Sunday, October 30, 2005

Old Trucks

A rash of spam just had to be removed from the Truck forum. A
dozen ads were placed simultaneously - advertisements like Payday Loans, Acne Treatment (?), Poker, etc. I don't know why they pick on that particular forum but a lot of these ads have been showing up lately. They are posted as a reply to a question so that you can't tell it is an advertisement until you click on it.

A few people might not know that we even have a truck section. The Classic Truck website was created because a lot of people who had old tractors had old trucks too. They needed a place to talk so the truck forum was created. Then their own classified ad section, etc which eventually grew into a whole new website, called appropriately YesterdaysTruck.com or YesterdaysPickups.com

There are more than 600 old trucks in the photo gallery there. Wow! I just love looking at them and I love old trucks. We had an old Ford when I was a kid. It was red and just a big old farm truck that probably never got a bath in it's life except when it rained.

Here is a neat picture that Dave from Illinois posted in the gallery. A 1946 White truck pulling a 1945 Farmall H. Cool! It proves my point that old trucks and old tractors go well together:



The trucksters who hang out at the Yesterday's Truck site have asked for their own Photo Ads, so I'm working on that. I'm going to use the same software that's on the antique tractor site but it's been heavily modified for use there and I'll have to go over it with a fine tooth comb to make it fit the truck site.

If anyone has any other requests or has ideas for the Truck site just let me know. If you have knowledge or interest in these old machines maybe you could help answer questions in the Classic Truck Discussion Forum.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

A Day in the Life of a Moderator

What does it take to maintain a site like YT? Like I said in an earlier blog entry, the day starts at 5:30 with content review. There are an amazing number of places on the site where visitor comments or messages can be entered. For example, in addition to the discussion forums there are photo comments, classified and photo ads, the guest book, tractor town mini-sites, etc. Content entered into these areas are reviewed for appropriateness.

Beyond virtual fist fights in the forums which I have already mentioned, the 13+ photo galleries can get some pretty dicey comments. For example, if a photo has a female in it, whether it's your mother, your daughter or your wife, inadvertently someone will make a sexual comment about it which doesn't pass the Yesterday's Tractors website morality meter test. We also occasionally get people who post pornographic pictures in the tractor galleries which causes instantaneous combustion of the site's morality meter. (Don't worry, I've got a whole box of them :)

Another thing that concerns me is when people post comments about a photo that is simply unkind. For example, someone posts a photo of a tractor they just spent 6 months restoring. Someone may enter a comment like "That's the worst %&*$?@ paint job I've ever seen." or "Why did you bother? Go get a real tractor!". Sorry, but I don't consider those comments considerate or constructive. I may be old fashioned but I took my Grandma's words to heart (God Rest Her Soul) when she said, "If you can't say something nice, don't say it at all.". I just think there is a constructive way to get a point across and some comments are just plain unnecessary. Take your anger elsewhere, please.

I suppose it wouldn't be so much work maintaining the website content if I wasn't so picky about keeping the site neighborly and above board. But I DO care, and I wouldn't know how to begin to look the other way when these things happen. Here is a list of the monitoring activities that begin at 5:30. It can take up to 2 hours to complete, depending upon what I find:

  • Classifieds: Approve dealer or featured photo ads and publish, review existing photo ads and remove non-tractor items, approve regular classified ads that got caught in the filter and approve, review existing classified ads in five different ad areas (we get a lot of spam attempts here).
  • Forums: Review posts that have been flagged, scan through new posts (usually about 1200 per day in 28 different forums) for problems, spammers, scams or concerns, then do the same for the KountryLife.com forums, the Truck forum and the Today's Tractors forum. Answer questions in the Site Comments forum as needed.
  • Photo Galleries: Review photos for appropriateness. Besides what I already mentioned about pornographic pictures, sometimes there are just simple mistakes like putting a new tractor in the "Vintage Photos" gallery, or placing a photo of yourself plowing in the "Vintage Ads" gallery. Review photo comments.
  • Spam: Review the Safemail logs for spammers and scams like these. This has been a huge effort but a lot of people have been hurt by scams so I take trying to keep them away from the site very seriously. I'm happy to say we're seeing less and less of these at YT and I like to think they've given up due to our vigilant attempts to block them and our buyers / sellers ignorning them.
  • Miscellaneous: Review article comments, chat room problems, TractorShed.com photo comments, regular guestbook and Tractor Town guestbook comments.
  • Links: Review and approve new links submitted to TractorLinks.com
  • Visitor Supplied Content: Review stories entered into "Your Stories", Collector Profiles, plus KL's "How-To DB", the Humor DB, Memories DB and Recipe DB.

