I was talking to a colleague who bought a Chevy Spark recently. He was telling me how he
stumbled across team-bhp during his car search and that the forum is a mine of information
on anything about cars and that he is addicted to the forum.
I could easily relate to it because that was exactly how I stumbled upon team-bhp in 2005
when I was searching for information on the Baleno. Me & wifey had finalised the WagonR
and that was then I did (just like that) a test-drive of the Baleno. After a 4km drive on the
TIDEL road, I was floored by the amazing pickup and driveability of the car.
And as if to prove a point, the sales-guy had me drive the car with the driver-side window
fully open and inspite of the typical noon-time Chennai summer heat, the a/c kept us all
cool. But then from 4lakhs, I was now increasing my budget to 6lakhs and I wanted to be
sure that I was not buying a car that would kill me in maintenance or fuel. So, started to
get info on the car - from owners and online.
This led me to team-bhp and it did not take me long to understand that this was a real
under-rated car, which not only was a deal at 6L, but also beat many costlier cars in
torque, quickness, 0-100 timings, fuel-efficiency etc. And guess what, the sales-guy had
a point - in a test conducted by a car-magazine to check the a/c effectiveness of cars in
India, the Baleno was the first. Beating even the Merc S-class, a car costing 75 lakhs or so.
Anyway, I told my colleague that I understand his addiction and that he will learn a lot
from the site and that the main reason for the site's quality is the effective moderation
done by the 10-12 moderators. They ensure that people stick to the topic of the thread,
do not indulge in personal attacks, spam, trolling etc and are the reason why this site is
one of the best in India.
But little did I realise that in just a few days of saying this, I would be at the receiving
end of the moderator's scissors. :-) As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am doing a
thread on the cars in Serbia and in passing I mentioned there about how the Serbian
women seemed to be the most beautiful in the world. Some guys wanted more info
on that and ofcourse photos to back my claim.
So 2 days ago, I posted there an email that I had sent to my colleagues a few days after
landing at Belgrade. Also posted some snaps that me & my colleagues had taken of the
women there. Knowing the rules of the forum, I was sure that there was nothing lewd
or objectionable in the email and the photos were also not smutty. But ofcourse one of
the moderators in his wisdom, felt that the post did not belong there and deleted the
post.
While I did think that there was nothing in the post to require deletion, I left it at that.
But, I felt that the post did not deserve to be in my email SentItems and needed a larger
audience. I wrote that email on 12th October and many-a-time I thought I should post
it here, but somehow did not. After the post got deleted, I decided that I need to put it
up here, where the only censoring that applies is self-censoring - my own.
Which I guess, is what makes blogs such a great medium. I am the contributor and I also
am the moderator. Just because the blog is mine, I can't print trash or defame someone.
But in my wisdom, if I think that a post is good to be in the public domain, it will figure
here. The next post will be about this facet of Serbia - it's women. Stay tuned.
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