Ellis, sorry to see your last pep talk has fizzled so soon

Don't give up

I've got a couple tricks up my sleeve, Dick. Stay tuned. Summer is never an active season online. Regardless, we still have a lot of good answers here, and WoodCentral is not going anywhere, at least not anytime soon. 

I will be picking up where we left off when I get to our summer HQ in a few days. Meanwhile, my suggestion box is always open. If you have any ideas about promoting this valuable community resource, don't hold back.

Cheers,

Ellis 

Be careful what you wish for.......

A while back, there was a lively discussion of whether the forum should continue to allow Off Topic posts to co-exist with the normal woodworking posts.  I expressed my dislike of the “get off my lawn” attitude of moving all non-woodwork posts to an OT board, as did others.  An offshoot of that discussion brought out a pretty surprising (at least to me) attitude that Woodcentral is now a place for highly skilled woodworkers, and not really a welcome place for DIYers of beginners.  I believe Ellis made that proclamation quite clearly.  I found that incredible and quite arrogant.  We all started out as beginners at some point.  Curiously, both those threads have disappeared from the forum discussion history.  I came here after the closure of Badger Pond and for many years have always felt welcome.  But now, maybe not so much.  I suspect others may have had the same reaction and moved on.  I feel there is still value in a site that can offer advice on how to build a bird house, regardless of the talent level of the active posters.  Just my opinion and something to chew on.  And as always, that opinion is worth exactly what you paid for it.

Here's a suggestion........

let's replace Peter with WOOD Girl.......

Re: Be careful what you wish for.......

Tim, I for one welcome beginners, and had previously mentioned that we could take on a role of mentor to a new generation. I imagine that many here would enjoy discussing woodwork, and are primed to offer their experience and advice. At the same time, the format of the forums would need to change to prevent it becoming overwhelming, assuming that there are a number of posts from newbys. Would this change the experience of coming to WC? Well of course, but it was like that before we all gained experience.

Regards from Perth

Derek

I can't stand that trend.

Just plain exploitive and everything bad about YouTube woodworking.

Well, I never said it was perfect........

and would appeal to everyone.......but, she does make a lot of things.......and those projects are basic beginner items.......and she does use a lot of very high-end tools.......not very safely at times and we could talk about that........and she is friendly.......waves a lot.......drives a forklift very well......

So, like most things in life, there are some positives and negatives about WOOD Girl.......but, I'm figuring you for a NO vote........

Re: Be careful what you wish for.......

I agree with you, Derek and I've never felt that newby questions were unwelcome on the board. Even though Roger Lance humorously (I hope) gives the YouTube reference to Woodgirl, it is exactly what a major part of the problem is - Not Woodgirl and similar, but the fact that newbies (and oldies) can get a lot of information from YouTube with videos showing what to do. Also, this is the go-to media that the younger people associate with, not reading a bunch of text that a lot of us are quite happy to do and actually prefer.

Bill

So, that's another NO vote.......

If i want to know how to do some woodworking thing

I don’t go to a YouTube video, I go to a forum.

a few years ago, my son thought cutting off a hollow core door, repairing it, and hanging it was a half hour job because of some video he watched.  I did it for him. After the job was done more than 1.5 hours later, he confessed he hadn’t known the job would take so long, because the video omitted a whole bunch of steps, including what to do when the jamb isn’t square or plumb.

An important distinction to be made.

Bill, Lance’s humorous, albeit delectable, video depicts where YouTube is at when it comes to learning about cleavage …. err .. woodworking. YouTube today is chockfull of clickbait - videos about nothing, the mundane, advertisements of startling and as yet undiscovered, monumental techniques that promise to turn one instantly into a maestro. Every woodworker on every forum on the Internet knows this. The issue is how to use this to promote the more serious aspiring woodworker to visit WoodCentral. 

Video is a good medium, but it is not the ultimate or only medium. It can be very frustrating watching something all the way just to find that moment you need. You cannot scan through a video as easily as an article with photos. Articles and posts with photos enable one to “pause” to reflect. I enjoy watching others work … I can watch people working all day  …  if they know what they are doing. Otherwise it is irritating. There is some really exceptionally good video material on YouTube, but finding it is not easy for those starting out. 

One idea may be to begin a library of videos here. This could videos made by members and also videos made by others (with permission to link). Anything on my YouTube channel may be used here. What most really need is discussion and video, explaining or critiquing technique, design, etc. We could also have a section for cleavage, beginning with Rogers’

Regards from Perth

Derek

Re: If i want to know how to do some woodworking thing

So, are you saying all YouTube videos are bad and all forum info is good? Over the years I've seen a lot of misinformation posted in forums but it is frequently pointed out but I've also seen YouTube video misinformation called out in the comments.

If I said only forum information is to be relied on, it still doesn't get the YouTubers onto the board until they find out about forums and come to that realization.

That certainly proves you can't learn anything from a video......

of course, Roy and Norm were both on video......and people must be mistakenly claiming to have learned from them.

Re: If i want to know how to do some woodworking thing

Phil Lowe was / is on YouTube but for every Phil Lowe, there are dozens of hacks. I can tell the difference but if someone doesn’t have the experience to sort them out, then it’s just bad advice.  On a forum, if someone is offering bad advice, they’re going to get called out.  It happens here all the time.

Consider me a no vote for women exploiting themselves for money.

Consider me a no vote for women exploiting themselves for money.

Well, I guess we won't be following........

WOOD Girl as she endeavors to persevere in her woodworking journey.

Here's the trouble...

That role has already been filled by r/woodworking, and in spite of being rather over moderated the sub seems to be effectively filling the role. 

Given that reddit appears to be shooting themselves in the foot with their API policy changes, perhaps there is an opportunity to pick up some of that traffic as the sub's moderators are pushing users to participate in a 2 day reddit blackout starting 6/12.  Short time to figure out how, but there it is.

Another thing I noticed is that there is one link to a WC post on wikipedia, and that link is dead.  Using the wayback machine I went and looked at the post, it was a tutorial with pictures for mitering molding on a frame and panel rather than coping it, with a reply from Ellis pointing out the traditional name for the technique (mason's miter).  There's an example of how to improve visibility - find archived info an pictures (the wikipedia text on a masnon's miter was horrible, the pictures from the WC post made it clear in an instant) that one can link to relevant wikipedia articles and make sure to maintain the links.  That provides useful content for wikipedia as well as helping WC gain visibility.  I'm sure there are other versions of this kind of idea to be found with some creative thinking.

One thing I've noted in the three of these threads I've viewed is that everyone seems to be debating silver bullets.  The silver bullet for this problem is visibility, everything else follows from that - only after you have visibility do you have to worry about a welcoming environment for the younger generations or whether you have an OT forum or not (I would have been in the "not" camp, remembering how Barry was the king of oddball questions for a few years and generated a lot of discussion with them).

Re: An important distinction to be made.

I think a better way to drive content here would be to have a youtube Woodcentral video channel.  Even if all it did was make a commercial and route people here.  By Commercial I mean show some attractive pictures, and say here is where you can get your answers.  Well maybe.  What I know about driving content is like what Norm knew about wood movement in season one of the NYW.

Speaking of which, I am reminded of when I used to do a listserve (possibly) dissection of everything Norm did wrong in his first season or so.  For the time, I got a lot of positive feedback.  But after one season or so, where he made each project 3 times for the shoot, and got lots of feedback from people in his sphere, he got a lot of skill, given he had some already (for instance he was pretty good with a handsaw).  These people who are posting content every week, will quickly advance, at least to some extent.  also, the star of the NYW was Norm, not the woodwork.  Same with these youtubers.