What Needs to be Done

dusty · Post by **dusty** » Sun Oct 28, 2012 6:16 am

to bring more of the guests on board as active members.

This morning, when I logged on, there were 7 members and 123 guests.

It would be so nice if you folks would all become active. I know that you all have something great to offer the forum and I think the forum has much to give in return.

Surprise me, please.

Tomorrow, when I log on, I hope to find 123 new members and 7 guests and the guests are all MSNbot spiders.

A special welcome to all of you who have just recently joined the forum. I see a rather long list of new names (names I don't recognize) who are now posting. Keep the comments and questions coming. It is always great to have new input.

wingrider · Post by **wingrider** » Sun Oct 28, 2012 5:05 pm

Dusty,
Yes, it would be nice to see more members than guests on here. I don't post very often, but do read the post most every day. I don't always log in when I am just reading post on here. Could be that other are doing the same and only log in when they want to post something.

dusty · Post by **dusty** » Sun Oct 28, 2012 5:11 pm

wingrider wrote:Dusty,
Yes, it would be nice to see more members than guests on here. I don't post very often, but do read the post most every day. I don't always log in when I am just reading post on here. Could be that other are doing the same and only log in when they want to post something.

I am sure you are correct. There are many people who, for reasons of their own, do nothing more than check in to read and that is good. It would just be nice if we could get to know these people better; get them to become members of this small family.

They all have so much to offer. I guess I am just selfish. I would like to be able to learn from them.

mrhart · Post by **mrhart** » Sun Oct 28, 2012 8:45 pm

I think I've taken it upon myself to ask more than my share of questions and as many dumb ones as possible. I guess I would rather ask and have a conversation with someone instead of just searching and reading sometimes. Both I believe are good ways to learn.
Dusty if we're all family...what are you making for dinner on Thanksgiving and what could I bring? Don't you just love extended family..

lightnin · Post by **lightnin** » Sun Oct 28, 2012 8:49 pm

Most of those were probably search engine bots gathering info for their respective search engines.

dusty · Post by **dusty** » Mon Oct 29, 2012 7:26 am

lightnin wrote:Most of those were probably search engine bots gathering info for their respective search engines.

There were and are some search engine bots but right not there are 171 guests of which only 10 are search engines.

The viewing audience is growing; there is no doubt about that. The neat part is that many are starting to participate on the forum. There are many user names that I do not recognize. It has not been all that long ago since I felt as if I recognized everyone whose name showed here. Not any more and that is good.

dgale · Post by **dgale** » Mon Oct 29, 2012 9:14 am

As a newcomer around here, I came I presume like most folks - I own a Shopsmith and have questions, curiosities, troubles, and/or looking for folks with similar interests. My guess is lots of folks lurking in the background are either looking for an answer to a quick question and/or not sure how to jump in or what they could contribute.

I don't usually advocate discussion sites to create a bunch of new forums as many times on similar discussion sites I think they have to many different forums and things get lost. But that being said, there are a relatively small number of forums here and perhaps some thought into how that could be changed or expanded a bit to entice more folks to join and participate. Maybe a welcome/introduction/general FAQ forum.

I presume many folks come here for troubleshooting, question answering, and for resources. I'm not sure what the rules are about what can be posted but many similar sites have a "Yard Sale" where folks can sell items and parts they don't need without having to go the E-Bay route - many folks often prefer to pass their items on to "family" rather than just try to make a buck on E-Bay...anyway, this is usually something fairly popular if allowed. The downside to this is that you might start getting a lot of new members just here to sell stuff...this is often addressed by having a minimum membership time and/or participation level before you can post to that forum.

Something else that would be really popular but probably not allowed would be to have a repository of pdf's of the various accessory owner's manuals. Assuming this is not okay, perhaps folks could still have a spot to post designs and plans and any literature that is not a copyright issue etc.

Anyway, just some brainstormed thoughts FWIW

dgale · Post by **dgale** » Mon Oct 29, 2012 11:12 am

Another thought for a possible site addition would be a "Photo Gallery" Forum - a place where folk's photos could be organized and easily accessible. Maybe different threads for each type of SS where folks can post photos of their machine(s), and/or threads for restorations, how-to's, projects folks are working on or want to show off, photos of folks workshops etc. I'm sure there have been tons of photos posted on this site but this could be a way to better organize them and encourage folks to contribute photos of their own.

dusty · Post by **dusty** » Mon Oct 29, 2012 2:48 pm

dgale wrote:Another thought for a possible site addition would be a "Photo Gallery" Forum - a place where folk's photos could be organized and easily accessible. Maybe different threads for each type of SS where folks can post photos of their machine(s), and/or threads for restorations, how-to's, projects folks are working on or want to show off, photos of folks workshops etc. I'm sure there have been tons of photos posted on this site but this could be a way to better organize them and encourage folks to contribute photos of their own.

It would be convenient if everything fell into nice little folders that we could go to but that would require some discipline on the part of the membership. My experience indicates that we, as a group, seriously lack that discipline.

To see what I mean just go browse through any one of the forum groups. We do not stay on topic. I have gotten used to it and now just roll with the tide. I let myself go wherever the forum (and my undisciplined character) takes me. I pay the price when I want to retrieve something I posted or read weeks or months ago.

A photo gallery would also be good to have but it too would require full time attention to keep everything in the right place.

paulmcohen · Post by **paulmcohen** » Thu Nov 01, 2012 5:27 am

This forum supports RSS feeds, my computer downloads the title and first few lines every hour from all the forums. I read offline and when something interest me I go online. When I am online my browser logs me in automatically or else I would not see the pictures and could not reply. My guess I a lot of automated tools are doing the same thing maybe without people even knowing it.