Did we fail?

I think it was two problems.  Both declining interest in using forums and also the forum having a different feel than other forums in terms of environment.  Around 2007 I remember V-Bulletin pulling ahead of other forum software solutions, and there being discussion of changing over to it at that time.  I remember that most WC users at the time didn't like the idea of switching to V-Bulletin (including myself).  There are now other software solutions that have moved past V-Bulletin but largely have a similar look and feel, but even those seem to have exhibited much declined use compared to 2007.

I think that most of the problem is the result of declining interest in forums.  The question is whether or not this is permanent.  I tend to think it is now, but I doubt I would have thought so 20 years ago.  The reason I now think it's permanent is that a similar thing happened when email lists were supplanted by forums - the reason I think that happened is that humans dislike waiting - and forums involve waiting compared to finding a convenient youtube vid answering one's problems.  I think vids will likely also fall by the wayside compared to immediate, yet often marginally correct AI answers.

This isn't the only forum with dwindling posts. I go on a Cdn WWIng forum and it is pretty stagnant now compared to what it was. Given other interests as well as WWing, Facebook seems to have filled a lot of the space as well as reddit.
For a lot of things, watching a video on Youtube is a good method especially for beginners who probably would have more difficulty understanding a procedure written out.  A case in point is Raffan's book on turning, even with the diagrams his videos were a better method. Generally, for a "how-to" about computer stuff, videos drive me nuts, I much prefer written instructions.
I don't agree AI will cause videos to fall by the wayside and it may use videos to augment its answer.
While I don't have hard data, I think that WWing is not as popular a hobby as it used to be and a lot of participants are getting old. I read, on various sites, more questions about how to sell off a shop full of tools.

Bill Howatt wrote:

I don't agree AI will cause videos to fall by the wayside and it may use videos to augment its answer.
While I don't have hard data, I think that WWing is not as popular a hobby as it used to be and a lot of participants are getting old. I read, on various sites, more questions about how to sell off a shop full of tools.

You may be right about AI Bill, I certainly don't know what the future holds.  I just see a trend in videos to move from longer, more informative (if you're lucky!) content to a couple minutes of short compressed things that play well on phones, tik-tok style.  Figure eventually even those will fall out of favor as it's too short to show anything of substance.  But I don't watch a lot of woodworking vids, I find them a waste of time.  There are better vids for time wasting in my view - mostly movie clips that cover your favorite parts of a movie you've already seen.

The same thing happened with a big drop in popularity and participation before I was born, and about 10-20 years later there was a rebirth of interest in the hobby.   I got interested about a third of the way into that rebirth I would guess.  I kinda expect to see another rebirth in the next 10 years or so, but I doubt it will manifest with forum participation.  It may not happen at all given how drastically media consumption has changed - that wasn't a speed bump that the last lull/rebirth had to contend with, people still read books and magazines in the early 1980's when the last one really got going.

I, too, actually prevent youtube from every recommending any video provider twice. 

But having seen reddit, which is already out of date, it don't think the hobby is declining at least in headcount - it's getting strange compared to what it was when I started 20 years ago, which is, of course, a different place than where it was 20 years before that. 

There are a *lot* of apartment woodworkers who don't really ever go anywhere and I think I mistake talking to most of them because they don't really have much for expectations and just want paint by number. 

There is an explosion in stuff just marketed toward social media promotion and affiliates, and a lot of it on a one-man scale if it's domestic and I can't even comment on the other glorified chinese copy stuff. There are some real shysters. the one-man scale stuff being like a specialty maker of just parts for tools, or even just tool handles. LN and LV seem to be selling stuff hand over fist, but you'll have trouble figuring out who it is - or I do, at least.

DavidW wrote:

I, too, actually prevent youtube from every recommending any video provider twice. 

I think Linux Mint has FreeTube installed. If not

sudo apt install freetube