I was sent an invitation by Delta to attend a gathering of magazine people in the late 90s at their corporate headquarters. Ellis was there. We listened to a presentation about the end of an era and that all those Unisaws they sold over the decades would soon be passed down to the next generation. New machinery sales were dropping and Delta foresaw the future. The baby boomers drove this entire country. First we drove the housing industry. With space in their basements or garages, along with a 5 day work week, hobby woodworking exploded. Now as all us boomers slow up and die, so goes the heydays of this hobby.
Yep, I was thinking the same thing. Norm built plenty of nice furniture and always in a congenial approachable manner as you said. Put it this way - if he got an order for a piece, he could get it out the door and stand behind it, though I know he didn't build furniture professionally as he was a residential contractor. He could build. More than two pieces a year.
He might not be able to debate cap iron esoterica, but who really gives a $hit in the end? Not me.
Re: Delta knew they were in trouble in the late 90s
Sounds about right. I think they ceded the business to Powermatic as that company appears to still carry something like a full line of decent equipment. There was no longer room for two.
I'm just on the tail-end of the Baby Boom generation, born in 1961, but had a dad who fought in WWII (Marine Corps) and a mother who lost a brother in the same war on Tarawa. Things are certainly not the same when we grew up, and definitely not when our parents did.
Re: Delta knew they were in trouble in the late 90s
Nothing like being raised by parents who'd felt the horror of war in a very up-close way. My dad turned 18 on Guadalcanal. Needless to say, I really didn't burden him with my teenage angst.
I've not posted here in a couple years, for my own reasons. I was not invited back, I just look in now and then, usually if work is slow. Finally something here prompted a reply from me.
I'm a bit appalled. Ellis asked you guys for help. The first thing that happens is that the old pissing match starts all over again and people take sides. It doesn't matter who was right and who was wrong, it doesn't even matter if both sides were right in some ways and wrong in others.
What matters is that Ellis has a problem he is trying to solve, because he does not want to see this forum die. You guys cannot help him with this as long as you put your own pride and desire to prove yourself right above the best interests of this forum.
So the question is - what is more important to you? Being right, goddam it all, or seeing this forum survive?
John, the fact of the matter is you can't have a forum whose first four pages of posts on any given visit are about tool steels or the cap iron. Enough was enough. It became absurd. There were times when you'd have to literally go five or more pages in to find something else, and then posting there was a complete waste of time. It was never seen.
The forum software needs to be ditched in favor of something more modern and easier to navigate, and there needs to be plenty of sub-forums.
This forum does not have to be ported there. It can survive in archival format.
Usually the hardest "solution" to implement is the one that needs to be implemented.
People bitch about this forum's software on other forums. That's how freaking lousy it is. New users are not coming here. They're just not.
And Knots has made a pretty remarkable comeback (it had been completely discontinued for a year or two) while this forum has languished. And they've managed to do it with a whole lot of old content from the old forums still intact. Maybe all of it. I know I've found some very old posts on Knots, at least by internet forum standards.
For users, I don't like feeling like I was just called to the principal's office, and even a rant can't be put in the correct place. Yup, speaks volumes.
The forum's jump-the-shark moment was probably the three page+ debate-cum-donnybrook over who brought the "cap iron" to internet woodworking forums first and why that was a seminal moment in the history of woodworking. Twilight Zone episode come to mind. Beyond bizarre. We should all be ashamed of that one. That information had been staring anybody who could read right in the face for decades.
Hmm, Charlie, I'm getting the message that you aren't very fond of our venerable software and the lack of Chinese-menu sub-forum organization. You're welcome to your opinion. I think you may have been around about 20 years ago when all the Badger Pond refugees landed here. Many preferred some version of the vBulletin/PHP-style software that most of forum world uses and left us for exactly this reason. My decision to stick with the BBS/Perl software despite its drawbacks was because of the mixed threaded message indexing that lets you view all the messages in a thread at a glance to decide whether it was going to interest you. Besides, I couldn't please everyone.
