So why did we do this? Why is there now a website called PositivelyRacing.com? Why not? After all, everybody else now has a racing website, right? Yes, that could be a very small part of our motivation, but there were many, many more reasons that you can now find the writings of myself, Barry Johnson, Dick & Joyce Eisele (coming soon!) and maybe more at this site. Allow me now to give you just a couple of those reasons.
First and foremost is the reason behind the name of the website itself, and that is the fact that all of us involved with this site, including our talented webmaster Sue McDaniel, are frustrated with, tired of, disappointed in and even sometimes completely disgusted with how our sport is treated on the internet. This foul treatment occurs primarily on the forums and message boards where anonymous “experts” make bold statements, call out drivers, promoters and officials by name, start rumors based on little or no information, or just state outright lies that do nothing but damage our sport in the eyes of the drivers, fans, promoters and sponsors. Former Sunset Speedway owner/promoter Craig Kelley dubbed these internet jockeys as “Anonymous Weasel Posters”, or AWP’s, as nearly all of them hide behind screen names that do not reveal their true identity. Whenever somebody makes a case for limiting or eliminating the ramblings of the AWP’s they always seem to invoke their “Right to Free Speech”, although it is my belief that this constitutional right does not actually apply and here is why. When our founding fathers established this right I feel that it went along with the fact that the speaker would always be identified so that those hearing his or her words could then decide, based upon what they knew about the speaker, whether or not to put much stock into those words. The reputation of the speaker and any potential biases could be weighed and you could then decide whether or not you should trust those words. And that is the problem with the internet forums, you are not given the opportunity to weigh the credentials of the AWP delivering the message and therefore you have no good way to filter out the few truthful posts from the rest of the…..well, insert your own descriptive word here.
I can give you two specific examples, the first that I can recall and the most recent, of how this process directly affected racing projects that I was involved with. The first one came during the 2000 season when I was running the NKF Heartland Tour for a Cure. We had a mid-week race scheduled at the Crawford County Speedway in Denison and the forecast called for scattered thunderstorms during the day and clearing conditions during the evening. As we made the four and a half hour drive west we encountered some of those storms, but with each storm we called promoter Howard Mellinger and he assured us that Denison had escaped the rain. When we arrived at the track around five o’clock it was obvious that the few sprinkles that had fallen had now passed on to the east and that we were ready for a great night of racing. The cars checked in at a slow pace that night and while we still had a respectable car count I was surprised that at least six of the drivers who were chasing the points championship on the Tour failed to ever show. The crowd was okay, but nothing close to what the Tour had drawn to Denison before and the racing was great on the high-speed half-mile oval. The next morning when I posted the results on the internet, within minutes I started fielding calls from those point-chasing drivers. “You guys ran that show last night?? I thought that it was rained out.” When I asked the first caller why he thought that, his response was that his wife saw it on the internet and called him on his cell phone to tell him to turn around and come home. The story was the same for the other callers, some even called each other once they got the “news” from an internet forum post that the race in Denison had been cancelled due to rain. So I went to the primary internet forum at the time and under the Modified section, sure enough there was a thread started by an AWP who was making just his/her second post ever on this forum stating that he/she had just returned home from the track and that the races were cancelled due to rain. No sense of “speculation” that they “might” be cancelled, just a point blank statement of “fact” backed up by the “evidence” that this person had actually been there and witnessed the rainout.
Today, after years of seeing how the internet forums work, most people wouldn’t have taken that rainout report as fact without backing it up with a check of the track’s website, a phone call to the track, or even a phone call to the Tour director. But back in 2000, we were apparently a little too trusting of the AWP’s. I added a response to that post the next morning stating what a blatant lie it was and pointing out how this misinformation might have an effect on the outcome of the points for the Tour not to mention the money that it had cost Mr. Mellinger for those drivers, and fans, who stayed home that night. You know I never did see another post from that username, but of course that doesn’t mean that he or she didn’t just assume another username in order to continue their AWP ways.
The more recent instance had much less of a financial affect, but to me was every bit as annoying and perfectly illustrates the role that many AWP’s take on today as a pot-stirrer, instigator or gossiper. We were just a few weeks ahead of our annual “Shiverfest” event at the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson and the rules for the event had been posted on the track’s website. On one of the regional message boards somebody had posted a question asking what tires would be allowed on the Hobby Stocks. Now of course the first question is this. Why would somebody who wants to know what tires could be run on the Hobby Stocks get on line and go to an internet message board to ask the question when he could have just as easily went to the track’s website to find the rules? But it was the response that he received from an AWP that really made me laugh. “I was told that they will be able to run the same tires as the Stock Cars.” Now of course that information was totally inaccurate, so I replied, “Really? Who told you that?” And then I posted the accurate information in regard to the tires and referred any other questions on the rules to the track’s website. Of course the AWP never did respond as to who gave him the bad information, but I will credit that exchange as being the last push that I needed to move ahead with PositivelyRacing.com.
As you have guessed by now, there is no forum or message board on this site, nor will there ever be one! No AWP’s allowed! We know that this fact will keep up us from capturing some of the traffic looking for racing information on the internet, but that’s fine, we can live with that and sleep at night. I’ll admit that I myself will still go look at those forums from time to time, but primarily for entertainment purposes only and we hope that the regular visitors to this site will view those forums in the same light. On our Links page you will find a couple of sites operated by friends of ours that do have forums/message boards, but it is the information that they provide in the main body of their site, not the forums that rate our approval. The bottom line is this, we feel that the AWP’s are detrimental to the sport and we hope that we can provide an alternative going forward.
The second big reason why this site now exists has to do with the constraints that were put upon us in print. Now don’t get me wrong, both Barry and I love to write for Hawkeye Racing News and we both plan on continuing to contribute to the best regional racing paper out there. However, when the racing season is in full swing and there are stories and results from all over the Midwest to include in the paper, there is just not much space left for us columnists and we are asked to keep our efforts to one thousand words or less. That is a very reasonable request and we completely understand why it is made, heck as former editor, Barry was the one making those rules a few years back. The problem is though that if you go to more than one race in a week it is virtually impossible to keep our columns to a thousand words or less. Then consider early August when both of us spend ten or twelve straight nights at Knoxville and, in my case at least, I only use about 10% of my notes for my column. This site will allow us to write as many words as we want and hopefully you will find them to be informative and entertaining.
So there you have it, that is why we are here and we hope that you will check back often to see what we have to say and to see what is new. If you have never checked them out before, take a look at the All Iowa and the Missouri Points (the final 2008 standings are currently listed) and once the season starts check back regularly to see how your favorites are doing. We have some big plans for this site, but we are going to start slow and try to build momentum. Bookmark it now, PositivelyRacing.com, and help us get that ball rolling!
And more thing…..don’t be an AWP! :)
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