Why am I getting this message?

OK I'll put in my .02 and that's about what it is worth. I have been a member of this forum from it's very beginning. I was here before there was a here. The idea of this forum was to create a place where all were included, a place where no single person had anymore say so then anyone else. A place where folks could feel free to post questions, show off there work, get advice and in general allow fellowship among folks with a common interest and that was woodworking. In doing so we have come up with a resource with an abundance of information that fills a need for many. Some come here for the fellowship other come here just for the information side of things and all are welcome as long as they play by the simple rules. We like to think of ourselves a one big happy family but we also need to realize that while a few choose to participate there are also others who have no interest in joining in. They view this forum as a resource. That's ok and it is the price we pay for being a public forum. From the very beginning we have had discussion as to how we could get the lurkers to join in. I have made a number of posts where I have tried to encourage the lurkers to become participates and have come to the conclusion that if they want to they will and nothing we can do the force them will work. Furthermore I see that this latest attempt has actually offended a few of the regulars and I see that as a bad thing. To add one more thing I am yet to hear from anyone who said "gee I haven't posted in a while and thanks for the e mail to remind me of that". I see that this my cause more harm then good. OK I'll get off of my soap box.

OK one more thing. We have made it a policy that one can only view the pictures are member. For this reason if someone is doing web research on a project the only way they can get the information they need is to be a member. I have gone back to doing leather work since I am no longer able to do woodworking. I joined a leather working forum so I could learn. I did post to introduce my self but for now I confine myself to browsing the vast library of information so that I can improve myself. I will post questions later when I get good enough to attempt some of the thing those guys are doing but for now I am a lurker. Just a little more food for thought.

Well... I must admit that I over reacted a bit, so in compensation I will say that there members that have been absent for quite a while and when they have come back, they have been welcomed and received as if nothing had happened. They have been missed and so it has been expressed, and I believe that this (among other things) is what makes this forum different from many others.
When I joined this forum I got a very warm welcome, which like Leo left me baffled and overwhelmed, later on, getting to know some of the members personally and having been help by many others confirmed my opinion about this family. I have more friends here than in my own town, the pity is that we are so far away.

On the other hand, if I look at it positively, the message has achieved its goal as many of us are taking part on the thread and discussing and expressing opinions which I believe it is always good.

I thought it was one of those messages the bad guys send out to see if you are alive, confirm you look at this spot, etc. so they can send you advertisements or worse.

Enjoy,
JimB

Personally, I believe the message is worded well. The only person who will see the message is the person to whom it applies when they log in to the site. It's not like a message is being broadcast to the entire membership base to embarrass anyone. The message is simply intended to encourage those who normally lurk to get involved regardless of their level of expertise. It's a good idea!

Bill Arnold said:

Personally, I believer the message is worded well. The only person who will see the message is the person to whom it applies when they log in to the simore E-mailte. It's not like a message is being broadcast to the entire membership base to embarrass anyone. The message is simply intended to encourage those who normally lurk to get involved regardless of their level of expertise. It's a good idea!

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So if I lurk and don't post then what...more e-mails. If someone wants to say something then that is their choice. This discussion reminds me of a story Bill Cosby once said. He was talking about a family who had a son who never talked for years and years they tried to get him to talk. The Doctors said there was no medical reason and no one could figure out but he still did not talk. Then one morning he come down for breakfast sat down took a bit of his oat meal and said "this cereal is cold" well everyone was was shocked and his dad said, "son all these year you never talked and now you have decided to talk why have you waited so long" to which the boy replied "up until now everything was ok."

Don, you have been here long enough to see the amount participation go down and up and right now its way down. so if you thought that by taking someone by the hand to the other side of the creek they could possibly catch more fish wouldnt you try it as well?

Well I post an ata boy from time to time. Some see this as a waste of time and bandwidth. others appreciate it as encouragement. I see is a a way to show appreciation for the sharing of their talent. I haven't posted much about what I am doing as I haven't been doing much woodworking. i hope to be doing something to share or get help with in the future and I hope no one gets upset over the success or failure over this attempt by the mods to get more activity. This includes the mods who seem upset that the effort hasn't been universally appreciated.

