User forums are, some would say, simply microcosms of the worldwide powersports ownership community. That they are essentially egalitarian, democratic, even grass-roots in nature. This seems an intelligent, comfortably reasonable, powerfully simple defense. But it is actually a very simplistic one and dead wrong--quite false in fact. Even if a user forum has 5,000 members, fewer than a handful drive its ethic, determine its mores, values and culture, what is acceptable and what isn't. Thus forums are not democratic but totalitarian in nature. Dissent is not sanctioned. Might is right, even if ill-informed and intransigent, as it inevitably is. Forum culture is in fact incestuous, toxic. Motorcycle forums are airtight enclosures teeming with ignorance and rank with the odor of never being exposed to the bright light of day. Forums are rebel outposts in a galaxy far removed ftom ours, and they are destroying the industry through the missinfomation that ensures that new powersports consumers are ignorant. Their members over-value online advice. The Internet has sucked all the brains out of society.

The unspoken assumption is that if a large number of people believe a thing, it must be true. But rallying around a falsehood, celebrating it, codifying it, repeating it incessantly, in no way qualifies it. And falsehooods describe user forums. Opinion disengaged from objective, qualified fact takes on value despite having none, simply by its echo. So dependent do forum visitors become, so enthralled with data for data's sake, that they can't imagine that anything outside the forum could be more authoritative. I once had a forum member email me a bitter criticism of my website's articles, charging that I was plagiarizing my material from forums! Wait! The career powersports professional is copying the Internet poser? Really? Which do you think is more credible? And if that makes you think, then consider the fact that forums are completely silent on literally hundreds of issues vital to powersports consumers. Every day I hear from folks who believe in honing cylinders, sanding brake pads, lapping valves, crimping wires, incorrectly measuring compression, and thousands of other bad practices that if they did not learn them from forums they were confirmed in their error by forums, while I have yet to read on a forum even the correct way to lube a drive chain. And that is just the mere beginning, just a bare hint of the Internet's technical vacuum. There are innumerable powersports maintenance issues forums should be advocating on. Yet they are silent on these dritical issues.

Forum leaders think their discoveries and observations exhaustive, definitive, despite their actually being very limited. It's like someone reading a book on the subject of war and from then on lashing out at every decorated military veteran whose real experience questions their superficially informed view. Those who absorb Internet information on a subject invariably make adversaries of persons who dare pose obviously more qualified views. And the more authoritative the questioner, the more vitrolic and confrontational the attack. In point of fact, it is instructive to observe that real authorities are almost universally absent from these forums. So conspicuous is their absence that it constitutes a resounding alarm for any thinking person. As does the universal response of forums when someone posts anything not officially sanctioned by the forum leadership. Ad hominem attack. Meaning, attacking the person behind the post instead of the idea in the post. None of the things folks have said about me is as insightful as this. It's "the dog who yelped" syndrome, you know, when you throw a rock into the pack?

Of course, it's more than just forums that are at fault. It's really all of powersports media. Whether forum posts, aftermarket company advertisements, or YouTube how-to videos, bike media typically encourages bad practices and disseminates fallacious ideas. A video on drive chain replacement for example that promotes overly-tight adjustment, and that adjustment prior to lubrication and without checking for tight spots. Very very typical. It's as if the whole world is cursed with attention spans so severely shortened that they can't deal with a rational thought.

Okay. So you have read what I have had to say about forums. You find it some degree of over-the-top, a lot of people do. That's fine. But perhaps you should reread the examples I give of what these forums are saying, what they are disseminating. Really. It's incredible stuff, maybe not to you, but it is to a career mechanic.

Besides, it's one thing to say everyone has their own tastes, their own opinions, their experiences, preferences, etc. But forums aren't restaurants. And they're not music retailers. Forums aren't dealing in the purely subjective. Their commodity is facts. Tangible, provable, repeatable truth. Objective reality. At least they're assumed to be. And that's what makes them harmful.