    Well I'm sure I forgot a thing or two but that gives you a good idea of how the day starts at 5:30 am. When I'm done, I wake my son up for school and get his day started. Then onto the YT Warehouse as required to manage the retail side of things (that's another blog entry in itself). There is also time spent fixing broken programs, server performance, adding new features, etc, which will also be covered in another blog entry.

    The site monitoring is repeated two more times during the day, usually in the afternoon and then again in the evening. Thank goodness for laptops and wireless networks!



  • Monday, October 24, 2005

    Back to Work

    I'm back from my vacation in Southern Utah and was very impressed with the natural beauty there. Time was spent at the Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Lots of hiking and a lots of ooh's and ahh's. These places are real gems so if you get a chance to visit, I highly recommend them!

    In-between site seeing there was some play time, including both horseback riding and a jaunt through the Ponderosa Pines on an ATV (pic below).



    This was my first time on an ATV, but I've spent some time on two-wheeled machines. People may be surprised to learn that I'm not only interested in Antique Tractors, I also like motorcycles! I got my first motorcycle at age 18 and back then it was the only thing with an engine I owned, taking me back and forth to work during good weather and bad. Currently I have a 250cc Rebel street bike, a 100cc dirt bike and an NS50 cafe racer. They're all small bikes but perfect for me at only 5'1. I like my feet to be able to reach the ground!

    It's back to work now and I've been working on the Yesterday's Tractors website and fixing a problem with the search engine. Looks like it is working now but certain searches really slow down the rest of the site. I'm considering moving the search engine to it's own server. As of today, it has to search through 1,838,359 pages to find a match for what you enter. That takes a lot of CPU power!

    Saturday, October 22, 2005

    The YT Story - Part One

    How it All Began

    I'd been living in town only a short time when we started talking about getting a place with acreage. I was born and raised on a farm and several years living in the city left me with a hole in my soul that kept getting bigger and bigger as time went by. Oh, living in town was exciting at first, the hustle and bustle was an endless source of things to do for this self proclaimed "do-a-holic". But after late night parties next door kept us up all night, and my favorite cat got squashed by a car after venturing only 20 feet from the front door, I began to crave the rural life once again.

    Finding a place was difficult. Here in the most northern part of the Pacific Northwest acreage is covered with towering firs that don't let in much sun for gardening or crops. Land that has been cleared has to be re-cleared on a monthly basis or the alders, blackberries, nettles and ferns take over before the tractor engine even gets a chance to cool.

    That's the kind of place we ended up with but it seemed like paradise to us. In short order we decided we needed a tractor to help shape the land to match our dreams and keep those alders at bay. Chris, having lived in the city his entire life, thought there couldn't be much to this tractor buying business and found himself at the local saw shop where Jim Storey sold everything from chain saws, weed wackers and lawn mowers to tractors big and small.

    I remember well the day the tractor was delivered. Here it comes bouncing up the long dirt driveway behind a truck, a large mass of faded orange and rust chained to the trailer like a prisoner of war. Chris had a grin so wide I thought his face might split. This was a kid at Christmas, plain and simple, and the fact that his new toy had been around the block once or twice - okay - so many times the rubber was worn off the tires, was of little consequence. The ancient tractor was home to stay.

    Little did I know that this moment would change not only our lives, but the lives of many others in a very big way. [to be continued]

    Friday, October 21, 2005

    There's No Vacation in Cyberspace

    Sitting here in a remote cabin high in the hills above Utah's Zion National Park, I'm on my first vacation in two years. Vacations to me are highly over rated... I know they are suppose to be fun, but I miss my daily routine. I miss my son and the cats, I miss the familiar creaking of the floors in my tiny house as I walk to the kitchen to make my morning coffee. I guess I'm suppose to be relaxing up here in the thin air of the 6500 foot elevation. But what does that mean, relax? Am I suppose to forget about my responsibilities and not just care any more? I guess so, say the vacation experts. But I don't know how to do that and I'm convinced that if I were to get to that state the world would collapse and it would be my fault. I'm the kind of person who needs people and things to care for and the thought of leaving everything near and dear to me so I can "relax" just seems absurd. Vacationing is stressful!

    Much to everyone' s dismay, I brought my laptop. Being a computer geek out of necessity, I have an iBook G4 Macintosh laptop computer that is maxed out with every possible option and shines like a freshly painted Farmall. (A Farmall "demonstrator model", of course, because it's white). It may shock people to know that I'm sitting here now with the laptop and it is 4:30 in the morning. And I'm on vacation. That's not a typo, it's 4:30 a.m.

