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What is Boompa.com

Boompa.com is a community driven online vehicle encyclopedia devoted to showing off, tweaking and catalouging anything that drives, flies, floats or pedals. Registered users can showcase their vehicles in their boompa "garage" as well as write guides dedicated to vehicle tweaking, maintenence and humor.

Who built Boompa.com

Boompa is owned entirely by Enemy Kite LLC, a tiny web company based out of Berkeley, CA. Its founders, Dave Snider and Ethan Lance, built boompa.com over a few months in early 2006. Previously the two worked at CNET Networks and were primary members of the team that launched TV.com and MP3.com. Dave and Ethan currently maintain Boompa.com out of their pockets and independent of Venture Capital. You can find out more about them on the about us page.

How do I create my own message board?

If you start a group at boompa you automatically create a message board. Just go to the "talk" tab at the top of your group and you can begin posting in your very own message board.

Who controls the content at Boompa, where do you get your information

The users control and create everything. There is not one programmed or planned piece of content on the site outside of the home page and this FAQ. The staff at boompa merely provide and maintain tools for use by the community. The direction, tone and usefullness of the site is dictated by our userbase.

Is boompa content moderated in any way

The vehicle database is moderated by our staff as well as by trusted volunteers from the user community. All information is checked for accuracy and all changes are archived to preserve an edit history. While mistakes and misinformation happen from time to time, the site aims to be the most accurate and specific vehicle database in the world. The site is also very new so it's common to find a make or model that has little or no information collected at present.

How long does approval of a new make and model take

New makes and models go up immediately after you add them. They are normally checked by the staff for accuracy the same day.

Are user uploaded profiles and garages kept to the same standard

No. While you may report abuse of users who misuse the garage features of the site, we simply do not have the resources to visit everyone's house and see if they actually own a certain car or if it runs as fast as they claim. We also only moderate the aftermarket parts database when we notice problems, though this may change in the future.

What are garages, how do I create one

Think of the boompa garage much like the one attached to your house, it simply stores your vehicles in one place. From it you can also submit news, add new vehicles, add guides and edit your preferences. Any registered user already has a garage, just click the "my garage" tab at the top of any page while logged in and you'll be able to start adding vehicles.

What is BB Code and what is the form at the top of my Garage

BB Code is a type of shorthand supported in most popular message boards (VWvortex.com...etc). The code we provide is just a quick way to build a signature of your garage based off of this code so that you can easily link to your rides from other places.

How come I can't browse some vehicle types (like boats) even though I can add them to my garage

We only open up certain vehicle types for browsing once they hit a satisfactory amount of coverage. As a new site, boompa is still trying to achieve coverage in most types. The best way to help out is to add your vehicles to the site or contribute information to the base make and model pages.

I own (blank) vehicle, but you guys don't have it. What gives.

Because we try to keep the database as clean as possible, you may only add vehicles to your garage that corrispond to a previously existing make and model of vehicle. If we don't have it yet, don't worry, you can add it through this form. Once approved, that make or model will be available not only to you, but to others wishing to add vehicles to their garage of that type as well. You'll also recieve a thanks from us for taking the time to help complete our database.

How does news work at boompa

Boompa news is simply a collection of links to outside content that are submitted and promoted by our userbase. Any registered user can submit news using this form and can dictate which news links show up on the main page by using the up and down arrows to promote or demote stories. The ranking system uses a combination of the freshness of the article combined with mob rating to decide which news should float to the top.

How do I add video to news

Currently we allow both YouTube and Google Videos to be associated to news stories. To do this you must copy the "embed" code into the textarea provided. The embed code is located on the google or youtube page where the original video resides and normally looks like <embed=something> or <object=something>

What are guides, how accurate are they

Guides are step by step instructions for a given task associated to a specific vehicle or vehicle type. Any registered user can write them by using this form. Boompa can not speak for the accuracy of any of the guides as we do not have the resources to test each guide out. However, we do remove guides reported to us as inaccurate from the community. We strongly recommend that any major work being done on your vehicle be handled by a professional.

When using the forms on boompa, it won't let me progress to the next step

Boompa.com uses quite a bit of Javascript to make its forms dynamic and easy to use. If you are noticing that dropdowns aren't populating, it most likely means your browser has Javascript turned off. Simply go to the Tools or Preferences area in your browser and click "enable javascript". This will make forms populate as they should.

How do I deal with people who leave nasty comments in my garage

Whenever you are within your garage or content you created, be it your profile page or a vehicle page or even a guide you wrote, you can delete comments left by other users. Just click the delete button and the comment will be permanently removed. If you continue to have problems or think a certain user is harassing you please let a moderator know.

I have a great idea for the site, who can I tell

Both Ethan Ethan Dave monitor the message boards daily. You can also PM either of us directly at anytime. We're here to help.