Now that it’s the end of the year, we have some time for reflection.
In the current day and age, everything is about numbers; how fast is your car, how expensive is your house, how many likes does your selfie get and how many friends do you have on Facebook?
Our OSS-world is “sort of” the same; numbers are an easy way to measure if you’re doing something right. As it is now, Facebook and other readily available social media run the world; a lot of people are just not bothered about putting in any effort at all online, because the aforementioned Facebook,Instagram or Snapchat will happily do it for you. In return means all your data is shared and sold to advertisers. This is something just about everyone just takes as a given and give it no real second thought. We do though.
Since all these We-Do-Everything-For-You platforms have come to rise, most traditional technical forums have been dwindling, and that got even worse when Photobucket thought it’d be a good idea to block all “third party hosting” (unless you were to fork over 400$/year) which meant all pics you ever used on a forum posted from Photobucket were now gone..
All this in general means many don’t bother with forums anymore; it’s just too much work. Rightly so, it is maybe a bit less straight forward than Facebook, BUT, all that You post would actually stay Yours and in the place you put it. Facebook and the pages we all frequent have one pretty big issue; useful information gets washed away in a sea of nonsense, never to be seen again, plus there’s too many “experts” that will endlessly argue over a given point without ever giving actual proof of their said expertise.
Now, since we were talking numbers, let’s make them work for us. While many forums are struggling in the face of social media, we as OSS have managed to bring over 2000 members together on a forum in 2 and a half years. Granted, these are not all active users, but 2000+ people non the less that have taken the time away from the usual internet to immerse themselves into our world. Some will stay, some will flounce, it’s been the same since day one; OSS really isn’t the most easy place for outsiders; we like people to put in some effort, not your usual play on the internet.
This is all done to “naturaly select” those that would have no place amongst us. You either bring something to the table, or you leave.
2000+ members, 10 Raceteam members (at time of writing) and growing fast, 300+ project topics with more getting started every day, OSS has proven to be a good place to hide away from the fast/short/simple that is the daily internet, to find it all a bit more in depth and (for me personally anyway) a generally more relaxing atmosphere. Just remember to read the rules.
From me to you, thank you for visiting, posting, engaging on Oldskoolsuzuki.info and helping us spread our beliefs on the internet and in real life during bike nights and the bigger events, it’s greatly appreciated. It must mean we as a team of people are doing something right and the decision of bringing back OSS as a stand-alone website has been the right one.
Let’s get 2017 behind us and go forward to 2018; more projects that are actually easily to follow and properly documented, more high profile Winged Hammer racebikes run across the globe and let us meet up somewhere along the way.
We promise to not make you want to look at your phone every 10 minutes. Just check in every once in a while, when you feel like it and share with us what you have been doing. Most importantly, do so safe in the knowledge that it will still be there when you come back and no one is going to sell your digital soul for a quick buck.
See you next year, thanks,
Rene EFE
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NB; All bikes in this article are built, owned and maintained by the Admin team. If you like what you see and would like to know more, please join our forum and get in on all the fun. We’re a friendly bunch.
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