"Lousy" isn't an objective term; it only pertains to your opinion of it. This software, as brought into the new century by my colleague Peter Martin, is not only highly responsive and easy to use, it is also intuitive, if you're willing to suspend your disbelief for a moment. Not only that, but if you take the time to look around the site, Peter has brilliantly coded our substantial archive of thousands of pages and millions of messages into a page template that allows content searching, commenting and other abilities that we never had before. Navigation is much improved and getting better, photos are now dead easy to upload, PMs are now possible, etc. We've also incorporated new gallery and chatroom plug-ins that are far superior to the old ones.
It should also be noted that, at our current level of traffic, adding a lot of sub-forums would be counter-productive. Cummins and I discussed this a lot at the outset of this grand experiment. Why make people agonize over where to put their posts? We don't even really need an OT forum, since historically we've allowed OT posts on all the main boards anyway, with few complaints. Even now, several commenters are echoing that sentiment and we're keeping an open mind. The Feedback forum idea is Peter's, and I support it because we've been in developmental mode now for almost a year, and your feedback is important to us and to future development decisions.
The Woodworking 101 (Getting Started) forum idea was intended as a landing spot for newbies who we might entice from Facebook interest groups and other venues -- folks who represent the current entry level, who might feel intimidated by the sometimes esoteric and advanced discussions on our main boards. I'm not convinced that is where we want to be, but as somebody mentioned, we're in a new era, and our Baby Boomer concept of hobby woodworking is becoming less relevant. Does WoodCentral want to go where the next generation is headed? or shall we stick with our familiar territory?
Lots to discuss, if we're serious about being part of the vanguard. WoodCentral is more than a forum, or a website, or a community; it is a framework that has the flexibility to imagine itself and its future. Peter and I are trying to rise to that challenge by designing a site that is fast, compliant, relevant and welcoming. In that spirit, we invite you all to be part of the solution, but you need to want to help.
Ellis, the software isn't good. I'm sorry. It's just not. I understand that it's somewhat your baby, but you are not going to be able to attract new, younger users to this forum unless you make a change. We can all be old men waving our hands in the air gesticulating about "progress" but it won't change a thing.
Like I said in one of my posts, the hardest most expensive course of action is usually the one you need to take and mostly because it's been put off too long. This is true in so, so many businesses and I can practically guarantee it's true with this forum.
If you went to SMC and removed all the posts that were related to what someone found at a tag sale or how to sharpen a chisel or why can't all tools be free?, you would probably have a similar level of participation. There is a lot of low level, repetitive activity there.
There is a very high tolerance for newbies and repeated topics on that forum. The difference is that when those newbies gain skills and have more to say, they already have a forum home.
This forum seems to be at a higher level regarding information and practice. Unfortunately, the eager consumers of this knowledge are newcomers and this site does not seem to foster an aura of welcome to those who don't already possess a high level of skill. As age and experience advance there is less appetite for adopting new methods, so the dismissals commence.
Half the time opening a thread is like walking in on a couple's fight. There is no good thing to say in such a moment. Just keep moving on...
It's not the software, it's the people (my opinion). All woodworking forums have a certain number of grumpy old men - here there is a higher proportion, for various reasons that we could speculate about were it not pointless to do so. This intimidates the newbs, and runs off those of us who get tired of fighting (even when we are involved in it - I was as guilty of that as anyone), and just generally gives the place a clubby, insider feel.
Look in at reddit - it's really more similar to this layout than it is to a vBulletin or Xenforo site. There are significant differences of course, but I took to reddit's layout right away. The other really nice thing about reddit is that replies to a thread don't make that thread "new" so the inevitable pissing matches end up getting lost in the newer stuff. After half a day or so, no one even knows they happened but the participants who are still in there sniping at each other.
This place handles pictures much better than does reddit, their upload is confusing and buggy. But reddit has so much traffic that someone always has an answer or two for really basic questions. One significant difference is that pictures and vids are on the front page and are as much of an influence on clicking into a thread as the title is.