However usually any social engineering is likely to fail, when tried on independent thinkers, which almost everyone here seems to be.(and I think that's a good thing) I am sure it is well meant but almost guaranteed to fail as it tries to change people..

No intent to insult anyone by me............
Garry

OK, several points, and I apologize in advance if I come off a little stern:

This is NOT an email message or a Private Message. It is not spam nor a form letter, either. It is simply a small blurb at the top of the page when you log in. We have a similar message for new users to tell them about registering to vote. It's not like we're bombarding the member with tons of text and blocking their screen with a pop-up message. Relax, people. Have a look. (Click the image to see a bigger version in a new tab or window.) And you see that little "X" in the upper right corner of the message box? Click that and the message goes away! Is this message really all that horrible that you can't just click a little X and go along with your life? I'm honestly amazed at how upset people are getting over a very minor inconvenience that was instituted with good intentions.



Reading the discussion here, I can see that the message should be re-worded. (By the way, you can all blame me for the current wording of the message.) It should be presented more as a "Welcome Back" than a "Please Post Something" message. That's easily done. But for crying out loud, if you don't like the message, just click the X and make it go away!

Leo, I'm bummed that you feel you are treated like an outsider here or that your posts have been ignored. Personally, when I see you drop in (as well as a few hundred other semi-regulars), I just think "Cool, Leo stropped by. Haven't seen him in a while. Wonder what he's been up to?" In your post above, you suggested a committee of regular members be assigned the duty of reaching out to members to encourage their participation. We have exactly such a committee: Our Moderators, who are elected every six months. This just happened to be the method they decided to try to use to reach out to members. As has been said, it apparently needs some tweaking, but it was done in the spirit of trying to help the forum.

As Don said upthread, when this place was founded we recognized that there would be some active participants and some lurkers who never posted. That's perfectly OK. But encouraging others to post helps all of us, both lurkers and regular posters, because we can all learn more when there are more voices in the discussion.

Larry you missed my point. I applaud the effort, I mentioned that I have tried posting appeals to lurkers and had no success. I am merely pointing out that If we did something that offended someone and to me it sounded like we did then we need to stop doing it. We need to accept the fact that not everyone will participate all of the time and some will not participate at all. I honestly don't think that this will have any effect on participation. You say that posts are down well they are always down in the winter heck some folks can't even get to their shops. This has been a very hard winter for some folks so I am not surprised that they are not posting woodworking project some might be using their project just to keep warm. Ya might think about some other things to get the newbies post like maybe a contest. you know like the person who posts the most project in the next 90 day wins... Oh I don't know how about a years free membership...... Oh and if you think I am gonna tell ya where my fishing spot is you have another thing coming.

Yes I am a "lurker". I very much enjoy the articles and have learned quite a bit of information on this site. However I am a little bit computer unsavy so I don't as a rule post items. As
time goes by I do get my two cents as I need to.
By the way how do you ground a dust system to a shop vacuum?

EDIT: I copied your question to a new thread David so it wouldn't get lost in this discussion, can find it here... http://familywoodworking.org/forums/showthread.php?32287-Grounding-Dust-System-To-Collector - Darren

Don, I agree that the chances are good that lurkers will remain lurkers, and there's nothing wrong with that. But I don't see the harm in trying something to convince them to post once in a while. And I'm sorry that the message might have offended a few people, but should we completely abandon an idea just because a few people can't click a little "X" in the corner of a message box?

Seriously, this message takes up less than 1/2" on my screen and it takes A SINGLE MOUSE CLICK to get rid of it. Most websites have much larger banner ads that don't go away.

I don't know if what i'm about to say helps or not ... but as an owner of a woodworking forum also seeing its participation declining lately, I felt I had a possibly helpful point of view.

We've tried contests. We've tried giveaways. We've tried encouraging. We've tried all kinds of things. None of them did much good, I hate to say. The contests were encouraging but the 3rd time around, there were only 2 participants ... that's kind of a bummer.

Here's what I know for a fact: The only reason someone is going to post on a forum is if they believe they'll get something out of it. Plain and simple. That 'something' is different for everybody. Some people get loads of value out of helping others so they post because they like to help and share their knowledge. GOOD. Some people get the value by asking a wealth of knowledge for help and they almost always get that help because of the first group of folks.

