A big help would be able to customise the latest forum posts to only see what you want to see.

The structure of the forums topics is way to large to be easy to steer around.

Forum mods need to be on the ball to stop users from attacking others opinions.

Remember this is a showcase and extension for your magazines. Would you put the items on the forums in the magazines? If not, then maybe they dont need to be here.

Neil,

can i respectfully suggest you first discuss this matter with your fellow moderators.

your arguement that model engineering should cover all 'engineering' related (and in some cases non engineering related) subjects is a bit disingenuous when one of your 'pet' non engineering related interests fills up one of the threads regularly. Astronomy is not model engineering however much you try and self justify your own posts!

there are lots of things that we all have a common interest in. but i dont expect on here to read about the rugby or football scores, or the price of petrol, or the price of fish!

the darkest days of Model Engineer magazine was in the late 1950's early 1960's under Vic Smeed when it became far too general and half the magazine was about model boat building. sales plummeted. there is a lesson here i think.

there must be a good reason why the other specialised forums are flourishing, are full of build threads, and are far friendlier. again there is a lesson here i think.

i dont expect anyone to agree with me, but as moderator you must accept some responsibility if excellent forum members decide to leave and go elsewhere, and your reply today on Gary's 'My Little Engine' thread was IMHO way off the mark.

cheers,

julian

I very much enjoy reading the various topic's discussed on the forum, what I find annoying is when someone adds a thread which is completely off topic to the current topic.

It then has to be dragged back to the original topic, as has already been stated you do not have to read thread's you are not interested in.

Also very disappointed that Gary's My Little Engine thread will no longer be added to because of negative comments made by other's.

Chris

Neil Wyatt:

I wonder if it would help if thread starters tried to make their titles as informative as possible so that those who are definitely not interested in the main topic can readily choose to ignore them.

I am not going to give examples as I have no wish to appear to criticise individual members but there have been some very vague and unhelpful titles (and some models of clarity).

I'm with David Clark on this, I don't care what a thread is about as long as the title describes it correctly.

What does annoy me is when people drag a thread off course, instead of starting a new one.

I do think that members should support those brave enough to post their efforts online. It's easy to knock others work and those who do generally don't do anything worth posting.

Bert

I agree entirely with Neil's comments and also with the request from David & ega that perhaps posters give more careful consideration to the titles of their threads. One of the big benefits of a forum like this is the huge data bank of knowledge that accumulates over time. The big problem is finding it if it's not within the top few current threads. In this respect the thread title can be very important when using the search tool to locate previous items of interest.

Regarding the role of forum Moderators, they are not there to censor opinion, merely to ensure that discussions remain reasonably PC within the boundaries of decency and legality. It would be a pretty poor forum if nobody was allowed to challenge opinion & would soon fill up with egocentrics & soapbox dictators!

As to your final comment, agreed the forum is an extension of the magazines, but the magazines have to be entirely ME focussed because readers are paying for the content and would rightly be annoyed if they were full of articles on bee keeping, astronomy and fuel emissions. The forum doesn't have the constraints imposed by a paying audience so within reason can be universally diverse and in my opinion is all the better for it.

Just my tuppence worth, Martin.

utube has an option where comments are disabled, the Original Poster is the only person allowed to comment

Might be a handy option for some peoples' build threads

I thought this was settled a few weeks ago with the change to the 'what did you do today thread' to add an off model engineering section. That seemed to be the only thing missing from this forum. I have mostly reduced my forum reading to this and one American as being the best 2 out there. hence disagree with Julian.

Also do agree with David. Can't moderators change poor titles? Some engineers aren't that good at expressing themselves clearly so just need a little nudge in the right direction.

So Murray, can you give me some tips on the money laundering scheme that you use for buying your workshop please?

Mark

Mark, in light of the theme of this thread, could you take your discussion with Murray into another thread?

(I'm likely to get a kicking for posting this….lol…)

The question asked was 'what direction should the forum be taking ?'

In my opinion at the moment the forum is attempting to appeal to everyone all of the time – it's becoming unwieldy and losing its direction by becoming too diverse.

I said in an other post I think the forum needs to decide what its target audience is and focus on that, as a few others have said other engineering forums are full of posts about builds / techniques / hints etc but here that core material gets lost in the reams of other chat.

At the moment there is really only 1 regular 'build' thread (although there are a few others updated less frequently) yet with all these members and other sites cramming in the build threads doesn't that in itself say something. ?

Others have said that the site shouldn't just appeal to the engine builders amongst us and I agree but I do also think it needs to be far more focussed on building (whether that be an engine or not) / tooling / techniques / ideas / technical discussions etc.

My worry is that before long the site will become a general discussion forum about anything by people who are otherwise interested in engineering.

Somebody earlier in the thread said you wouldn't last long in the 'Come dancing forum' talking about engines and that is a perfectly valid point.

Decide what the site is for, who your target market is then stick to it – if that means a far more focussed less diverse forum then you may get less postings but you will get far more 'quality' ones.

Edited By Peter Nichols on 13/11/2015 19:45:31