Shopsmith Forums

Based on Dusty’s post http://www.shopsmith.com/ss_forum/viewt ... 009#p92009 which he made some years back (seems Dusty is always out front on a issue, and often years ahead of many of us), that post has resurrected a new wave of current posts.

I am making a request for Admin and the Shopsmith team relative to what he suggests, to research where the forum itself may be able to assist members.

Since the system is in essence a large database of users, it is likely the system has features and options that are not being utilized yet that might help bring it about.

Find a member section of Profiles, there are a number of fields of data that generally are not being utilized by many, if any, active users.

To that end, I request that Admin approach the database administrator of the forum, if they are not one and the same already, to add a field such as Zip Code that would help us find and locate users geographically close to us.

While Shopsmith may or may not be able to implement a search proximity feature similar to many other systems which can identify for example items for sale on ebay within X miles, could we not do something similar on these forums? Certainly Shopsmith already actively tracks past orders utilizing the zip code field, extending Zip Code Proximity to Profile Searches, we could do much of what Dusty suggests, building regional groups of folks who had an interest in meeting face to face periodically.

Obviously if a user doesn’t populate their email field, you couldn’t contact them that way, if you were trying to set up such a collaboration, but one “how to” could help turn folks on to the prospect of how to get connected to local folks in their area, and even provide confidence for some who have not yet tested the waters with Shopsmith ownership, to realize there is far more available to them than just posting in a forum. There are friendships and trusts to be made that would further support such ownership.

Admin, what say you? Can Shopsmith discuss this or something similar to help foster such collaborations?

Thanks,
Everett L. Davis
Texas

Seems like a good idea to me. I live in Pepperell Ma. I don't have a ShopSmith yet, but my check has cleared.

The user profile already provides geographic location of those members inclined to reveal it and it displays on every post both past and present.

As for e-bay stuff, really! I consider their tolerance of what we have been doing quite generous. After all they are running a business and purchases on e-bay does not directly help that.

Also Admin has quite enough to do and I doubt there is much usable additional functions that is not already utilized. Remember this is a low budget endeavor.

As for the 'how to', filling in the profile fields will do that.

Remember some folks are paranoid about revealing personal info. A sad attribute of today's society.

Rodger that. in some places you even have to hide the box's stuff came in so the thieves don't come for an uninvited shopping trip.

JPG wrote:
Remember some folks are paranoid about revealing personal info. A sad attribute of today's society.

Haven't thought about this in a few years but did we once a map where people could add there location...... I don't recall many details but perhaps someone here does. If not I try and search for it later today.

Ed

reible wrote:Haven't thought about this in a few years but did we once a map where people could add there location...... I don't recall many details but perhaps someone here does. If not I try and search for it later today.

Ed

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid= ... 013672&z=4

Thanks! That is the one I was thinking of. Might be a bit out of date but still could be useful for finding other self identifying members.

Ed

JPG wrote:

reible wrote:Haven't thought about this in a few years but did we once a map where people could add there location...... I don't recall many details but perhaps someone here does. If not I try and search for it later today.

Ed

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid= ... 013672&z=4

JPG wrote:

reible wrote:Haven't thought about this in a few years but did we once a map where people could add there location...... I don't recall many details but perhaps someone here does. If not I try and search for it later today.

Ed

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid= ... 013672&z=4

That is very cool! That was done before my time here, but a lot of the folks/bubbles I clicked on are still active members.

I had forgotten about the map. Thanks for the reminder.

JPG wrote:The user profile already provides geographic location of those members inclined to reveal it and it displays on every post both past and present.

As for e-bay stuff, really! I consider their tolerance of what we have been doing quite generous. After all they are running a business and purchases on e-bay does not directly help that.

Also Admin has quite enough to do and I doubt there is much usable additional functions that is not already utilized. Remember this is a low budget endeavor.

As for the 'how to', filling in the profile fields will do that.

Remember some folks are paranoid about revealing personal info. A sad attribute of today's society.

The existence of the map is evidence that someone thought along the lines previously, but I know of 20 or more folks in Texas that I have met with Shopsmith gear that are not on the map. Someone has to put themselves on the map.

When I checked this morning: We had 41084 users • Page 1 of 2055 pages • 20 Users per Page

I was suggesting that we use some form of automation to aggregate users by zip code opposed to letting our fingers do the walking through 2055 pages, and opening each one of the members profile to see if they had listed a location, and an email and then manually building a list of folks we might want to contact near us. We still will be typing a list and build a potential email contact list from it.

Some will embrace that kind of contact. Others will not prefer to. Right now we don’t have a viable option that I am aware of to make it feasible to do, nor a ‘configured’ way to extract the relevant data, if we could.

I was not asking for the system to do the contacting, only present a report of folks we could identify near us that we could identify by proximity, then collaborate with in person where and when choose.

Of those 2055 Pages of members only 173 pages of members and 13 members of 20 on page 174 (sorted by number of posts) have ever posted anything here.

Of the 3460 members who have posted, only 840 have posted more than 10 times.

On the first page we find the most sage among us, who have posted thousands of times and contributed untold volumes to the collective knowledge. Those are the Platinum members. Indeed one only becomes Platinum after they have contributed 500 or more posts. There are 3½ pages of Platinum members or just over 75 people. There are another 20 or so who are close to becoming Platinum members.

On 43rd page of 2055 is the beginning of users who posted 10 times
On 45th page of 2055 - 9 times
On 49th page of 2055 - 8 times
On 53rd page of 2055 - 7 times
On 57th page of 2055 - 6 times
On 63rd page of 2055 - 5 times
On 71st page of 2055 - 4 times
On 82nd page of 2055 - 3 times
On 99th page of 2055 – 2 times
On 128th page of 2055 the end of those who posted – 1 time

From Page 129 to Page 2055 we have users who have never posted at all.

1926 pages of users (20 per page) who have never posted: 38,520 of the 41,084 members.

It does not mean they have not read volumes of valuable information here.

That is 0.93% who post. 99.07% have never posted a thing here.

It doesn't mean they aren't using their Shopsmith equipment, nor that they are not benefitting from the knowledge base, as thousands upon thousands more who are who are not members, but can read all the content. It does not mean they aren't Shopsmith customers actively buying products, parts and services.

With over 99% of the Shopsmith forum members not posting, and thousands perhaps hundreds of thousands actively benefiting from content here, my point is that there are likely folks all over, very near to us who could become engaged either here, or in person if we are geographically near each other.

I believe there are thousands of folks out there, who read the contributions who are not members, and there are members who never post because they have found the answers they needed without having to do so.

I don’t want to turn it into a social media site forum, or anything of that nature, but there are folks here I know I want to meet in person, and I suspect I am not alone. JPG, you are among those.

Equally none of us want to build a map to our respective front doors for a variety of reasons.

Everett