As a driver and forum troll, here's a few tips to all new tuners... and some for the vets.
1: Make your tunes as easily accessible as possible.
PDF's, XLS, Word Docs, off site links, I don't care, all a bad ideas.
If your tunes aren't visible within 2 clicks, to every single person who enters your thread, then it's too much trouble and you've already lost my attention. Word docs require you to DL documents, time is money. XLS stopped coming with windows, I can't remember how long ago, casual users won't buy it. PDF isn't standard either, requires a download, that will turn a lot of people away. Unless you have a very specific car I'm looking for, I won't spend anytime trying to access your tunes. Motor City comes to mind on this one. He has about 50 tunes I assume, and the first one I'll have actually driven is the Z he entered in the Tuner Challenge, because he uses all PDF formats. Eventually he emailed them all to me, but the point remains.
2: Make them readily available.
1 thread that leads to another thread, with each specific car having it's own thread, blah blah blah, is a pain in the ass. Blueshift and Lotus come to mind here. Winner of this Catagory, Wienish. RKM gets the honorable mention, but requires too much scrolling. Their use of pictures make their threads the easiest to navigate and find what you're looking for. I understand that can be a pain for some people, So a simple list will suffice, For Example, Avid or LDP. MFT fall in the middle, with an 'image list' which is half and half. They've come up with a way to avoid needing pictures of the actual cars, but still make their list much more aesthetically pleasing than Avid/LDP.
3: Readability.
Case in point: Deutsche Rennsport. Good god, scrolling through their OP makes my eyes bleed. If it weren't for Cntrl+F I wouldn't even enter that thread. This is too much of #2. They've clearly made their tunes available with minimum amount of clicks, but at the expense of any form of organization or visual appeal. It'll take an extra click, but I'll find RKM's tune 10x's faster. If you insist on having every tune in a single post, use alignment, color, bold, fonts, text size, something to help it's readability. Pictures... Small pictures are nice, Medium pictures are a toss up, large pictures are clutter, and multiple pictures is spam. Looking at you Moose Knuckle. Vengence is borderline. I prefer RKM's application.
4: Findability.
This includes navigation of your thread, Original posts, tune posts as well as your listing tactics and names... This is where RKM gets another -1 from me. They alter the names of their tunes and sometimes it's difficult to find what you're looking for. On top of that, the names are within the images, meaning they will not show up using Search nor Cntrl F. The first defense would be that they use the 'car based on' where they then state the original car, but understand that, that text is copy/pasted over and over again throughout your entire thread, meaning when I search for "Car X" the search will likely take me to a page that doesn't even contain the tune, and in a 77 page thread, isn't helpful. While I'm being nit-picky, I also don't like using single post hyper-linking like RKM. It isolates the post as an entire page, rather than normal hyper-linking, which takes you to the post, but still within the page of the thread. Sometimes I want to see the posts below the tune, to see what others have mentioned. Afterthought... Updates. This one is tricky. I've often found myself looking for a certain tuners 'new tune' only to realize, I have no clue which one is new and which one's are old. (From the OP) Now, 1 remedy is newest tunes at the bottom of the list, but that sacrifices findability, because your list appears to be completely random. I think MFT wins here again, with the shiny 'new' icon next to their recent tunes.
5: Measure twice, tune once.
For the new tuners this can be detrimental to your credit. Posting tunes as 'tests' or 'feedback' 'incomplete' 'in progress' whatever word you use, if people test it before it's complete and it's crappy, they'll be reluctant to try future tunes. I understand you want feedback, but don't use your client base as unknowing test monkeys. I know there will be a learning curve and that tuners will get better with time, but don't throw something together to test on people if you can't confidently tell me that it's an improvement. Also in this category, make sure you test cars in their stock form, and document lap times. Then as your personal tweaks and adjustments progress overtime, make sure you're getting faster. Don't spend hours on a tune, only to find out, you've made it worse, because you forgot how fast it was, or how it drove prior to tuning it. On the subject of test monkeys or tuning partners, I'd recommended offering drivers to be dedicated testers. I believe Roj and RJ send cars back and forth for each others input before posting them. I know Avid used Thunderstruck as a driver to get feedback on tunes, before Vette finalized them for public.
6: Don't tailor to individuals.
Best example here is me. Don't try to suit your tunes to fit a single persons needs or driving style. Obviously all of your tunes will be biased to yourself as the tuner, since you're the one driving and tweaking based on your findings. But you want to offer tunes that will work for a variety of people. Just because 1 review says 'the car does this' doesn't mean you should adjust your tuning methods to suit their driving needs. Although the reverse also holds true. If you see a trend where people are complaining of your tunes tendencies, regardless of whether you agree, it's probably in your best interest to compensate for what people are experiencing, even if you aren't. The car may feel perfect on exit for you, but if 4 people experience understeer on exit, then you've become the 'individual' and you don't want to tailor to your personal needs. If you do, then there's no point in posting your tunes to begin with.
7: Ignore Adrenaline
True story, I'm an idiot. Don't listen to a word I say. I'm just one guy. Don't sacrifice your personal beliefs just to please everyone else, including me. If tuning feels like it's becoming 'work' then you should stop tuning, even if only temporarily. It's a game, if aren't enjoying it, urdoinitwrong.
Ninja Edit: 8: Racing Soft Tires. I don't actually understand why anyone tunes with anything else, as I assume 90% of people use Racing Softs with absolutely no regard to what the tuners says the tune was designed for. I feel in the long run, people run into problems caused by mismatched tune/tires causing cars to re-act differently, which is technically the fault of the driver for using the incorrect tires, but ultimately, I really don't see the point in using anything less. If you want the car to be more of a 'challenge' then why are you using a tune designed to make the car driver faster/handle better? I dunno, just me.
It actually almost gave me the idea of taking on an apprentice myself, not to become a member of Lion's Den Performance, but to help service the community. I'll sleep on that idea......
