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Sandie
My feeling has always been that they were originally intended to have a research value, researchers could visit and learn from the site fairly quickly that a particular model was named a certain way or modified in a particular way for a country using the tags and page comments. Now, bluntly, they are so many vehicles given a made for tag just because they happen to be in a country, the database no longer has that research function and the oddball namings and modifications no longer stand out. That was probably the reason that Made-for-GB was never used for RHD as it made the genuinely interesting GB spec cars stand out and most European and many Asian cars are generally built with a view to being available for either-handed traffic.
The other big problem is that just because a vehicle is in a country, it wasn't necessarily a vehicle specced for that country or sold there new. Russia seems to get cars from every corner of the globe, as do many African countries. "Oh this should be made for GH, we don't have many films from Ghana" is an innocent comment but most of that country's car parc is second hand imports. Sometimes a second hand import isn't obvious either, so we end up in the scenario that we have wrong information because we're not basing it on a reason (visible change, change of name). Even with the visible changes there are the grey area ones. A lot of American cars were never sold officially in Europe but when they make their way here they have to be modified to meet lighting standards etc.
The whole thing is now a bit of a mess. I think we're risking getting to the point that Made-for-Tags have lost their value and would probably be most effectively replaced with a box that simply states the country the vehicle was filmed in, which would resolve all the problems and allow us to pull stuff out when required, but such a change of policy isn't really practical when you have nigh on 1.2m listings to deal with.
As for a nuanced policy, I'm not convinced it's useful to change the nuances of a policy depending on the preferences of who happens to be active on the site at a given point. People make this point whenever someone fancies changing the naming conventions on a few dozen Datsun Dogturds, this is a lot bigger than that. The current policy - for its flaws - is clear, we change it and who is going to arbitrate for evermore as the supreme overlord on what is a "useful" made for? Who is going to update thousands of vehicles if necessary?
For me, it's making big problems out of a problem that isn't really one of the site's biggest problems.
The other big problem is that just because a vehicle is in a country, it wasn't necessarily a vehicle specced for that country or sold there new. Russia seems to get cars from every corner of the globe, as do many African countries. "Oh this should be made for GH, we don't have many films from Ghana" is an innocent comment but most of that country's car parc is second hand imports. Sometimes a second hand import isn't obvious either, so we end up in the scenario that we have wrong information because we're not basing it on a reason (visible change, change of name). Even with the visible changes there are the grey area ones. A lot of American cars were never sold officially in Europe but when they make their way here they have to be modified to meet lighting standards etc.
The whole thing is now a bit of a mess. I think we're risking getting to the point that Made-for-Tags have lost their value and would probably be most effectively replaced with a box that simply states the country the vehicle was filmed in, which would resolve all the problems and allow us to pull stuff out when required, but such a change of policy isn't really practical when you have nigh on 1.2m listings to deal with.
As for a nuanced policy, I'm not convinced it's useful to change the nuances of a policy depending on the preferences of who happens to be active on the site at a given point. People make this point whenever someone fancies changing the naming conventions on a few dozen Datsun Dogturds, this is a lot bigger than that. The current policy - for its flaws - is clear, we change it and who is going to arbitrate for evermore as the supreme overlord on what is a "useful" made for? Who is going to update thousands of vehicles if necessary?
For me, it's making big problems out of a problem that isn't really one of the site's biggest problems.