of lithium HV packs are out there without issues, so to continue to talk down on the products without having one for yourself is even lower than mudder paying testers to give him their prototypes.
People with enough of a knowledge base in common manage to have technical discussions all the time without all needing to have the same item in front of them. Might even argue that when human technological progress really took off was after people figured out how to do that. There's nothing 'low' about it. I also don't buy that there was anything 'low' about mudder offering to pay anybody for an item that they had. It is only because of mudder that this community learned what the signal soother actually does. Only vague nonspecific verbiage had been seen until then. Before mudder offered to examine one, I had also offered to do so, only I didn't offer any bounty, and when mudder offered to, he did. And that enabled him to answer the question that more than one person had asked in that thread without getting a technical answer to that point. PriusChat is better off for it. It is only because of mudder that this community learned any battery prototype shipped out with disconnect terminals that don't disconnect anything. We don't know how many shipped out like that but we know it at least happened once. PriusChat is better off knowing about that. Was it disproportionate for mudder to say, in that post, something like "immediately go and take out that battery"? A little, yeah. I would have thought it adequate to say something more like "go with a meter and check whether the one you've got has working disconnect terminals, if it does, carry on." But I can see how mudder might not have written something quite that measured, in the immediate aftermath of discovering disconnect terminals that were dummies.
You are talking about a prototype that mudder got a hold of and he should not have had possession of it. Furthermore Jack already said it was like that and the beta testers knew about it. Newer versions are complete and are connected as they should be. There really is no other reasons to talk about prototypes as they are just that prototypes. Talking about things that mudder would like to see implemented in a battery is just his opinion and he should take his two cents and save them so he can actually build his own prototype of a Prius HV battery. This is getting old already and to continue to talk about mudders "findings and wishes" is really sad and shows you really dont have a lot to talk about on here.
A reader of these several threads will notice that I haven't repeated or amplified any of mudder's comments about things he "wishes" or "would like". Yes, he has included some points of that kind in his posts, but those have been of less interest to me. My thanks to mudder for his contributions here are chiefly for his work answering what the signal soother does, which had already been asked more than once and not usefully answered, and for his disclosure of the dummy disconnect terminals. With regard to the dummy terminals, if it is true as you say, or Jack says, that any tester who received such a unit was fully informed of the fact, with all its implications including the absence of fuse protection, and chose to go ahead with installation fully understanding all that, then any such tester would be unsurprised and unimpacted by mudder also reporting the same fact. Any other tester who received a later unit with functional disconnect terminals, who might take a meter and go check to be sure, will end up confirming the terminals are functional and have peace of mind on that score. But mudder could not know whether it's true that everyone who needed to be was fully informed and fully understood the implications, so mudder could have felt that professional responsibility demanded he disclose that issue when he found it. I'm inclined to agree.
At least 1 person has said that they got a V3.3 pack and were not informed of the absent disconnect. Discussion: NexPower V3 Sodium-ion Battery Announcement | Page 2 | PriusChat Also unrelated to the above statement, it looks like Jack has made video from post 1 on this thread Private on YouTube.
I dunno, I looked at that post, and it does say that poster received a pack with no notice about nonfunctional disconnect terminals. But what that post doesn't say is that the disconnect terminals on that pack have been checked and found to be nonfunctional.* If they've been checked and found functional, there's nothing to see there. If they haven't been checked, that could be worth doing. * unless that was the pack that got supplied to mudder to look at. I don't remember.
Based on statements made in the video and being the same source for the signal soother, I think it is the very same pack that got supplied to mudder, or close enough in version / timeframe to draw the same conclusion. In the YouTube video (which I won't link) "Concerns with NexPower's V3 Sodium Battery for Toyota Vehicles" at 7:15 while he is disassembling the prototype pack that he received and shows the absent service disconnect wiring, mudder mentions the same "V3.3" and "May 2024" timestamp. Either there are different versions of "V3.3" pack in the same May 2024 timeframe with and without a working service disconnect, or V3.3 and earlier packs have absent service disconnect wiring and at least 1 person was not informed.
Transcript from 14:46: "As you can see, we have little studs coming up for the positive and negative posts of the battery cells and then every other one of these has one of these wires hooked to it. That's a voltage sense wire so the battery ECU is watching the voltage of each individual cell and then it looks for a difference in the state of charge. Lithium-ion batteries don't like to have a difference in the state of charge when they're put in series like this so they have to be balanced ..."
