Maybe the worst car forum ever

I have a friend having problems with her 1998 Saturn SC2, so I joined SaturnForum.com

What a mistake that was.

Her car was having difficulty cranking and hoping some friendly members would offer some ideas. It was not easy getting information from her, but wanted to spare her paying a mechanic if possible. Finally got from her it may have some thing to do with the alarm system.


About that forum. The moderators immediately got rude even after an introduction to assure them of good intentions. Even though it was obvious I was not spammer or troller, they piled on me for apparently not being under the hood on Skype. :eyebrow: One of the moderators had stuff in the sig inactive accounts would be deleted immediately.....only 25,000 posts since 2004. Was banned a day after posting the thread, contacted the admin and was reinstated, but after a couple of very polite posts to trollish moderators, was banned again and thread removed.

Again, I was helping a friend short on cash in hopes of sparing her a trip to the mechanic, yet they acted like it was MY CAR and I was under the hood ready to post replies right away. They wanted more than scanning the entire forum if the question was ever posted before and made the atmosphere not like an outing of friends but like meeting a board of directors....i.e. do your homework to the point you probably already know the answer.

Given their inactivity, I must have broken their boredom coming in thinking they were friendly enthuasists. And I thought I was a strict moderator. Not only do they ban spammers, trollers (except for their moderators), but anyone that's not a groupie. I'd bet over here if PC wanted to delete anything that was ever said before, that would be at least 80% of the past posts, and 99% of new content.

 

When the car does not start, all electric systems work, but the starter does not work, or attempt to crank the engine.

The battery to her 1998 SC2 Saturn was replaced recently, so it's not that suspect.

Went thru her fuses recently - all good.

The best guess right now is her alarm system is failing - the frequency of the keyless devices are off. There may be a feature on the alarm system that is disabling the car when it thinks someone is breaking in.

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The other part of the problem is it's not my car and she is hesitant to join a forum, even with me promoting them as a great way to get information for health, pets, computers, and cars. Aside from being unfamiliar with navigating in forums, she is afraid all forums are troll-ridden, as SaturnForum.com apparently is. Half joking - half-serious, that problem could be resolved by changing the URL to SoYouWantedSaturnCarAdviceLOL.com or SaturnForum.troll.

I can somewhat understand, being a moderator that n00bs get watched the first few posts - spammers and trollers are a problem by the 10th post - usually a lot sooner. So I started with an intro before going into my friend's Saturn problem.

I've been on forums since 2000 - car forums since 2003. I don't make my dig at SF lightly.