Magic Quadrant Ranking of MB-related Auto Forums

[Jlaa]

I. Ot

Banzworld yesterday moved over to the XenForo platform, as previously announced by BW guru @edfreeman.

I noticed that! I was excited to see the new UX, as I peruse their forums on occasion. However, my excitement was short lived when I realized that the pervasive advertising still degrades the experience substantially, regardless of the pretty new face. As well, the signal-noise ratio there still, unfortunately, lags behind the leaders in the field.

In the magic quadrant of auto-forums, they belong on the left most lower quadrant ... their vision and ability to execute ratings warrant such judgement. That is unfortunate as they seem to have a large following. Let’s see who get my extremely-geek joke. (All in jest!).

 

[gerryvz]

In the magic quadrant of auto-forums, they belong on the left most lower quadrant ... their vision and ability to execute ratings warrant such judgement. That is unfortunate as they seem to have a large following. Let’s see who get my extremely-geek joke. (All in jest!).

This is the Summer 2019 Magic Quadrant for MB-related auto forums.

 

[Jlaa]

This is the Summer 2019 Magic Quadrant for MB-related auto forums.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHA!!!!!! You're killing me, esp with the up and to the left rating for w124performance.com, what with the @gsxr 's 1995-style interface reflecting in its "cultural quality and engagement....." Now here comes the round where all the forums will now petition the analyst to reconsider the ranking ......

 

[gerryvz]

The "Technical Acumen & Credibility" axis entails the following criteria:

1. Breadth of technical coverage of car systems
2. Accuracy and completeness of information provided
3. Information provided in a member-usable format (illustrations, quality prose)
4. Information provided by knowledgeable members
5. General technical abilities of key members
6. Completeness of information provided
7. Amount of credible supplemental information provided (manuals, excerpts, etc.)

The "Cultural Quality & Engagement" axis entails the following criteria:

1. General/overall member activity level of the forum
2. Ease of use/accessibility to provided information
3. Site performance, technical infrastructure and software capabilities of forum
4. Degree of modern-ness of forum ("look and feel")
5. Ability to find information / overall site organization
6. General level of forum discourse
7. Overall abilities and level of forum moderation

 

[alabbasi]

Sad to see where the M-100 forum is right now , there is some very high quality content there but activity has been down in recent years. They do have a facebook group so maybe it went there.

 

[gerryvz]

Sad to see where the M-100 forum is right now , there is some very high quality content there but activity has been down in recent years. They do have a facebook group so maybe it went there.

I would have put M-100.co much higher on the x-axis 10 years ago.

 

[LWB250]

Sad to see where the M-100 forum is right now , there is some very high quality content there but activity has been down in recent years. They do have a facebook group so maybe it went there.

They're dying off.

Being in IT and having worked for organizations that live and die by Gartner's Magic Quadrant, I really, really enjoyed Gerry's use of it for forums. Is MBWorld really that good? I never cared for it and rarely, if ever, look at it. Is it because they follow later models more?

We joke at work about Gartner as in the highest rated vendors are the ones who buy the Gartner people lunch....

Dan

 

[gerryvz]

They're dying off.

Being in IT and having worked for organizations that live and die by Gartner's Magic Quadrant, I really, really enjoyed Gerry's use of it for forums. Is MBWorld really that good? I never cared for it and rarely, if ever, look at it. Is it because they follow later models more?

We joke at work about Gartner as in the highest rated vendors are the ones who buy the Gartner people lunch....

Dan

I work with Gartner on an hourly basis. Literally hourly. It's what I do, influencing MQs and related reports. Lunch? Heh. Lunch isn't even table stakes.

Engagement and culture is a BIG piece of this quadrant. Active forums with large numbers of members do well in this. And forums with bad cultures or poor moderation fall back, despite perhaps having a HUGE member base.

 

[alabbasi]

I spent 1/2 my career with a company that was focused on being on the top right corner of that quadrant. You need to have deep pockets to be there, but If you're selling into companies that are $500m and above, that's where you need to be.