Madness Shop Manual

The term ‘noob’ is often thrown around with negative connotation, but many people don’t realize that there are two flavors of noob: well-intentioned and tool. The well-intentioned noob has some sort of idea as to how a car works, and based on those core principles (which often require modification after research and education) have innovative new dreams. For example, I still see ‘How do I swap an s2000 motor into my CRX?’ threads starting up fairly often. While I’ve considered this swap myself (and still am, if I can find the right collection of donor cars), I have a pretty solid understanding of what’s required, have done oodles of research, and have drawn up diagrams. I can reasonably explain how the swap SHOULD go, and what’s required to do it. That’s the only difference between the well-intentioned noob and myself. Treat these hopefuls kindly, they’re the future of our community.On the opposite end of the spectrum is the mostly-useless ‘tool’. When you meet a tool, they’ll talk a lot about things that don’t pertain to the conversation, they’ll brag a lot about crazy stuff they’ve done, they’ll make up numbers to go along with the power their previous projects have supposedly put out, but most of all, they’ll confuse the hell outta you. On a forum, these people aren’t always easy to root out. Sometimes they have a screenname that looks similar to one you recognize (I’ve seen a Jadker before, which is a play upon the venerable name ‘Jadkar’, but Jadker was a complete idiot). Sometimes they’ll start by saying something that seems completely reasonable, such as:
“I’m swapping a motor into my CRX, what do I need? It’s the JDM motor.”

At this point, I have difficulty not breaking faces. Try not to waste too much time beating on these ones, either they’ll learn (though it’s not likely) or they’ll get bored and move on to a different hobby (usually within a paycheck).

Moving right along, a well-intentioned noob turns into an advisor. These are the types who have a pretty solid understanding of the basic principles necessary to make educated decisions, and know where to find the information they need to go further. During this phase, a community member is the heart of the community, generating more threads/discussions/topics than anybody else (often exponentially so).

After awhile, our neophyte forumer finds herself unable to ask worthwhile questions because they’ve all been answered. At this point, the forum-goer seeks bigger, badder projects, joins other forums to help out, and generally becomes known as a ‘guru’. Eventually, the fun and excitement of online communities gets to everyone, and our forum-goer quits (often for an extended period of time) and often comes back with newfound excitement after this hiatus. Some even start their own forums, or change the type of vehicle they enjoy tuning (sometimes even planes or sailboats, not limited to 4 wheels).

This is not meant to be a de-facto series of what happens for everyone, but like the Hero’s Quest, I’d say this is a pretty solid layout.