Well, first of all, thank you all for the warm welcome...
@ tubut
The 2600 SZ register has been on the site for a good number of years now and you are obviously well aware of that. What I don't understand is why you (or the gentlemen that you mention) have never contacted me through the website about that but have chosen a public platform such as this forum to ventilate your discomfort with it. Also here the PM system was at your disposal of course...
There is however the possibility that you did try to contact me in recent years but that your message(s) didn't come through the spam filters. The website generate an enormous amount of traffic and more or less as a consequence of that it also generates huge amounts of spam mail. Sometimes as many as 2.500 messages per 24 hours. As a result of that I have implemented very strict filters with the consequence that these sometimes also filter out messages which should have reached me. If that is the case, I duly apologize for not responding and invite your to resend any messages to which you have received no reply.
As I mentioned before, if persons are entitled to credits regarding information, I am the last to deny them that... I recently move forward a number of "chapters" that the late Chris Koopmann has written and also there, he receives the credits for it.
@ Bruce Colby
The same regarding messages applies to you as well of course. I would like to invite you to resend the messages to which you have received no reply and I'll swiftly amend the car's file. The average turn around time is around 24 hours at the moment. I'll try to do an update this afternoon and already list you as the current owner. Would appreciate any and all additional information that you have on the car, including images.
And commercial? Not more or less that this BB... I pay the hosting & traffic out of my own pocket and the Google ads (like here) and shop pay back part of the cost involved (not even taking the effort of maintaining it into consideration).
I would like to ask everybody who sends email messages through the website to use the "Request Read Receipt" option in your email program (when available) in order to verify if I have actually received the message.
If I receive the message but don't respond... feel free to flame me as much as you like...
@ Olaf
There are indeed different views on what a "register" is and should do. It is my firm belief that a register should indeed "register cars". Not so much owners but actual cars and not only to register them but document them as well. Owners come and go and so become part of the car's history.
I also firmly believe that a register should be public. This has of course to be done with utmost care regarding privacy of owners and other people involved. There are many ways to safeguard that privacy, either by simply not publishing names or contact information or, for example, blinding off license plates when it regards images. I feel that the decision to publish that data is up to owners and I gladly am of assistance when an owner does not have the digital capabilities to blind off a license plate to do that for him or her.
The reason why I believe the data should be as public as possible it that when persons, mainly owners, feed information to a register, this is not done without reason. It is done to contribute. Contribute to the car's history file, to the broader understanding of the model / make etc.
If that information is fed to a central point (i.e. a / the register) but is further kept secret, it does not contribute to anything else but the knowledge of the person(s) running the register. In that way you get a funnel effect of knowledge and that can never be the purpose of any register. I know that the various clubs do run registers and organize meetings for the models involved but I dare to question the true purpose of registering individual cars in that case. To me that is more like registering owners for "club purposes" and there is nothing wrong about that, don't let that be misunderstood.
The "funnel effect" that I mention above, IMHO, also lead to something that is, again in my eyes, very undesirable... and that is that the "information will be provided on a need-to-know basis".
The questions then raised are "who determines who needs to know?" and "when does one qualify to know?"
The first being answered rather easily... the person(s) "sitting" on the information determine who needs to know... The latter is more vague... because... indeed... when does one need to know? When one actually owns that particular car? Does one have to prove that to the information owner though (copies of) paperwork? Or does merely a claim of ownership suffice? Is a prospective buyer entitled to the information? If so, when is one considered to be a "prospective buyer"? Is mere interest in that particular car sufficient? These are all questions that make me raise an eyebrow and strengthen my belief that the information should be public, again with respect for the desired degree of privacy.
Surely nobody voluntarily provides information about his / her car to consequently see that information going lost into the inaccessible archives of one (group of) persons and future owners of that car being at the mercy of that group. After all, a simple "I don't like your face" could be enough to deem someone unfit to "need to know"....
Now, nobody should take this personal but these are all arguments that have passed through my mind the last 10 years on what to do with the information collected and from this contemplating I have distilled the viewpoint that for me a register of cars should be public with all due respect for the privacy of people that have contributed information.
Another side to this is that no one can with hindsight "create information" about the cars.
One can collect information / data... but not create... a factory can create data in their files on when a car was made etc. A racing event can create data on which cars / drivers were entered and the results but we, mere mortals, cannot "create".
All that "outsiders" can do is collect that "created data" and do something with it that is useful, for example recreate a chain of events in a car's life.
This is also the reason why I don't see the information that I have collected on the JZ's over the years, be it on individual cars or the "birth process", as being "my property" which in turn leads me to freely share my findings, information, facts or even rumors, as can be read in Olaf's topic about the JZ.
I truly believe in freely sharing information on subjects like these cars, after all, since I
can not be the creator of this information, I can only gather information by the grace of other people providing information and than piece the information together to get a better view of the events that have happened in the past and where I was not present and I owe it to the people who have so generously contributed information that it does not go lost.
The fact that we are all present on this public medium, the BB, shows me that you all share that view as otherwise you wouldn't have joined...
And now I'm off to update the site and list Bruce as the owner of 1300 JZ # 463 as I wrote that I would do this afternoon...
Best regards,
Zaagmans
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