When you swap your bike for a new type and even for a new brand, you all of a sudden invalidate a lot of miscellaneous information you had before.
Naturally, nowadays, to fill that void you turn to the web and eventually run across a dedicated forum für owners/riders of the same type as your new bike.
In my case, I ran across – and joined – ninetowners.com, an english-speaking community having a membership which spans the globe, being heavily anglo-saxon centered (USA, UK, Canada) notwithstanding. This is why I’m writing this piece in english, so the prospective readership can both find and understand what I’m going to tell about my experience.
After properly introducing myself in the introductory thread I was friendly greeted by some, and soon found myself entangled in the usual biker forum infighting. Nevertheless, it didn’t even take three mere weeks until I was kicked out, «banned» as they call it.
What had happened?
In retrospect i’d say, there was a mismatch between my expectations and what the forum has on offer: I had introduced myself as a «retired mechanical engineer, looking forward to in-depth technical discussions». As it turned out, I didn’t meet anyone who I could have had those «in-depth technical discussions» with.
Take for instance this guy, who (probably with a straight face) reported, that his engine also «cut out for no reason«. How can you have an «in-depth technical discussion» with someone, who isn’t even aware of the concept of Cause and Effect, which had been established millenia ago by great minds like Parmenides, Archimedes, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and more, which goes (in Latin language): «Nihil fit sine causa«, which means: nothing happens without cause. A core principle in engineering, btw.. Every «effect» has its «cause». Always and without exception.
Another guy exhibited a sore deficiency in his reading-comprehension skills: He kept trying to drag the topic of the thread «intermittent engine cut-off» towards the general idea of blipping as such, how beneficial it was and how he’d done at least a million successfully blipped down-shifts. What he was actually contributing was, that something like what had happened to the problem reporter could not possibly have happened, because it had never happened to him. While I can’t comment on the veracity of his claim, he didn’t contribute even the tiniest amount to the solution of the thread opener’s problem. Namely, that the TO’s engine had intermittently(!) cut off cleanly during some blips. Even this guy’s elaboration on how a too rich mixtrure would never cause an engine to stall was completely off-topic. Nobody had ever claimed otherwise. My take on the probable cause was that of a temporary too lean mixture. Again the same thorough lack of reading comprehension on the side of the commenter.
As the discussion got more heated, an Administrator reminded me(?), that everyone is entitled to their opinion. Only some time later I realized, how close he was to the mark: whenever I’m trying to solve a technical problem, even on someone else’s behalf, along with my peers, I’m not interested in a maximum «diverse» collection of «opinions», but rather in a contest(sic!) of rivalling hypotheses, out of which the most convincing should prevail.
Opinion vs. Hypothesis
What’s the difference, you may ask. Well, a well drawn-out hypothesis adheres to the following (minimum) set of principles (besides being verifyable or falsifyable):
- it picks up on the details of the problem reporter’s account
- it doesn’t defy the laws of physics
- it doesn’t defy the laws of logic
- it doesn’t need any additional assumptions which the problem reporter didn’t mention (Occam’s razor)
- If it can provide a real-life example on how this hypothesis has helped solve a real-life problem of the same kind before, that would be the icing on the cake.
An opinion, on the other hand, is nothing more than a «gut feeling», based on personal experience and preference. And, doesn’t everyone have a gut? And doesn’t everyone have some experience, however limited that may be?
Me, as an old-fashioned engineer, I am not into that DEI stuff. I rather favor the merit-based approach, where the best shall prevail. I’m sure, reagarding his problem, the original problem reporter would agree on that.
Against that background, the sizeable number of contributors from the «electrical» camp, which considered an electrical fault of some sorts (around the steering head, the side stand or the kill switch) to be the most likely cause for the intermittent engine cut-off the TO had reported about, have in my view inferior agency. Because they rely on additional asumptions, of which the TO didn’t report anything about:
neither did the TO report about wildly (or gently) swinging the handlebar back and forth, nor did he report about rocking the bike up and down (getting the sidestand rocked along the way), nor did he report on fumbling about the kill switch while his engine stalled.
None of the contributors, and I repeat: NONE even tried to refute any part of my hypothesis, which I had given very early on in that thread, and which -btw- meets all the criteria I set up above. See this.
