Mini-Rant: What has happened to our site?

[Michelle]

I believe we've lost the welcoming feeling and spirit that used to be "X5world" and made it such a great place. I want to get back to when new members could post a question and would be greeted with a few links or nicely directed to the search option. Now they are basically belittled and blasted with screen shots pointing to the search button.

I'm not saying I don't want to pull my hair out when someone asks how to fix their rattle or when they ask if anyone else has a problem with their windows "getting stuck." But there's a way to nicely guide someone to the search function along with some links to former helpful threads related to their issue. Searching for terms like "oil" will find hundreds of related threads. No one wants to sit and comb through all of them to avoid being ridiculed.

There will always be newbies, there will always be reposts, there will always be people who are too lazy to use the search function. I found X5world by accident. I had never been a member of a forum or had any idea how they worked. Who cares if the question has been asked a bajillion times? This is a message board - a place where you can post your question and hope for an answer. It isn't the encyclopedia. If you are sick of giving the same answer, then I suggest moving on before blasting a new member. Having 5,000 posts doesn't make you God or someone who knows everything about X5s. It also doesn't give you the right to be a bully.

The board is growing by leaps and bounds and is a lot more active…the E53 forum especially. The repetitive questions will pop up more often and our frustrations will increase, but I hope we can continue to make every one of them feel just as welcome as we feel! We need to get back to what used to make X5world the place to be and set us apart from BimmerFest and RoadFly.

End of my rant.

Carry on.