hodad said:
Gus said:
I guess forums change over time.
Yep. PRR has spoken about this fairly thoughtfully here in the past.
But really, the big thing is that the nature of Audio DIY has changed. Back in the old days, before the current forum, there were Jakob's early projects (no PCBs available though), probably a few people doing P2P LA2's, some 312 chatter, some smart and talented folks doing their own thing, and a lot of discussion of old designs. Things moved slowly, which perhaps gave more time to focus on various bits of theory, and certainly lent an opportunity to really focus on one or two particular pieces--since there just wasn't that much going on.
Now, of course, you can buy tons of stuff--clones and designs abound, and you can get parts kits, project-specific transformers, cases, panels, vu's--it's almost
too much!
And there's a ton more builders now, and certainly a lot more casual builders than in the old days--the folks who want to do a paint-by-numbers type build, have it work, and use it & be proud of it. But it does seem there are still folks who come in & get an education, who come to understand the circuits & maybe even design/mod some of their own.
There's good & bad in the new reality, and there's certainly more clutter and distraction, and more repetition of stupid questions. But you can't put the genie back in the bottle, and I applaud Ethan for trying to figure out how to deal with our shifting landscape.
Tom
Great post.
This thread kind of comes off and on the rails so it's hard to even follow it. There are about 10 different things being discussed and most, if not all are unrelated. The forum has changed for better or worse but so has everything else in the world. This might as well be a political thread where people see who can yell the loudest and make the more sweeping generalizations. Fortunately, I believe there are good, thoughtful points being made from all sides or I wouldn't post.
Some people have left, but I think it's inappropriate to assume why they left. Publicly we know one "legend" left because of a tiff with another "legend". One (maybe two or three) left because he went comercial. Another has openly sated he just doesn't do a lot of audio electronics anymore. Certainly a few left because of the noise, but not all or most. The glory days of this form were over 6 years ago. People move on, let's not assume why.
New people have joined and I think they have a lot of knowledge to add. In fact, I think we have some new legends in the making. Unfortunately, there is more noise because we have more people, and that makes it harder to see. However, as stated the genie is out of the bottle. So what we do?
Here are a couple things I'll throw out. I'm not saying a support or am against these things. I'm just trying to be constructive.
- See if Ethan has the ability to hide threads. You can select build threads and hide them.
- Have a build thread section and make people use it. This could clean up the lab.
- Don't like the WM? Don't go in it.
- Don't like the new BM? There is another thread for that.
Also don't assume this forum is a democracy. We have a mod who has been here along time and he's been doing a kick ass job dealing with constant growth and change. He's a smart guy, he's seen all of this unfold and change and he'll do what he thinks is best for the forum. I actually have complete trust in his judgement because I've been watching him deal with all of this for a long time now.
Unfortunately he'll never make everyone happy.
Mike
*edited for spelling
