Good morning

Show and tell can be frustrating too

I stop by reddit each day to look at woodworking. Some of the work shown there is of the lowest quality I've seen. But yet they get lots of pats on the back telling them their work is just spectacular. I give them suggestions to improve and point out some mistakes. Then I get piled on for discouraging comments and not giving out participation trophies. That is way worse than commentary to me. 

Re: Show and tell can be frustrating too

It can........I've never been to Reddit......but, does it have the volume of traffic that Ellis seeks?.......and is there a continuum of projects from very simple to complicated/advanced on Reddit?........and if there is, perhaps you would feel more comfortable participating in a tread with a more advanced woodworker who might be receptive to a real critique......I think you have to get a feeling for this like an elementary teacher develops so they know when to only praise and when they begin to sense that their student is ready to receive some more realistic input......

So, I'm not advocating the praise thing......just where it might be welcome......and the more pointed advise/insight where that is sought.....

But, the model of a woodworking forum with ever decreasing actual examples of woodworking does not seem to be working well......if it were, Ellis has nothing to worry about......

Are you saying Viagra will improve my WW skills? :-)

Norm retired and so did a lot of us weekend warriors, and social media has taken the next generation

Re: Symptoms and Disorders

Agreed!

Re: Delta knew they were in trouble in the late 90s

I think what helped to "kill off" Delta and other North American companies was the influx of imports from Taiwan, then China. I know several guys who would have bought a Uni-saw, but opted for a Grizzly clone which was about US $ 300+ cheaper. 

Re: Show and tell can be frustrating too

I log onto the FaceBook primarily for the Black Powder Cartridge Rifle shooting and the Abandoned Railroad pages and sometimes, 1 or 2 woodworking pages. As for the woodworking pages, if you make a comment that the group doesn't like you are classified as a "hater" and/or several people mention "if you can't say anything positive, don't say anything." And heaven help the poster who mentions he/she has Fe$tool or SawStop. There are a few really skilled woodworkers, but they are few and far between. 

Re: Software

Badger Pond! Now that was a woodworking site I haven't thought about or heard mentioned in years. Hard to believe it has been 20 years or so years since it closed. 

Re: Show and tell can be frustrating too

Peter.....I had no idea that there were these large numbers of people involved at Reddit......now, that is amazing.

Perhaps a "welcoming committee" could be formed here that you could turn to for future responses to visitors seeking information. It should not happen that people visiting the site leave feeling ignored. There is no guarantee that such an effort will bind someone to WC; but, at least the effort would be made.

I figured I'd wait

Because the forum would potentially blow up with negative reactions. Derek, I'm a pattern recognizer. When ellis sent me an email, I recognized from talking to him before that there was a low probability that the email he sent me was done in his words. you posted similar later. If I had to bet at lloyds, it was taken from someone other than ellis and put in an email by ellis. I don't think ellis had ill intent. Given that people often fail to say what they did, but follow up with "it could have been ....did you consider that?", then I'm left to find out what was most likely. That's what I posted. 

The rest, I agree. It's ultimately not about you, though that incident did give me a chance to consider if I'm wasting my time posting on forums. ultimately, The reality is the issue not of what I do, what you do, what charlie does, or that warren corrects things. The issue is I really have no idea how you, me or anyone else revives a forum - I think the Lloyds betting window answer is it can't be done. But I also have to be honest - I don't care if it's revived. It was a snapshot in time just like plectrum banjo bands. Things just go out of style. 

Last week, I made a rasp, I cooked a rosin varnish, and I cooked a japanning varnish and tried them. While I was doing it, I didn't think that I was bored with someone trying to improve what wood planes are made from (I know the answers to those questions) or have my time wasted by a disgruntled tax preparer who "has read everything".

I haven't got an answer for the forums. I'm usually full of ideas - no clue if they'd work, but I've got none for this. Outcome is outcome, and it's fun to speculate on causes - but I think the reality is the growth phase was when the small amount of people doing things did them and 90% more acquired stuff and imagined they could. I think the media fed hobby now is blacksmithing and maybe ten other things, but people filled their shops with dust collection and stationary tools and some of them didn't survive long enough to get rid of them and many others will be disappointed to find out how much work it is to get their space back. If they were bursting with enthusiasm, they'd just be here regardless. 

Data - and John NM, I owe you something

https://www.woodcentral.com/archive/index.php?find=&op=AND&poster=&date1=2015-01-01&date2=2015-12-31&forum=Hand_Tools&submit=Submit

At one point, I mentioned above, the HT forum was so dead in the mid 2010s that there would be no posts for several days. The last year here shows about 1500 posts. 

The link above is 2015. I searched on a space, so hopefully that means every post that has a space anywhere is found. That should be substantially all. 3928 in 2015, and it looks like I made about 500 of those posts. 

You can go through the list of posters and it's not so much that they are no longer posting here. They're no longer posting anywhere. They didn't go out with a bang (well, some of them had differences of opinion with the forum moderation in general and left), they just left. Maybe a few are deceased, I don't know. 

