Brave Suggestion...

I have no problems with posts in jest or humour. But not in a thread about how the forum is having problems and people are leaving. It is the OT section, but still.

Johan, Point taken and accepted. Thank you. Reading thru the complete set of messages I can see where it morphed. Comments like these should be linked to the original picture so that they would follow the image down the line. I believe this was sort of a test to see if the "constructive critique" would be accepted in the spirit it was given and not end up in a dust up. Also it brought others into the conversation.
Thanks again,
Fred

If I may offer a suggestion or two.

I own a online group called The North American Rail Alliance.NARA is for people modeling the North American rail scene from where ever they live.I also have a forum for said group,which is terribly unused.

The point I want to make is I just added a forum called projects where members can post their ongoing projects.Now if I could only figure out someway to get the members posting

My suggestion is to name a forum Projects where members can post pics of what they are doing so other members can make suggestions and/or pat each other on the back and compliment with a Atta-Boy or Girl.Nothing derogatory would be allowed.

The point I want to make is I just added a forum called projects where members can post their ongoing projects.Now if I could only figure out someway to get the members posting

There is space enough here to post about projects. You got a section for layouts and for rolling stock and for scratch building etc. Adding something for it isn't needed, nor is it the limiting factor.

There are already too many forums (about whatever you care for). I follow about 10 forums daily and another 10 at least a few times a week. It is just impossible to be active everywhere. And most of those have serious overlap. Do you want to post 5 times the same thing? So you limit it to 1, maybe 2 where you are active and post stuff like project updates.

And as already been said somewhere, at most 10% of the members contribute regulary.

Have to be honest that Z isn't my main activity. At the moment I'm active in gauge 1 and 3.5" live steam. Apart from occasionally buying a piece of rolling stock and sketching layouts Z is soundly asleep.

My suggestion is to name a forum Projects where members can post pics of what they are doing so other members can make suggestions and/or pat each other on the back and compliment with a Atta-Boy or Girl.Nothing derogatory would be allowed.

The problem is that it doesn't work that way. People only post in order to get the opinion of others, to show off. So critique will come. But giving it without hurting and receiving it graciously is hard. But if you don't nobody will get any better so what's the point? Even suggestions fall into this.

I follow a forum that's part of a magazine. Whenever there is a new issue you always here how great it is, never that in fact that the photo's are lousy poststamps and the content is always the same. This is the greatest show on earth, the best invention since sliced bread.

Another point is how this forum(software) is behaving lately is making it hard for me to keep coming back. I have the feeling that the last months more and more forums are going back IE only and the rest be damned. Web standards...they heard of it.

Critique,is not the problem it is the know it all poster's whose intent it is to drag someone's hardwork down to their level (man that is the biggest POS I ever saw,you should have done it this way). That is the type of post I am refering to,those that offer honest suggestions are encouraged.

There is a huge difference between telling someone they did something all wrong and offering up the way you did the same project or one simular to it.Besides the whole idea is to encourage the modeler not tear them down.

Another way to look at it is a learning process where you might learn a better way to do something than the one your currently using.