I've not spent much time here since all the changes. It's enough like the old version that I like it fine. I've used plenty of vBulletin forums over the years so I'm used to them too, but I always liked the threaded feel here for exactly the reason you stuck with it. I don't like the sorting and subdivision of numerous sub forums as it both reduces traffic and also ends up putting implied rules that discourage newbs - "you can't talk about that in here" sorts of responses. One forum I'm on has no less that 118 sub forums. I think I've been in 3 of them and I'm not likely to stray into others - its just plain overwhelming!
I can't figure out why you have that video page. The semi-curated channel side of it is ok, though more info might work better, but the viewed in the last 24 hours thing on the right is too random. I guess those are vids from the channels? It might work better if it had a postage stamp preview of the vid - understanding of course that this may not be possible. The video links is not a bad idea, it's just not working for me, personally. Youtube does need curating though, so maybe you're onto something there (I once saw a vid by a much ridiculed ax guy who was using a high lift jack in place of felling wedges - tons of very bad ideas floating around youtube).
Newsletter link isn't a bad idea either, if it's what I think - like a daily digest with links to the page? If you can get the traffic up (and more appealing if I may say so), that might work well.
I said in another reply, check out reddit. Lots of ideas to borrow from there. Just one is notifications - us old grumps find it annoying, but the kids seem to like it a lot since other forum software seems to be going that way too. Phone beeps and they are back on it seeing what just happened that they got notified about.
Charlie, the video of the research done in Japan on the chip breaker was the most meaningful. Not the three pages you referred to.....that was too much for me.
Gosh Charlie, you do seem to be rather exercised by this topic. I think you have made some fair points, though. I can see, for example, how David's long posts on metallurgy, cap iron/chip breaker placement, 'unicorning', and so on along with any comment generated could be off-putting to some. It didn't bother me I must say, and I actually found a lot of interesting and even influenced my work. For instance, I tweaked my sharpening routine somewhat in order to experiment with that horribly named unicorning thing and found it beneficial, not that I use it all the time, but unicorning has its moments.
I can't judge if the types of topics or debates that have been generated here over the years put people off from joining or contributing, but instinctively I suspect that there's an element of an aging and increasingly knowledgeable (and perhaps dying) user base may have something to do with it. How do new and younger users get hooked in? I don't know the answer, and maybe, as I mentioned before, those younger users gravitate to newer IT formats (YouTube, for e.g.,), and perhaps they're also less interested in tradition or historical furniture making and embracing more contemporary methods, e.g., digital parametric drafting, 3d printing, CNC work and the like, which isn't really well catered for here as far as I can see.
Anyway, no good solutions from me that I can think of, just some thoughts, but I do know this forum's software isn't smartphone friendly, which no doubt doesn't help encourage new and younger users. Slainte.
Currently, there are less than 2 dozen people on WC (not counting the turners) who go to the effort of making something (be it simple or advanced), taking some photos, writing and organizing a presentation, and then posting.
Everyone else is a commentator.
Not only do you need to attract new blood......you need to also attract people who will make things and post their efforts.
There are now 48 individual comments being made in this tread.....that's were the energy of this site lays......in commentary. If I were a new, young woodworker coming here, I may or may not find this type of energy attractive as I might want to see and look at some actual woodworking......and examples of woodworking at my current level of skill and woodworking at a level I might aspire to reach one day. I might, however, find this site attractive if I aspired to be a good woodworking commentator.
Perhaps changing the composition of makers/commentators more in favor of more making would help.......and there are many commentators here that could make something, take some photos, and make a posting.
I have posted on two threads in the last few days where someone posted a question looking for advice specific to what they were trying to accomplish. Clearly there is a need for this in addition to reading a project chronicle.
Unfortunately my shop is a mess and I am still working full time with lots of other distractions. Deal with it. Calling people who come here without a project to post snivelers doesn't help the site. It drives them away. The common thread is that there are more people here trying to offend than trying to help.
I agree that a lot of commentary is unhelpful but answers and advice will not go out of style.
