The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk C'mon gang!

A little help please?

Especially all of you with 4 or 5-digit post counts....

How many times have we dealt with the following questions over the years ???

"How much is my truck worth?"
"How much will my insurance be?"
"How do I get titled/registered in ____________ (fill in state name)?"

Do the answers ever change??

No. They do not.

And you all KNOW IT.

These questions are all subjective and based on variables we have no knowledge of that it is impossible to provide useful answers to the OPs other than that *they* have to go to their state DMVs, insurance companies or start perusing classifieds and auction results (as appropriate). *They* have to climb the appropriate mountains to seek the gurus thereupon for their own answers.

While I feel compassion for the OPs in these matters, we do them a disservice by dragging these conversations out with personal anecdotes, conjecture, dated experiences and the like. Sure, we like to commiserate, and we've all been there. But are we really helping if, in all this flurry of gabbing, we give bum gouge to an innocent info seeker by leading them off into pointless rabbit holes?

How about we all discipline ourselves to actually provide the only *good* info we can in these matters? Let's skip the bloviation and direct them straight to the right info source(s) for these common questions.

Thank you.

It is not only this site. I see it all over Facebook. I often wonder the motive of someone asking what their truck or car is worth. Do they really want someone to tell them? How can they trust the answer?

Do your research of other vehicles in your category and start there.
Call two or three insurance providers, only they can tell you how much insurance will cost.
Call or stop by your local county clerks office. They can tell you the process. We all know it varies by location.

Good point John.

Forum meaning today:
A place, meeting, or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged.

Forum meaning historical:
The scene of public meetings, law courts, and gladiatorial combats in republican times and was lined with shops and open-air markets.

Stovebolt's word sparring reminds me of geriatric gladiatorial combats. I often find it hilarious. So "forum" is an appropriate label.

As long as information is freely shared and with Stovebolt's reputation for helpful information, people of Chevy truck connection will come to this forum.

Go visit the forum of late 40's lead sleds with flat sixes. Notice the silence. Most of these cars have gone to the crusher-recycler.

Just be thankful for what we have however imperfect.

No one is not thankful. The subject here is narrow. The point has been reached to stop these long conversations which do not lead to an answer. Just someone looking for a pen pal or a more nefarious cause. There are other questions we see over and over but are more technical and hands on and working-on-a-truck stuff. The issues John mentions should be transferred to greasy spoon. The Stovebolt Search database is full of the endless posts John speaks of.

1. Appraisal is subjective even if you examine the vehicle. Appraisal in a forum is ridiculous. Old trucks CAN NOT be appraised by anyone or any company. Just a buyer and a seller on a given day in a given location. Lets don't argue about that. If you buy it we will help you work on it. If you sell it you will know what it's worth.
2. Insurance: obvious. call your agent
3. Title: obvious. call your DMV. We are not going to help you interpret or circumvent your local law.
These are all personal day to day problems. John has reached a point that he is asking for it to stop. Pretty simple. Been pretty patient for many years. It won't stop anyone from coming to this forum.

So here I am streching this post. I need to go back to the bar where my focus group hangs out.

The moderator can regulate discussion by chastisement or removal.
A membership fee may be a good way to discourage newbie frivolous questions.

I was once a newbie with frivolous questions. At the time, I had no website searching skills. I am certainly grateful that I was not discouraged by anyone. Instead I was treated with grace and often encouraged to check the search feature and was supplied with key search words to find many answers to my query.
I do understand Johns concerns, and share them, about how we get into the weeds which ends up not helping newbies with their questions, but instead cause them more confusion.
Those of us who know things (or think that we do ), need to keep John's concerns in mind.
I am not comfortable putting this on the ones asking the questions, especially those brand new to the site.

Could something be put together in the form of a tech tip, or maybe even a sticky thread at the top of the forum page, laying out the basic answers to these questions as John and Bart have outlined above? Then when someone asks the questions, they can be gently referred to that thread, without having to re-hash the same old stuff over and over.
Just a thought.

