Why I started Autocade

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:12:08 +1200

I am going to be doing some banners to promote Autocade soon. It’s still very much in beta with only a few dozen cars on it, but I have been thinking about the reasons I started it.

There are a few, but not many, car sites out there with geographically unbiased information. I believe that German cars, for example, should be written with the point of view that the German market is the domestic one and others are export ones. Wikipedia is not one of them. It tends to take the American view on a lot of topics, but 80 per cent of the internet audience is not Stateside. Some of the better car wikis out there also have this bias, though they do not claim to be international—Wikipedia does.
The Wikipedia layout is boring.
I want basic information, not long stories, and I should be able to trace the global lineages of car models relatively simply. I’m fine with the long stuff appearing at specialist sites, but there should be one place where I can get the basics, including info on model changes and even a little opinion on the vehicle.
I am more passionate about cars than many other things in life.

   When I began researching some of the Autocade entries, I was surprised to note how much incorrect information exists on Wikipedia about various models—and that I was absolutely right to have doubts about it. (I realized that I could go and edit Wikipedia myself, but why bother, if the actual editorial approach differs?) I also noticed how many references I have that take the brief format—Michael Sedgwick’s work, the first issues of Your Classic with buyers’ guides, and The Complete Car Guide five-week supplement in Autocar & Motor in 1988. This worked with readers like me then, and I can’t see why it wouldn’t work now in 2008.
   The way Wikipedia and some other sites is organized isn’t to my liking. For example, one of the Autocade entries is on the Holden Belmont. There is no such entry at Wikipedia: searching for the car name takes you to a forwarded page on the Holden Kingswood.
   But if I wanted information on the Holden Kingswood, I would type in Holden Kingswood. Specifically, I wanted information on the Belmont, to cross-check the information I had. There is a lineage there, and the way the engine options differed between series is interesting to car nuts.
   I took Sedgwick’s approach and recorded the Belmont separately of the Kingswood, just as he did in the same circumstances.
   And I have been using non-digital sources to confirm a lot of the info.
   Most of the work is still mine, but I’d welcome extra pairs of hands once the marketing gets under way, provided that senior editors take the approach that I have above.
   My work isn’t perfect and I am sure I have made my share of mistakes, but I hope I have made fewer, relative to the number of pages on Autocade, than many generous writers of Wikipedia have. Then again, there is less to go wrong at Autocade. It looks like too many cooks spoiling the broth at Wikipedia (i.e. you can’t bank on the Wales)—something we need to be careful with as Autocade goes out of beta later this year.

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Jack Yan on Vox

Why I started Autocade