Shopsmith Forums

Certain members "the Village Elders" on this forum have spoken.

I have heard from them through various threads, and private messages. The messages have come through loud and clear. They don't like what I have done for one reason, or more.

Apparently they run this forum, they make their own rules, judge who has broken them and who hasn't, and their word is law. They speak for you.

So, I quit.

I will no longer be posting any videos on this forum.

The owners and operators of this forum (I would guess Shopsmith) had no involvement on my decision, whatsoever. This is solely my own choice.

Here are the youtube channels I posted videos from:

My Growth Rings with Scott Markwood: https://www.youtube.com/c/MyGrowthRings

Woodshop Nerdery, (a non-monetized channel): https://www.youtube.com/c/woodshopnerdery

Nick Engler's Workshop Companion, (a non-monetized channel): https://www.youtube.com/c/WorkshopCompanion

If you want to continue to watch videos from these great guys, just use the links above.

See you around, and happy woodworking. -Chad

Speaking as one of the more elderly members of this forum - your input WILL BE MISSED.

It would be very interesting to know which of the "Village Elders" have voiced disapproval and exactly what did they disapprove of.

+1 on dusty's post . ?

+100

+1 Dusty’s post, also.

I’m certainly not a “Village Elder”, but more likely someone who is the intended audience of these videos. As I’m not retired, I don’t have the time to bounce around the Internet looking for and accessing all the valuable videos available, and I “normally” value the discussions that happen on this forum. I have appreciated coming to this single forum and finding what’s new. I’ve learned a lot from the videos. Losing them from this forum will hurt the value of this forum. Up to this point, we’ve had a great learning and sharing environment.

I’ve only been involved in this forum for around 10 months, and I’ve seen a bunch of people put a lot of their effort and time into adding value. A lot more have come to ask questions, share their challenges and successes, and even try to share a little of what they have learned here. But I’ve also seen a few who are quick to criticize and sometimes just get plain mean, as if being decent should only be expected of others. I say, if you want to be that way, go back to Facebook, where that seems to be the expected protocol, and is why I left it in 2016. And telling people they need to have thicker skin does not absolve you of being inconsiderate and disrespectful.

Since I joined this forum I have been impressed by broad willingness to share experience, and some members appear to get joy out of doing so. I’ve never been made to feel inferior for being a new woodworker, and most members have taken great pains to be considerate. That is the majority of members here.

I have also seen discussions about dwindling membership and participation on the forum. This is often blamed on decreasing interest in woodworking, but it looks to me like there is actually quite a bit of interest, but they are going other places for their information. There are many reasons for this, but you can be certain that offending, and running off, anyone who has long been putting significant effort into making this forum more valuable, is not going to attract more forum members. To keep this forum alive, and to ensure it remains valuable to ShopSmith, we need to attract new membership and not run them off.

I would encourage Chad to ignore what I believe is probably the “vocal minority” and to continue making his efforts to benefit those of us who need what he’s been doing for us.I’ve seen it happen in several organizations, and it frequently happens in politics, the vocal minority are so loud and offensive that it’s hard to recognize that there is a much larger majority who disagree with some or all of the minority’s views.

I beg of you all, and especially those who have acted offensively in this latest brouhaha, to just stop and think about whether whether what you are doing will attract more membership or run them off. We all need to be aware of forum guidelines, but there are very few of us who are responsible for enforcing them. If ShopSmith had a problem with “commercialism” you can be sure they will let us know.

If you look into the potential commercial aspect of MGR, if 100 people joined as members, Scott would be raking in a huge windfall of $300 a month! Wow!! He’s going to get rich off his (how many?) hours put into planning, gathering equipment and supplies, making sure he has the audio, video, lighting equipment, and often buying some tool (or cyclone dust separator), and finally editing, posting, and participating in the comment section of the You Tube Channel. Like someone said, he likely benefits ShopSmith sales. The only thing non-members miss out on is the mid-week Q&A, but only if they don’t catch it during the week it gets posted. Scott basically gives away everything, but charges for archival access to the Q&A session, which I admit is occasionally more valuable than the weekend session.

I come into this forum expecting to meet up with friends or potential friends, all walking the same woodworking road; with some more experienced than others, but all wanting to help or encourage each of us as we try to become more skilled with each project. If this is true, why do we automatically assume that others are to do something nefarious. I don’t know about you, but I’ve certainly came up with some great ideas that weren’t so great. There are at least a few ways that Chad could have done what he was trying to do, which was to hopefully benefit us in how we find the video topics and encourage better and more focused discussions of those videos, but his foundational mistake was not presenting the idea for discussion beforehand. I think that collectively we could have met his goal, but made it function better than what resulted. Plus we might have avoided this whole learning opportunity (the hard way). But we, forum members could have all had respectful conversations about what happened, as if we were talking with friends.

Chad, I want you to know how much I appreciate all the work you have done before and since I’ve been a member here. And I hope you will reconsider your decision as it has greater impact on those of us who are new than it has on the vocal old timers who already know much of what’s presented.

Thanks again to you all for your focus on making this a better forum.

Well Said!!!

An absolutely well thought out response. to all that has gone on here about this subject.

To the "Village Elders"

It would be appreciated if the "Village Elders" whose comments brought this to be would stand up and speak out. I do not believe that you speak for the majority and if you do then "I quit".

I make no claim to being a Village Elder, moreover my comments to Chad on this subject are public.

To be clear, I never objected to Chad posting new videos, which he has been doing for some time. What I objected to was Chad systematically re-posting to the forum every one of Scott's old videos -- all of which Chad had himself previously posted to the forum in another thread -- because he was dissatisfied with how many people on the forum commented on Scott's videos. I viewed that as a deliberate spamming of the forum for the benefit of another site, i.e. Scott's YouTube channel (which also just happens to be monetized).

In addition, after I discovered that Chad was listed in the credits of the videos as one of the "Chairmen of the Board" of Scott's YouTube channel and listened to Scott describing in one of his videos how he and the "Chairmen" meet monthly to discuss strategy for the channel, I questioned the veracity of Chad's claim that Scott really had nothing to do with the decision to spam the forum by re-posting every one of Scott's prior videos.

FYI, Chairman of the Board is a subscription level on Sott’s channel, so it only means that Chad pays more than $2.99 per month to have the opportunity to be more involved with videos that Scott does for the community. I still don’t see any profit motive; it appears more like service to our community to me. It’s one of the strengths of our ShopSmith community.