This past month has been an eye-opener, as I have waded once again into the forum swamp. How utterly and caustically antagonistic forums are! I regularly get emails and phone calls from people who visit my website, and not just from noobs. Check out my testimonials page. The owner of Cycle X called me a few weeks ago. The owner of Factory Pro emailed me a while back. I'm on the industry advisory board of the most successful mechanics training school in the U.S. When I taught mechanics, the students were eager, receptive, both those just starting out as well as the 30-year veterans of the trade. By contrast, forum people are consistently confrontational, they always want to debate, to challenge, to rebut. They act threatened, victimized, triggered. I have no time for that, and I refuse to beat my head against the wall. I have better things to do with my life. Why would anyone disrespect formally qualified advice? It saddens me that forums are like that. Have you ever wondered why the techs who win Yamaha's yearly technician Gran Prix--the best mechanics in the industry--aren't on forums? No Erv Kanamotos or Byron Hines or Mike Velascos or Nigel Patricks or Joe Mintons (now there was an iconoclast!), names even forum people have heard of but who are conspicuously absent? There are dozens of technical stars of this industry and forums don't know who they are. For example, Dave Trombley. Ron Dickey. Mike Norman. Doug McIntyre. TJ Jackson. Bill Getty. Why don't these guys visit forums? Because they know what they'll encounter: Forum "experts" who declare that Honda's head gaskets are "impregnated with graphite to allow movement of the head against the cylinder during heating and cooling", promote using "copper wire..." to bench sync carbs, advocate using Honda's idle drop procedure as a tuning method, claim ethanol-laced gasoline requires carb rejetting, and advocate "using a Dremel with a sanding drum to smooth the transition from the carb to the boot as well as the transition from the boot to the head for better flow". At the end of the day, forum ethos can be described as the presumption of original thought (Thank you Dr. John Wittner, the famous Guzzi racer). Think about this, it's an important concept. That is, the hubric of believing your ideas--simply because they're yours--are original, no one has ever thought them before. Thus many think they know better than anyone else, even Honda. This is what goes on in forums and it's juvenile and foolish and insidious and by nature it denies the existence of professional best practices. Some say, "but forums are just people helping people." Yes, it's true, help is obviously there. But by denying members access to a veritable thought-galaxy far outside their own, forum "experts" aren't serving people. They're keeping them ignorant.

Someone famously said, "Don't mistake ignorance for malice." Alright, I am not saying that forums literally hate Honda, although the things said on the some forums against Honda dealers and their personnel gives me serious pause in that regard. What I am saying is forums consistently disrespect and discount so much of the Honda product that they might as well hate the company. The effect is the same. Forum members inexplicably believe aftermarket specs and claims over those of Honda-trained and experienced people, and even over that of the Honda company itself.

Contrary to how people have viewed the Honda product for more than fifty years, forum "experts" insist that Honda's charging systems are inadequate and will leave you stranded with a dead battery should you change the specification of the ignition coils or the headlight. Reader, stop and think. Can you accept that only a forum has ever discovered this "defect"? That before this, for more than fifty years no one ever complained of weak charging systems? Can forum "authorities" really believe riders in the past had habitually to pull their bikes over as they ran out of battery?

Also in contradiction of more than a half century of owner experience, forums would have you believe that Honda's handlebar switches are flimsy and are prone to overheating. I can believe almost anything about the Chinese teplacement switches, as I have dealt with them. But I have been around the factory parts too long to even understand why anyone would say this.

Likewise, only forums view Honda's ignition points to be vulnerable and short-lived. No one who has any knowledge of the product believes this. In fact, OEM Honda points, with their tungsten faces and excellent current carrying ability, may be the highest quality contact points ever found on a motorcycle of any make.

Possibly the most inane position forums have taken is that of declaring Honda deceptive in publishing unrealistic cylinder compression values. Again, stop and consider. Are the myriad of professional mechanics out there giving assent to this proposition? You know they aren't. A solid 170 psi is what you get on your vintage Honda sohc four when the engine is properly rebuilt, exactly equal to Honda's published spec and proven thousands upon thousands of times by innumerable people all over the industry. Wear of course reduces that. And valve recession, a significant issue with old Hondas, reduces it fairly rapidly. But none of the forum pundits address this, despite it being the number one concern of every vintage Honda owner.