Please edit blog post about Badger Pond

Badger Pond went beyond being just an on line forum, it became a community.  There were numerous gatherings of the members across the country where we put faces and personalities to the names we knew from the forum.  At these gatherings there was lots of conversation, demonstrations, contests and teaching sessions.  There was food from different regions of the country and many friendships that have survived the years and miles of separation.  I personally attended gatherings in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Texas, Washington and Canada.

At least two other forums came into existence from Badger Pond; Woodcentral and Sawmillcreek.  Both are still available today.

In one of his last posts Wayne Miller personally said that it was in fact a social experiment, that is a fact and I am a witness to that. Wayne absolutely did not do it for "academic research" although college psychologists and such may have been following the group with some interest in that. Life on the internet during those days was like the old wild west; people were accustomed to being rude and downright nasty online; anonymity brought out the absolute worst in people. Things that would never have been said in person to your face were the standard posts of that time. 

Wayne saw the future of the internet forum before its time. By moderating, rebuking and correcting people, removing rude posts and in a lot of cases blocking people from the forum if they could not learn to be civil, polite, courteous, and helpful, he fostered a community of knowledgeable woodworkers and amateurs/neophytes alike that was the same as people gathering around a table at a coffee shop and having productive discussion; discussing, brainstorming, throwing ideas around and having civil discussions about them with no fear of denigration. Discussions of this type fostered a respect among people with a similar interest and an insight into the person behind the computer screen that was unusual for the time and ahead of its time. 

This led to what I believe was the first community of friends or one of the very first of people actually getting together for events in person that had previously only met online. I attended events near Indianapolis IN and at Bill Grumbine's house in PA. The events were attended by people from all walks of life, professional and hobbyist, expert and amateur alike were all welcomed, treated with respect, and built on each other's knowledge. 

The Neanderthal Forum as it was labeled on the Badger Pond website had an extremely significant impact on my life. The Badger Pond forum was begun with a forum discussing general woodworking and occasionally old school woodworkers would discuss hand tool woodworking in a power tool forum and at one point one of these people was joshingly called a "neanderthal" by a modern power tool enthusiast and the hand tool enthusiasts embraced the moniker. A forum was soon set up that was dedicated to discussion of hand tool woodworking and titled "Neanderthal Haven". Growing up in a rural area I found and read Krenov's books and was intrigued by his use of hand tools but the books in no way gave me enough information to become proficient at using planes, hand saws, and chisels. The people of  Neanderthal Haven became my teachers. I was intrigued and fascinated with hand tool use; I could easily see that joiners a few centuries ago built some of the most elaborate, intricate, and beautiful woodwork before ever electricity was discovered and I was interested in learning how they accomplished that. 

As a woodworker today in the modern world of electric routers and table saws I find hand tool use removes limitations to what one can accomplish with power tools; I can literally build anything that I can imagine and the only limitation to what I can accomplish is time. I am not one of the best hand tool woodworkers, I am still working on improving my abilities, but I am capable of doing work that I would never have imagined possible before I discovered Wayne Miller, Badger Pond, and Neanderthal Haven.

Added later 17 min 36 s:

The name "Badger Pond" came from a pond on Wayne Miller's property (or somewhere around there) that was called Badger Pond.

I wore my Badger Pond hat yesterday while working on the stairway in my house that I am rebuilding in hickory.  I needed a place to stick my pencil between uses.

I do recall when I ordered and received my BP hat, it came absolutely reeking of cigar smoke.  My first reaction was a bit of annoyance, but it quickly turned to a chuckle, chalking it up to, "Wayne likes cigars, and that's just how he is."  In an email exchange with him over somehow getting moderated (post removed or edited, I don't recall), he told me the story of how he had built a $10,000 deck for a guy, who then refused to pay him.  So he went back with a chainsaw and cut the deck off the house.

Jason

Your article sounds spot on to me, Peter, though I did not personally spend much time on Badger Pond, as I had been occupied with managing my own forums, beginning with American Woodworker's AOL site in 1994 and leading up to launching WoodCentral when American Woodworker went away in '98. I really admired the sense of community that Wayne had fostered at Badger Pond -- something that I was also trying to do at WoodCentral. The fact that we were both using the WebBBS software and plowing similar woodworking and community fields may have been part of Wayne's motivation for recommending WoodCentral to his troops when he decided to close up shop in '03 or whenever.

For the record, Wayne bequeathed me all of his articles but not the BP message archives, although I did at one point have the entire body of content on disk.

The main difference between Wayne's and my management style was that I was determined to have just a couple commonsense rules for the forum and let peer pressure and leading by example keep things in line. This was primarily so I wouldn't burn myself out trying to enforce complicated rules and regulations, but it also worked.

Ellis

My strongest memory: Some Ponders started a drive every year to contribute cash to Wayne for Christmas. I sent in a check for a (for me) sizable amount. It was promptly cashed. A few weeks later, the site closed. Kinda pissed me off that he took my money, knowing he was going to bail. However, I liked the site and enjoyed the atmosphere, especially when compared to the trolls at "The Oak", another early forum.

Regards from Perth

Derek