Exercising critical thinking skills vs. trust in «experts»
On another occasion, someone gave a very fine description of the steps required when swapping out the rear shock absorber for an aftermarket one. I applauded him on his post, then added the related(!) information that with the bike supported and the old shock gone, this would be an excellent opportunity to measure the «unsprung mass» of the nineT’s rear end.
The thread owner immediately jumped in, dismissing the infomation I had given as irrelevant and how he’d been thouroughly and to his complete satisfaction been served by a hired contractor. When I objected and pointed to the benefit of knowing yourself the technical background, he started preaching the gospel of how trusting the experts was the only way towards success and happiness. (Now where have I heard THAT before, in the not so far ago past? -never mind …)
Anyhow, this discussion devolved into a fierce altercation, with the fault lines being: «relinquish as much of your critical thinking skills as possible to the experts» (his position), vs. «exercise your brain and retain as much of your own critical thinking skills as possible» (my position).
As you can imagine, this is not a topic where you easily compromise. In the end, he accused me of being «confrontational» – LOL.
The final straw
Finally I introduced a presumably innocent little project of mine which I wanted to pursue: the addition of an oil thermometer gauge. Because the stock 2026 R12 nineT comes with only a tri-state «engine temperature» indicator, being «COLD-OK-HOT/NOK». Which actually boils down to a binary indicator «OK-NOK» only, after covering the initial two kilometers of the engine being «COLD». That joke of an engine temperature display keeps telling you everything is fine – until it isn’t anymore 😳. You never know the safety margin which separates you from an overheated engine.
Soon someone chimed in and succinctly stated: «waste of time». This guy obviously wasn’t out to advance my project, so he caught an adequate reply from me.
Now one of the moderators(!) joined the discussion as a participant(!), and seconded the nay-sayer: how dedicated analog oil thermometers were «a thing of the past», to which I replied that this would be so much more reason to add one to a dedicated retro (!) bike like the R12 nineT. Besides, our 2025 (!) Audi Q3 does have a dedicated 8-step bar graph display for the engine (water) temperature, covering the range from 50°C up to 130°C in increments of 10°C.
He went on to say, that «the temperature is what it is» and there was «not much one could do about it». While his first remark is so trivial, that it amounts to a waste of keystrokes to even mention it, the second part misses the point of an oil thermometer entirely: obviously a thermometer can’t change the temperature. But an attentive rider having an eye on an existing(!) oil thermometer can adjust his behaviour accordingly, when he notices a rising(!) temperature – before things get out of hand. He could, for instance take it easier on the throttle, turn off the engine while waiting at a traffic light or, when stuck in a highway traffic jam, decide to accept a detour, leave the highway and get some air circulation along secondary roads.
Even though I had given examples of how useful an oil temperature gauge could be, he repeated his previous statement that «the temperature is what it is» and there was «not much one could do about it».
At that point I openly questioned his qualifications. To which he instantly reverted from his role as a discussion participant back to his Administrator privileges, threatening me with expulsion if I wouldn’t «watch my tone».
Having lost the argumentative part of a discussion only to take revenge by wielding his administrative powers on me I considered extremely poor style. I called this a «complete loss of any moral authority», which obviously sealed my fate at ninetowners.com .
Going forward
Clearly I’m not processing these events as a victory. I could have contributed a lot to ninetowners.com . Even though I had managed to flash some of my bike-related work on the forum (like here, here or here), it never got to the point where one would have become curious and asked for more.
Alluding to the above horse analogy, there is a variant according to which a «good teacher» brings his students to water. Whereas an «excellent teacher» makes them thirsty first 😉
By that measure I failed at being an «excellent teacher». That hurts.
Going forward, I will post R12 nineT related articles on my blog in english, with a tag «ninetowners», so as not to deprive the remaining forum members from finding what I have to contribute.
On a related note: by banning unruly members, the operators of forums like ninetowners fail to realize, that they are actually punishing their remaining members. Because I can still extract information from ninetowners.com, should I stumble on a respective link in my future search results. Even though they tried to exclude me from that part, too. Probably with some kind of browser fingerprinting. Nothing which a browser update and browser restart couldn’t get rid of 🤣
This reinforces my conviction, that the human brain is one of the most-underutilized resources at the disposal of humanity.
Stay tuned!