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[clarkma5]

This is the thread for discussion about the inner workings of the new (as of March 2009) cool wall. Initially discussions will probably focus on how best to tweak the voting system and rules to suit the forum balance that we seek as a forum. After that, this will be the place to discuss any other issues that may pertain to the cool wall.

[clarkma5]

So I actually looked at the latest top gear cool wall (5th episode of the 12th season). As far as I can count, and admittedly this is all plus or minus a car are two, there are 94 cars on the wall. 19 are in seriously uncool, 37 are in uncool, 28 and a half are in cool, and 9 and a half are in sub-zero (we call it frozen). So that's almost exactly 20%, 40%, 30%, and 10% in terms of increasing coolness. Figured that would be a good baseline for figuring out how our voting system works.

[clarkma5]

Looking at how the voting's turning out, I'm thinking that 80% of all votes for frozen or seriously uncool is a bit too stringent of a requirement. It might be worthwhile to lower that to 70% or something. Thoughts?

[Marien]

Maybe wait until there are a good 10-15 topics in the main cool wall forum with 20 votes and then look at how many would qualify for the outer most categories. If there are none, lower it to 70%

[Phix]

Yeah, I agree. Let's get a bigger sample range first.

[Synesthesia]

I feel like it should take more than just having more cool votes than uncool votes to make a car cool. What if there is a really large number of neutral votes? It should take a majority of people to think a car is cool to make it cool. See because the way it is now the difference between a car being cool or uncool is just 2 votes. If that many people think a car is uncool or are neutral about it, it's not cool.

[clarkma5]

We can evaluate something like that, it is a good point. Let's see what happens when we start getting 20 votes on threads and see what the percentages look like...if there are too many cool cars, we can change the rules that way.

EDIT: Just thought of another way to do it...if there are more neutral votes than either cool or uncool votes, then it goes to uncool. (Like, 10 neutral and 7 cool and 6 uncool would be uncool, but 10 cool, 9 neutral, and 8 uncool would be cool since there are more cool than neutral votes).

[clarkma5]

Ferrari California is the first thread to get 20 votes and get moved. Under current rules, it is placed in uncool: http://forums.dieselstation.com/index.php?showtopic=27308

[fiber optic]

For a car to be put into the cool category I think the number of cool votes must be greater than the sum of neutral+uncool.

[clarkma5]

That's another possible criteria, but the problem with that is that that makes a neutral vote too much like an uncool vote.

[fiber optic]

That's another possible criteria, but the problem with that is that that makes a neutral vote too much like an uncool vote.

If it's not cool and there's no neutral category then where does it go?

UN
COOL

[Phix]

If it's not cool and there's no neutral category then where does it go?

UN
COOL

booyakasha

[moe]

I think the current system is fine.

[clarkma5]

The Volkswagen CC has also gone into Uncool.

[Razor]

The system is perfect but the percentages may need tweaking. I still say it should be *slightly* easier to end up in Seriously Uncool than Frozen.

[clarkma5]

I removed nismo from forum leader (he's a global mod so that doesn't change his ability to do stuff in here) and made phix a forum leader, since he's shown leadership in the new cool wall from day 1.

[Uwe]

From the Mazda 787B thread, continuing the debate here as Phix suggested:

I think we should not vote on race cars because they are inherently cool. I mean even the slowest Minardi F1 from the 90s is an absolute bad ass machine from hell compared to any high priced penis enlargements living in the car dealer's glass bunkers.

I disagree. The Minardi sucked. It was a bad race car. In my eyes, that's not very cool. What's so cool about something that sucks at what it does? I don't see anything cool in that.

It was slow compared to its competitors because Minardi had only one tenth of the budget of the big teams. Otherwise it is still damn fast.

When I see old race cars during trackdays, preferrably with a spirited driver at the wheel, then I don't care if it was first, fifth or 11th in its time. I simply enjoy it for what it is, something designed to go quick and filling my ears with heartbreaking screaming. And if someone offered me a drive in a Minardi then 0.1s later you would hear a swooshing noise and see a blur which would be me entering the cockpit.

I really can't think of many race cars that I would call uncool (a urine-yellow AMC Gremlin WRC perhaps).

[Phix]

If someone offered me to drive anything I'd take it simply because it's there to drive. If it's a race car, of course I wouldn't deny it. Yes, I know Minardi built their cars and operated out of a closet in the basement of an old Italian grandmother in Faenza and yes, Alonso and Webber certainly did some remarkable things with the car. But, that's it... when I see those remarkable results from a thoroughly underbudget/underdeveloped race car it's obviously not the car doing those cool/poetic/amazing things; it was the driver.

Now, imagine if that driver had a competitive car when everything clicked for him on that day? Where would he have finished then? Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Minardi and I don't hate race teams that go racing on a shoestring budget. I loved Super Aguri.

But, I certainly wouldn't look at any of their old ass cars and think 'Damn, that's so cool. It's a race car from 2002 trying to race against race cars in 2007.'. I don't find that particularly endearing. What drew me to the team was the spirit within the team and that Sato was still in F1 and Anthony Davidson finally got his big break into a race seat.

Yes, inherently an F1 car is faster than most other things out there. That's cause of the genre, the category it races in. But that's also comparing apples to oranges. You can't compare a car built in a top tier category with anything else out there. You can't really compare a majority of single seater formulas to other single seater formulas out there. They all have their various differences in machinery.

To sum up my feelings I'll just say this... I don't think a race car-- this is critical! not the driver or the race team but the actual car itself --has to be some sort of dominating force ala McLaren '88, Williams '92, Ferrari '02/'04 to be cool. But, I do want to see a COMPETITIVE race car. Something that is consistently in the point, something that can maybe snag a podium or even a win. Something which can actually RACE other cars and not just be LAPPED by them.

That is what I think a cool race car should be and is. A competitive machine in its category.

[Uwe]

Fair enough.

[Razor]

Judging by the Lancia's initial insane score of 100% frozen, do we need a Fridge on the top end?