WalterHouston wrote:
Wow! I just finished reading the stuff in the Triad fourm.
I read through it last night and I was pretty upset. A few thoughts...
* While our forum is not open to non club members, people should realize that there are TSCC officers visiting here. This is 100% fine with me as anything I have to say, I would say to anyone personally. But please don't start a flame war hear by accident by thinking that TSCC (or anyone else) is not going to see what is said here. Just like we don’t want them to generalize about THSCC, I would hope that we don’t do the same about TSCC. I don't think the items below are inflamitory, but maybe I am wrong.
* Karen Kraus (I assume that is the “Karen” on their forum) was an instructor at a THSCC autocross school a few years ago. She was one of my instructors and I liked her in person. I will say that what you saw on the forum yesterday seems to be very much like her posts on the Evolution mailing list and others that she frequents. Her online persona is on the strong side. Still, I don’t know the history of why she is so upset. It just seemed bitter and over the top. I just walked away confused at her anger.
* It’s hard to judge people online. If you go back and review posts here in our own forum you are going to find that there are a handful of people who you may say are “hot heads” when specific topics come up. Some are even officers. It’s not “bad”, it just is the way it is. If you are an outsider (such as a newbie to THSCC) you tend to get roasted by these people occasionally (see my topics of death list). I wonder if we are seeing some of the same when we visit TSCC forum. For example, I think that nearly any post from Anthony Hodges (hope I got his name correct) was just pure gasoline on a huge fire. And as far as I can tell, it wasn’t accidental. It seemed like he wanted an all out war to happen? I don’t know him personally and only know him via those posts and I honestly can’t see why an officer of any club would act like that. But maybe he is just that way and everyone else at TSCC is used to it. Or, that is just normal for TSCC forums. I haven’t read many posts there to see if that is the case. Threads like those would have been locked much earlier here. Granted that stuff happened pretty quick on their forum, but locked threads allow people to step back, take a breath and act like the adults we hope they are.
* I frankly can’t understand the entire site switch conspiracy theory thing. There were and are people in this club (I suspect the majority of those involved) who wanted the event to happen at the Greensboro Coliseum. So I just don’t understand what the root is regarding the logic on “THSCC found an excuse to switch sites”. I assume there is some story somewhere to explain this that I just haven’t heard. If I was to guess (and I could be way off base), it is that since this is a TSCC site and that we decided to move that it is some type of slight on TSCC. That we are saying “Their site is not good enough”. If that is the case, then who feel that way need to grow up and have more self confidence in themselves and not look to others for approval.
* Now I know why Wes wasn’t putting up much more of a battle on our “JPM going to NASCAR” thread as he was busy on the TSCC forum trying to make peace as best he could.
* I think out officers did a good job trying not to get overly emotional about the entire thing in public. One thing that I don’t think got enough attention is that we have been doing a lot of work to make this event happen. I think that people enjoyed last years event put on by TSCC and realized that they did a lot of work to make that happen. I guess people either don’t know, forget or don’t care about how much work it must take to put on an event like this. Frankly the nitpicking about this is just a bunch of people trying to drive nails in NCAC’s coffin.
* While there were a few over the top people posting, there were also TSCC members (I believe some were TSCC officers, but I don’t know who is who) who were also trying to keep things civil. So Kudos to them as well.
* With all of the officers (mostly from other clubs) disputing how the communications between them was handled, maybe whoever does this next year should have an official mailing list and established representation, etc. cleared with the officers of each club well in advance. Full meeting notes, etc. so people can stop claiming they are in the dark. But one kicker is that it seems that with the NCAC being a rotating thing, which means one club is in more control than the others. And that means that someone has to give up some control. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t expect one club to handle most of the work, take on all of the expenses (i.e. risk) and then bitch that you didn’t get your way. Yes, there needs to be some standards as to what you should expect with NCAC (i.e. next year we just have one big PAXed class for EVERYONE should not happen), but otherwise, either you run the thing as a committee and share all responsibilities (financial and otherwise) or you just let the host do their thing. It is hard to do something in-between.
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Richard Casto
1972 Porsche 914
2013 Honda Fit Sport
2015 Honda Fit EX
http://motorsport.zyyz.comMoney can't buy happiness, but somehow it's more comfortable to cry in a Porsche than a Kia.