One of my greatest dreams at Car Autance is for the comment section to be as fun and interesting as the best stories on the site. I know it’s possible because I know so many great people in the automotive scene who are smart and fun to talk to. I want you to join us. Come help us form a community and a braintrust of car knowledge!
First of all, thanks for clicking on a post about how to use our commenting system. Second, you’ll be glad you did, because “Spot.IM” (the software that runs our comments) is actually pretty intelligent and conducive to good conversation.
Now I’ll walk you through how to make an account (it’s easy), how to get the most out of the platform, and what kind of conduct and attitude you should expect from your fellow commenters.
How to Make a Car Autance Commenter Account
- Scroll to the bottom of any post
- Hit “Log In” or start typing and hit “Sign up to post”
- Create a username, add an email address (one you can access), and create a password
- Wait for an email from “Car Autance” called “Finish creating your account on Car Autance”
- Open that bad boy up and hit “Verify Email Address”
You’re in!
How to Use All the Features of Your Account
You can just scroll to the bottom of any post and start typing. Put your thoughts into the text field, add a picture if you want with the camera icon, pick a reaction gif from a big library with the GIF icon, or just do one of those three things, and hit “Send.”
If you want to get fancier than just plain text, the Aa icon lets you do bold, italics, bulleted lists, numbered lists, or quotation formatting.
You can jump into the Car Autance community with just those simple tools, but there are a few extra moves at your disposal here that you should know about!
Bell icon (notifications): Just like Twitter and Facebook and IG and all the rest, you’ll get notifications on Car Autance in the form of a little dot on the bell icon near your name. So just click that bell when you want to see your direct interactions. That one’s pretty standard.
Gear icon (settings): This where you’ll find links to your Profile, Settings, and Privacy. You can also log out from here.
Profile: Will show past comments you’ve made, how many likes you’ve gotten (woo, validation!) and give you the option to “Edit profile” which actually just takes you to “Settings.”
Settings: You can change your pic, display name, username, email address, location (optional), add a 200 character bio (optional), set if you want to get emails when people reply to you (optional), and change your password.
Privacy: This lets you hide direct links to your previous comments, if you don’t want people to be able to easily see those. Remember, your old comments will still be up. Your location and bio still show up too even when your “Private profile” is “on,” so if you don’t want those things public, just don’t put them in the Settings adjustment screen. Your email address is not publicly visible either way.
You can also request a download of information we’ve collected on you from this screen. I honestly don’t know what that would include beyond anything you directly type in, but I’m looking forward to trying this out myself!
“Delete your account” is an option in the Privacy menu too, but of course I hope you won’t use it. I mean unless you’re a total A-hole, but we’ll get to that shortly.
I’m stoked you’re still reading because there are just a few more buttons to know that will help you have a fun time here.
How to Become an Advanced Commenter
These are the controls you’ll find under your own comment-input box on any post. And these, my friends, will really step up your commenting game.
Sort by: You can order the comments you see by “Newest,” “Best” (most likes), or “Oldest.” This will come in handy when our group grows.
Reply, Thumbs Up: These should be self-explanatory. React to other comments!
The three dots in the top-right of somebody else’s comment: This little switch is easy to miss but extremely helpful. Hit this button and you can Report if you see an ugly, rude, vibe-killing comment that moderators should see, Mute if the commenter annoys you and you just don’t want to see their screeds, and Share if you think a comment is awesome and want to link to it.
Yep, you can mute people you don’t want to hear from. Don’t make me mute your ass! Because I, and my fellow moderators, wield a universal mute power and will send you to purgatory if you’re an egregious bummer. Which is a perfect segue into our final topic on Car Autance commenting…
Car Autance Commenting Conduct
Alright, I’m going to lay this out as plainly as possible so we can all relax and enjoy ourselves on this platform.
Don’t be a dick. Disagreement with an author or another commenter is fine, just treat people with respect. If you spot an error in a post we appreciate you pointing it out, but you’ll look a lot cooler and smarter if you’re polite about it.
Don’t spam.* This isn’t designed to be free ad space, don’t plug your hashtag personal brand or goods and services in here. *Possible exception: If you have a product or something that’s clearly relevant to the post and your comment actually articulates why.
But don’t worry too much about staying on topic. We’re here to learn, have fun, and make friends. Sometimes one cool car will make you think of something unrelated… which you’re still welcome to share!
Disclosures are cool. We have no way of enforcing this but if, say, you work PR for Honda and you’re commenting on a post about Honda, it’d be a classy move to identify yourself.
Remember you’re in public. Cussing is permissible but maybe save it for when you really need to make a point or if it will be particularly hilarious. We try to keep the site generally PG-13ish, but I won’t promise the place will always be radio-clean.
Remember you’re a person. Racial slurs, homophobia, basically any personally disparaging bullshit, is just going to get deleted and get you banned. If you say something offensive but forgivable, I’ll probably delete the post and give you a warning. If you say something truly ugly, I’ll just ban you. If you can’t tell the difference, you might want to consider talking to a therapist.
Comments are filtered by AI. This site auto-filters for typical spammy garbage like fake prescriptions and sugardaddy scams, as well as many awful hate-speech phrases. As long as our systems are working that stuff won’t even show up.
Filters sometimes do get offended by profanity, so while I don’t have a problem with it, if you chose to cuss your comment might get caught in a filter for a few days or weeks until I notice it and manually approve.
With all that said, I really appreciate anybody who’s willing to invest some time with us and build a fun commenting community, and everybody who stuck it out to read this whole post. I’m serious in hoping Car Autance can someday be the coolest automotive comment section on the internet. I’ll do everything I can to facilitate that, but it’s only going to be possible if step in and help!
So don’t be shy: Ask questions, share your knowledge, have fun, and I look forward to chatting with you in the space below our posts!