Charlie, for all of his crying about who doesn't offer something interesting to other people had a single post with an answer that was usable - over an entire year. One post discussing not allowing a marking gauge head to move. What a sacrifice. 

To look further back, the 2008 calendar year doesn't fit within the 10,000 result limit - that is, there are more than 10k posts in hand tools that year. The wheels were in motion and I'd bet that if someone wanted to do a count year by year, it wouldn't be an issue of level success and then one year someone talked too much about tool steel and things went off of the deep end. 

Separately - for those of us who like to go deep on new topics, there is a rousing discussion about making natural resin varnishes going on through email. I no longer post here, but several who used to have decided that we don't really need anything more than an email discussion. It's certainly better in this case, and I feel no obligation to provide content with any of it for the benefit of a forum, and with the static about whether or not it's the right topic anyway. This month, it's varnish and preparing linseed oil for varnish, last month it was probably something else. That's just data of what goes on - five years ago, it's a topic that would've started here and proceeded and potentially ended up with an article - as the unicorn thing did, where the proceeds from the magazine article just went back to this forum itself instead of the authors requesting to keep the money. 

I can think of a lot of missteps, but every day we start with the game 0-0 and it's not like there's a score to settle. It just informs decisions going forward. When I got the request to not talk about tool steel, it did go through my head - I wonder how many people actually contributed more than complaining or cutting and pasting to the board, and how many bought stuff listed in benefit auctions. 

Referencing the varnish discussion, for example, there's enough depth that something will get published. it won't be by me, so it's not my decision, but to be frank, I wouldn't post it here if it needed to go somewhere permanent. The board doesn't really deserve it, and it would just disappear into a chronological listing that nobody would look at, anyway - that would be the case for all forums - the discussion is present moment, and the ability for information to be usable in some way that's compact doesn't exist in the first place. it should be published in a book or permanent organized online reference. Maybe it will be. 

------------------

John NM  - I still owe you some pencils for doing me the solid of supplying incense cedar. I don't think you demanded that, I said I'd get you some. By the time I get them made, they might be metal - or petrified wood. 

last post - faux eva - promise

I have heard elsewhere that some topics dominate the board and it keeps people from wanting to post because they feel not far along. However, this is about like Mike Brady and others who came out of the woodwork when i left "I would post if it weren't for people like David and a few others". they failed to appear - there was a gaggle, but I remember Mike because I never had a cross word with him that I can recall. 

the same kind of folks celebrated when they could get George in trouble for calling Chris Schwarz a sloppy maker - able to move fingers and post text when it's celebrating something negative, but that's it. 

Here's the search data from looking at the archives - note 10k cap on number of posts returned, so we don't really know the actual # of posts in 2012. The cap iron topic brought a lot of traffic to this board.  I did my best at the time to try to direct people here because this wasn't the blue forum or some other place where everything gets frozen and removed constantly if a single person complains - there could be substantive discussion that was actually usable  - because the board was left alone without engineering to chase a what could be but probably won't kind of thing. 

The two arrows are:

* first, the cap iron bounce, and

* the later one is plane iron testing, unicorn and toolmaking with subsequent drop off

But the drop off isn't unprecedented, it's what I referred to - by the time 2018 came along, there wasn't enough mass and criticality stopped. 

Sure, if you get to it one day

No worries if you don't.  I hated to waste that cedar but I had no use for it really, so it just sat on the rack.  It was serendipity that I happened to know the one person I've ever heard of making their own pencils   I put an email address in the post if you want to ping me.  The other one still works but eventually will be retired.

Interesting about making varnish, I would have liked to read that.  I remember Stephen Shepherd talked a lot about linseed oil & various historical preparations in his book about it.  I always wondered how scientifically accurate it was, I would have enjoyed hearing Bill's thoughts on the subject.

Re: Am I new or ancient to WC? (Good morning F/U)

One thing I have always looked for in a forum is the Total Number Of Posts by a Member. Low-number gave me the opportunity to welcome a new member; I felt better too, when new. Massive-number meant the party was well respected ... and, either helpful or blowhard. 

Yes

Re: Your error speaks to both users and the forum

To have the default display be the exploded view all the threads, the thread subject repeated over and over.

The default thread view of one message at the time, and again listing all the replies subjects lines, which in most cases is a repeat of the line.

One can change the preferences to compressed view and guestbook view, but next time I clear my browser settings, or use a new device it's back to the defaults.

Just my cranky 2 cents.

Rafael

Re: Good morning

Your problem, Ellis, is that you don't know how to use the cap iron. 

Peter Martin wrote:

Re: Symptoms and Disorders

This guy seem to  be doing something similar on YouTube

I came across his products in FOG. There're enough hobby woodworkers out there who won't mind paying money to buy jigs and gadgets to support this kind of seller or Tuber. Many FOGgers buy 3D- print products even though they are woodworkers and make things out of woodworkers. Their money, their say, but I have never dealt with any Tuber sellers.