I believe I did get off track and made it seem as if I was speaking to a potential poster. I meant to be speaking to who John was asking for help. The Gang. Us, Me included. To not go on and on.......and give the poster a quick referral to X Dept/X Resource. Martin is the only one who does that correctly.
But he is the Fuzz.

A forum like this is no different than a water cooler or the local country store 8AM coffee group.

People ask questions, people discuss things. It's the way it should be regardless of the topic. Best way for a forum like this to die is to begin berating people for what you consider to be a dumb question.

There is no such thing as frivolous questions.

If you don't want to answer a question because you've seen and answered the same question dozens of times before, don't answer the question and scroll to the next question. Something old and common to one member is brand new to another member.

I think Rich’sToys idea of a “Sticky Thread” or two is a good one. A link to that thread would answer most of those type questions and any additional questions, could be posted. I’ve heard many times, on this forum, “there are no stupid questions”. Like many other repetitive questions were turned into “Tech Tips” or “Sticky Threads”, these could reside there to be referenced for many years to come.

You miss the point *entirely.* This has absolutely nothing to do with newbie frivolous questions and *everything* to do with old guy frivolous answers. As Bart says -- what I am asking is for all of longer term users to quit dragging some of these discussions out with useless, pointless and ultimately unhelpful anecdotes. (Love the PenPal analogy, Bart!!)

I wasn't asking for a lot of discussion on this, but to sum up ... There are no dumb (or frivolous) questions. But there sure are dumb answers. Try not to give any of those.

And while we're on the subject, I do not want to see "Use the search function" as a snippy answer to a perfectly valid newbie question. I don't care how many times we've answered it in the past, ANSWER IT AGAIN! Help the guy! Especially if it is a simple answer to a simple question (which they usually are.) Few things turn a new user off faster than getting flogged on his first post for simply asking a simple (to him) question. Like Otto says, if you don't like the question, leave it to someone else with more patience.

We have tech tips on the Insurance and truck value questions (which I will be updating soon). The one about titling and registering shouldn't need one. But if you all feel the need to have me do a "How to boil water" tech tip on that, it shouldn't be too difficult. It probably goes about like this:

"Call your state DMV office and talk to *them*.

The End."

These three questions are perfectly legitimate. And the best help we can give these knowledge seekers is to direct them to the best knowledge sources quickly.

If you all want to trade stories, take it to the 'Spoon.

Carry on.

John, "Y'all stop that" isn't going to do it.
It has to be enforced (censored). Start by deleting me as a member.
One less senile babbler to deal with.

You go down we all go down, BTW John is creeping on the mark and not so slowly.

OK now you crazy boys are actually violating rules. You have turned a simple internal memo into insulting the owners of the free site you are on.

"4. Flaming/personal attacks
5. Bullying"

"Please, no flaming, advertising or anything else not directly related to the care, restoration, preservation or use of old GM trucks! Off-Topic discussions go in the Greasy Spoon Forum!".... (as in registration, insurance and worth issues not covered in a tip)

Are you fighting and insulting and threatening to be allowed to go on and on about insurance? Give legal advice about titles? Tell how you did it in your state which has no relevance? Appraise a truck and cause a buyer or seller to lose money? When you still can do it by Referral, Spoon or PM? Really?
Take the Joe Biden Cognative test and get back to us with your score.

A NOTE to all respondents/readers: What John posted above was clearly meant to be his shared "Head Honcho" wisdom and is "instructional" in nature. (Do I really need to say more - nope.)

Clearly the point has been missed that this is not meant to be a discussion, nor an opening salvo for arguments, verbal jousting, or other such nonsense and griping/grousing.

Extra attention needs to be paid to John's "The End" point.

I have not taken any action to this point as this being "John's" thread, I respect his prerogative to manage his post his way and will leave any actions on replies above this one to his discretion.

That being said, any further replies need to be expressed in "The Spoon" or be left unsaid here.

Respectfully,

Dan (GTT Mod)

Thank you John for what you do.
Peace out.

Thanks Carl, Bart and (especially) Dan.

I think we're done here.

Out.