    I don't know how many people get up that early when they're on vacation (unless they're going fishing), but I get up at 4:30 a.m. every morning no matter where I am as I have for at least a dozen years. After padding to the kitchen to start my coffee, I settle in with my laptop and start checking the Yesterday's Tractors Website and it's sisters (KountryLife.com, YesterdaysTrucks.com, TodaysTractors.com, TractorLinks.com and Tractorshed.com). It takes about 2 hours and I use a monitoring program that I wrote last year. In one of my next blog entries I'll journal what gets monitored and what doesn't and why it takes so long. There are several more monitoring sessions throughout the day and on into the evening with a constant peek at my email to look for your "reports to moderator". These let me know that a brawl has broken out in the forums or someone has posted a distasteful photo in the tractor galleries so don't be afraid to use them. They are completely anonymous and I keep the information between you and me.

    Well I've got to get to work... oops, I mean I've got to get on with my vacation. I hope I survive!

    In closing, I want to say that I'm overwhelmed by your letters of support and encouragement and wish to send out a big thank you. You're a big part of helping me stay the course.

    Wednesday, October 19, 2005

    Woman in a Man's World?

    I'm off to Utah this morning but I wanted to share an email I received from a gentleman who is a long time visitor to the Yesterday's Tractors website. Apparently he'd like me to stay away from the discussion forums. He says:


      "I've said before and I say again, a woman should not be moderating a website primarily intended for men. They just don't get it."


    Apparently he's upset that I don't let men swear, post nude pictures of women and have pornographic conversations in the antique tractor forums. An earlier comment I recevied, after I deleted something akin to the aforementioned subjects, was that "men will be men and this is what men do" and I should go away because I "don't belong".

    I just wanted to say publicly, sorry, that isn't going to happen. You're stuck with me! As a reminder, my long standing policy is that ladies and gentlemen both are welcome in the discussion forums and should wipe their feet and remove their hats prior to entering. Thank you and have a wonderful day!

    Tuesday, October 18, 2005

    Guarding the Antique Tractor Site

    Every day for several months now the YT website has been under "attack" by an overseas company attempting to post hundreds of advertisments for "Nokia" phones and other mobile phones. They post ads in the KountryLife.com site, the Truck site, TodaysTractors.com, the YT site, and everywhere else possible. They've even put ads in the Tractor Town guestbook!! I've written filters to keep them out but they keep finding ways to exploit the software we have. So each morning I go through all of the ads and delete the ones that have managed to get through. I'm thinking that maybe someone from the YT online community bought one of these mobile phones and now this company in China thinks we all want one!

    There are two additional exploitation attempts that are currently attacking our site, and it's been going on for at least two months. One is a "Texas Hold-em Poker" exploit where a gambling company has attempted to post thousands, yes thousands, of messages per day to the forums. They have a program or software that goes through our entire archives and attempts to reply to each post with a "go to this online poker site and gamble" garbage. The other exploit is doing basically the same thing but the theme is "Home Loans". Maybe it's the same company? Hmmmm, I get it, they want us to take out a home loan, then spend it gambling online!

    It may be obvious that I'm fairly angry about these exploitations. They're all over the internet so I don't take it personally but I have to stand ever vigilant at the doors of this great community and fight them off. Once and awhile something gets through to the forums or ad areas but as soon as I'm alerted I chase them out with my broom. Or the skillet, whichever is handy.

    Monday, October 17, 2005

    Antique Tractor Virtual Communities

    Folks interested in antique tractors are some of the nicest people I know. Honest, trustworty and always willing to lend a hand. In the past 12 years of selling parts and tractor related merchandise I've only received 5 bounced checks and had one stolen credit card. In twelve years! And out of those 5 bounced checks, all were recovered except for one. Unfortunately it was a $600.00 rebuild kit, but as I look back I like to think it was my contribution to his Save the Tractor fund.

    On-line communities are somewhat of a reflection of our off-line society. I say somewhat, because it seems people will say things to each other on the internet that they would never say face to face. Maybe it's the lack of eye contact, or we feel that our computer monitor is akin to a Darth Vader mask and some other persona temporarily takes us over.

    But for the most part, on our own on-line Antique Tractor community at the YT Discussion Forums people are pretty darn helpful and kind to each other. For example, out of 1200 new messages posted each day, there might be 20 that have resorted to virtual fist fighting or name calling. If you think about it, that's less than 2% of the discussions. Looked at it that way it conjures up thoughts of the town of Mayberry.