Here's another list of things I have noticed about why people do NOT post on forums: Being goaded into it never works. Feeling intimidated by the membership is a huge one. Not knowing how to word their question succinctly is another one.

Those reasons not to post, in my experience accounts for maybe 20% of the people who lurk. And that's being generous. Lurkers lurk because they want to. The only way to make them post is to offer something they'll want more. Content is the key. Encourage your regulars to post how-tos, finished projects, works in progress, tutorials, etc. Those things seem to draw people in - it's woodworking information that people want so you gotta have a lot of good stuff to bring people in.

It ebs and flows with the seasons - for sure. I started emailing members who haven't logged in for 30 days (and it'll stop after 2 notices) and brought back a half dozen or so members ... for how long? dunno .. it's up to the content at that point. I guess what I'm saying is that if the content isn't there, these gentle reminders aren't a permanent fix. I WISH i knew what was ... because I'm seeing the same pattern on my forum -- dwindling numbers, less participation. The time of year is definitely a factor ... but the content is probably more influential than that. I still haven't figured out how to provide good content short of trying to get leaders to lead by example.

Sorry for the long diatribe ... Neither side of this argument is wrong. It's just the trajectory of the effort that needs adjusting, I think.

Interesting and informative post Jason, thanks.

David Johnson said:

Yes I am a "lurker". I very much enjoy the articles and have learned quite a bit of information on this site. However I am a little bit computer unsavy so I don't as a rule post items. As
time goes by I do get my two cents as I need to.
By the way how do you ground a dust system to a shop vacuum?

EDIT: I copied your question to a new thread David so it wouldn't get lost in this discussion, can find it here... http://familywoodworking.org/forums/showthread.php?32287-Grounding-Dust-System-To-Collector - Darren

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David I see that Darren already did as I was going to suggest since you might have better luck in the woodworking Q&A section 16 posts in 5 year well that's better then many out there keep on posting. Hope you get your answer.

thanks jason for your insight and i agree with you on content being a calling card, and if the weather or time of year stops woodworking that i can understand as well as for the contests i have seen that here as well.. we had one brought up got a handful of takers then it fizzled.. so we were suggested this attempt to get those to help pick up the pace but you know as well as i do that the best laid plans dont always work..

larry merlau said:

thanks jason for your insight and i agree with you on content being a calling card, and if the weather or time of year stops woodworking that i can understand as well as for the contests i have seen that here as well.. we had one brought up got a handful of takers then it fizzled.. so we were suggested this attempt to get those to help pick up the pace but you know as well as i do that the best laid plans dont always work..

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I hear ya, Larry. The Post-Modern Industrial Lurking Woodworker is a very temperamental creature indeed. Skittish, flighty, obsessive and suspicious, the beast has yet to be tamed! (said with that tone you hear on nature shows... lol)

As a gentle reminder to folks who seldom post I don't have a problem with it.
However, as a member who considers many of you as close friends and who posts quite a bit, I would be bothered that I got the message addressed to me rather than a personal PM or posting asking if I was OK.
I do understand the intention and applaud the mods for coming up with ideas to bring the lurkers to joining in.

My main problem was the way Leo was responded to. I thought the remarks were insensitive and uncalled for.

I got it and it didn't offend me at all. It made me think that hay I probably do need to contribute more. I'm as big a lurker as anybody I guess. Heck I've made a little over 1200 posts in 7 years. That's not burning up the bandwidth whatever the heck that is! I will say that I've posted here more than any other forum I've been a member of.

Mack Cameron said:

...If the forum mods feel anyone doesn't post enough they also have the right to ban that person from membership here. This is the only forum on which I have ever been reminded that I haven't posted for a while...

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Nobody is interested in banning anyone for not posting. There are no rules stating that a member has to post at all. But there are also no guarantees that we won't at least ask people to post ask every once in a while. (So far, a total of ONE time.) Is it really that big of a personal affront and inconvenience? Really? I'm truly sorry that clicking an "X" every once in a while to gain 1/2" of screen space is such a big deal. I go through bigger hoops on a daily basis just logging onto my computer at work.