DCIDS: The Ten Guidelines

How to stay on the right side of Dave with your car ID requests

I. Thou Shall Attach The Hashtag. For car ID requests on Twitter that would be #DavesCarIDService. It’s how I keep track of the request queue and which ones I’ve already covered.

II. Thou Shall Focus On Quality Stuff. This doesn’t necessarily mean quality cars, it means quality subject matter. In particular this means old photos from your personal family albums; those are the main focus and priority of DCIDS. Rusting heaps in the wilderness and interesting old cars seen on the street are cool too, but lower on my to-do list.

III. Thou Shall Not Tag Me With Stupid Viral Internet Pics. Have you ever seen a funny or amazing car pic/Photoshop on Twitter, or Facebook, or Reddit, or et cetera, and thought, “I bet Dave would get a kick out of this one!” I regret to inform you that you would lose that bet, because trust me: I’ve already seen that stupid picture umpteen bazillion times, and all you’re doing is clogging up my request queue.

IV. Thou Shall Not Seek To Test Dave. I have never claimed expertise, infallibility, or omnipotence, I just try my level best to figure out cars in old photos and have some fun with it. There are no medals, trophies, or kewpie dolls for stumping me. Thus any car ID request that smells like you already know the answer — and are testing me to see if I get it right — will be promptly ignored.

V. Thou Shall Be Sensitive To Copyright. I’m lenient on this in regards to my weekend ID threads on Twitter, and fine if you want to request an ID on a secondhand image in the right spirit. But my Substack is a commercial enterprise, and I will only images here that are properly permissioned. If you submit a photo from your family albums, I assume you have copyright and it’s cool for me to use it. I started the Substack as little side hustle for beer money, and I don’t want to deal with nastygrams and take-down orders from lawyers.

V. Thou Shall Provide a Little Descriptive Info. Instead of just tagging me with a photo, provide what background info you can - the people, the location, the occasion, etc. It helps in providing a narrative, and can be useful in IDing the vehicle.

VII. Thou Shall Keep Thy ID Requests To At Most 4 Per Week. I appreciate enthusiasm for this service, but sometimes I get a huge boatload of requests from the same person which makes it hard to accommodate others. Please realize I will not ID more than 4 images from the same account in a week, so pace yourself and let me get to others who are waiting.

VIII. Thou Shall Not Half-Ass It With Thy Photography. Most of the old family photo requests I get are captured via cell phone camera. Which is fine, as long as you put a modicum of effort into it. Focus as best you can, avoid light bounce, take the original pic out of the glass frame, don’t take it at a distorted angle. Capture each original image separately. Rotate / crop as necessary. Ideally, use a flatbed scanner. That may be hoping for too much, but a fella can dream can’t he?

IX. Thou Shall Remain Patient. Just as pushing an elevator button will not make it go faster, repeating the same car ID request at me will not make me get to it faster. Due to backlog it typically takes 2-3 weeks to get to a request (less if it’s a totally boffo picture), but if it meets the other guidelines it’s on my radar. If I somehow have overlooked it after 3 weeks feel free to tag me again.

X. Thou Shall STFU About Politics. This is the cardinal sin; I have always treated DCIDS an oasis from politics, and if you barge in and befoul my ID threads with your pet political peeves, you will be promptly blocked.