Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge
The key for beginners is focusing on fundamental skills, safe tool use, understanding materials, and getting advice from those with more experience. Asking about common pitfalls and best practices can help accelerate the learning curve. This is one in a series of questions I will be asking that could provide useful information for beginners.
Putting the same info on multiple questions but not asking the actual question in the topic is misleading
@Sam Force,
Did you mean to say not answering the actual question?
Perhaps, but I don't know of any other way to get topics started. There are software apps to do this. For example, Question2Answer is designed specifically for this, but I don't want to install another separate app with its own registration, etc. Overkill IMO. There should be a way to do this using our existing forum software.
Can any one suggest a better way to do this?
I tried to model this how years ago, Ellis would often post questions to which he would summarize replies in his "News & Views" articles published in Woodworker West.
Added later 1 h 02 min 20 s:
BTW, the Opinion articles on the home page, as all articles, allow for comments. It would be interesting to see updates to the News & Views articles, as they are not necessarily time-sensitive. Most questions posed are as relevant today as when they were posed twenty years ago.
You don't need to be registered to post on the home page. (It doesn't use the same database as the forums, so registration here doesn't apply there.) Just fill in a name and email address. It will be held for moderation, so it may be a few hours or a day before it shows up publicly. You can use a fake email like [email protected], but you won't receive any notifications of replies if you do.
Yes, I stand corrected. I've no clue on how to get more topics discussed, sad but true WC is quickly sinking. 
Sam Force wrote:Yes, I stand corrected. I've no clue on how to get more topics discussed, sad but true WC is quickly sinking.
All forums are. Go here
https://www.woodcentral.com/-/rss-reader/
and click on the various forums in the left column. It will show the number of posts today, yesterday, and before yesterday. Most are faring no better than WC.
Their crazy number of registered users and numbers online are misleading. They may have accumulated 100,000 registered members during the heyday of forums, but most are not active. And as for the number online, I suspect it is reporting raw server stats w/o filtering out bot traffic, which is usually the majority of traffic.
For example, during the last 30 days, WC shows 24,56K unique visitors and 1.54M requests. When you filter out the bots, the numbers are 1,445 and 2,573 from actual people. Over one an a half million requests, but only about two thousand were from actual human eyes viewing ads and such. I hope the other sites are not billing their advertisers based on total server traffic. LOL
And it would be MUCH higher were I not blocking all of China at the CDN level, as they are a PITA and constantly spoofing IPs showing incoming traffic from Singapore and any other place they can hijack to keep it from showing as originating from China, so I just blocked the whole country at the CDN firewall level. They block most of our major sites, and if they can't play nice, it's only fair.
Our forum index page shows honest stats of users online, separated by registered users, guests, and bots (which are few, because I only allow a few like Google, Bing, and several others that are known to be legitimate).
It is not inherently misleading to create forum topics to spur discussion, as long as the topics are relevant and the intent is genuine discussion rather than trolling or promoting an agenda.
Forums thrive on engagement and new topics that generate interesting conversations. Posing thought-provoking questions or sharing experiences can stimulate valuable dialogue and knowledge sharing among members.[3]
However, some considerations around creating forum topics:
- The topics should align with the forum's purpose and rules. Off-topic or inappropriate posts are generally discouraged.
- Controversial topics meant to provoke rather than discuss constructively could be seen as trolling behavior.[3]
- Repeatedly posting low-quality topics solely to drive traffic or promote something would be considered spam.
- Honesty about one's experience level and posing genuine questions is appreciated over posturing as an "expert" giving advice.[3]
So in the context of the woodworking forums referenced, creating a topic like "What tips do experienced woodworkers wish they had known when starting out?" seems reasonable to solicit insights from seasoned members that could benefit beginners.[2] But the responses should be evaluated based on the responder's credibility and experience, not taken as gospel truth.[3]
Citations:
[1] https://www.woodcentral.com/forkbb/forum/5/Beginners
[2] https://www.woodcentral.com/forkbb/topic/76003182/What%20tips%20do%20experienced%20woodworkers%20wish%20they%20had%20known%20when%20they%20were%20first%20starting%20out%3F
[3] https://paulsellers.com/2024/04/how-opinions-confuse-the-issues/
[4] https://woodweb.com/cgi-bin/forums/aw.pl?read=798777
[5] https://forum.shopsmith.com/viewforum.php?f=6
[6] https://www.reddit.com/r/woodworking/comments/tmv0ie/what_are_your_woodworking_unpopular_opinions/
[7] https://www.finewoodworking.com/forum/projects-that-dont-go-well
The questions were patterned after those asked by Ellis and summarized in the News & Views published in Woodworker West. They once garnered lots of replies, but apparently not any more. 
Nothing really.
When I was an apprentice the rules were very simple.
If you don't know, ask.
If you can't listen you won't last.
But if you want to get banned from a forum really quickly try sharing your hard won valuable experience and post pictures of your work. The results are almost instant.
Nothing really.
When I was an apprentice the rules were very simple.
That’s a thoughtful topic—thanks for sharing it. I especially like how you encourage newcomers to learn from experienced woodworkers and understand the importance of things like tool maintenance, accurate measurement, and project planning—it really matters for success. For someone just starting out, which single tip do you feel would make the biggest difference: being patient with tool sharpening, spending time on layout and measuring, or choosing the right type of wood for your project?