    Unfortunately that 2% or so of unkindly discussion ends up primariliy in one of the forums, Tractor Talk. The complaints I hear from others is endless. Most of the discussions in question start out as a political comment, or sometimes just the price of gas. People on each side of the political fence join in and you can almost sit there and count down the seconds to a complete conversational meltdown. I've asked that these conversations not be started at YT, for that very reason - the forum is like a little neighborhood cafe and right in the midst of it are people standing up and screaming. It makes everyone in the middle of their virtual sandwich want to walk out and not come back for a few days. So I delete those discussions, after all, it was made clear that these were unwanted and we have zero tolerance for disharmonious communications. Arguing is fine, but don't start bashing each other.

    After deleting these types of discussions I see an onslaught of hate mail towards the site moderator (*me*), everything from threatening to sue me for violating their Freedom of Speech, to calling me a dictator and everything in between. And I get an equal onslaught of email thanking me over and over again for keeping the boards harmonious. I live my life in between a rock and a hard spot, if you will. I'm the kind of person who likes to make sure everyone is happy and having a good experience on the site. But it seems impossible to do that with so many people and it's disheartening. Of course I keep on trying.

    To that end, last evening I stayed up late into the wee hours and created a new "OH Tee" forum. That's OT, or "Off Topic" for those lost in internet lingo. It's a place for Politics, Tractor Wars and other Controversial Conversations. I'm hoping that by making a place for people to talk and argue a bit about current events and such, that it will keep them out of the regular tractor forums where friendly folks, women, kids, grandma's and grandpa's just want to talk tractors and not politics. I hope it works out and keeps that 2% happy without disturbing the other 98% of the community.

    The forum is unmoderated, and there is a disclaimer enouraging people to keep kids away and a good warning of what it's all about. I won't allow pornographic related conversation or anything close, and there is a "Report to Moderator" link on each post for people to alert me. If you're brave enough to take a peek at the new forum, here is the link. You've been forwarned! If you want to talk tractors just go to the regular forums.

    Sunday, October 16, 2005

    Welcome to the Antique Tractor Blog

    Welcome to the new antique tractor blog. I've resisted this for a long time as I'm very content with the same old software that has served us well for 12 years. But the computer world and technology is advancing around us and if we are to keep interest in the old tractors alive, especially for the younger generation, then I think we need to reach out into the deep dark void of new technology.

    So here we are. What is a "blog", many of you are thinking. The way it works is the blogger (me) posts a message about a particular topic and then the bloggees (you) post comments. Very similar to a discussion forum but, well, a different format and it is more topic oriented. This is my first blog so I'm afraid I don't have a lot of valuable insight to pass on regarding what it is and how to use it.

    Feel free to post a topic suggestion in your comments. I'll be reviewing them each day. Okay, here is my first topic. Just some conversation and insight into my world.

    It's mid-morning but darkened outside by the heavy cloud cover. It's raining, sprinking, raining, sprinkling. My broken down 1959 Allis Chalmers D14 sits alone and waiting in the darkness of the shop. It's been 5 years now since it served any useful purpose. I think it's kind of like that saying, "the housekeepers house is always messy", because they are so busy cleaning everyone elses house that when they get home they are too tired to clean their own. Maybe that is what happpend to Miss Allis D. One day she broke down and all good intentions of getting her going again fell by the wayside as time was spent helping thousands of other people get their tractors running and working on the website.

    I always feel guilty when people ask what kind of tractor I drive. In my dreans I drive a perfectly restored Minneapolis Moline 335. She sparkles, she shines, and she's all mine. But in reality I have a broken down tractor that has so much dust on it I can't even sit on her. The D-14 overheated while working at the top of the property. It ended up opening a passage between the water jacket and the oil sump and pumped all the antifreeze into the crankcase. It was very disheartening. At least she's under cover and not degrading further while waiting for someone to come fix her.

    I have a pretty good excuse now, one that may allow me to rise above the 24 hour a day maintenance requirements of such a large website and community. I've got 40 acres of raw land with a 5 acre clearing that is trying to become jungle. I'd like to turn it into a farmette with pasture. Quite a tall order, but the Miss Allis D could be readied for the job. I've got all the snap coupler implements, plus a three point and she's got enough power to pull the bush hog.

    I love bush hogs. They are so destructive in a useful sort of way. I could spend hours in a 10 x 10 foot area trying to hand pull and chop vines, weeds and small saplings. But it takes the bush hog about 20 seconds!

    Anyway, I need to get the '59 Allis D-14 running again. Advice and enouragement (most enouragement!) is most welcome!