A new set of chisels from Stan

[Mike Allen1010]

Stewie your assumption that Stan was only here to hawk tools blithely disregards his constant willingness to answer questions and share years of accumulated knowledge and experience in an area which - due to the language barrier for all of us non Japanese speakers - is notoriously difficult to ascertain regularly.

It's also pretty low to level accusations at one whom isn't present to defend himself, IMO.

+1 No disrespect to anyone but I agree w/ others who said Stan brought unique insight into Japanese tools as someone living in Japan and, more importantly, making a living with same hand tools.

I always valued Stans contributions to forum and am disappointed he's gone. Our community is dimensioned by his absence. Sadly, I don't understand why he's no longer here. Ours is a small, largely self sustaining community. I don't think anyone is getting rich selling WWing tools, however I clearly don't understand economics of SMC/tool sellers. just disappointed someone I see as valuable contributor to our community has been ostracized for reason I don't understand .

[Patrick Walsh]

I reluctantly add this thought. If I did not keep having it over and over again I wouldn’t bother.

It’s my opinion and only my opinion that the talented crafts people that drew me to this forum have all largely stopped posting. I can’t say and won’t speculate as to why as there could be many reasons.

Some of these people I will admit I often wondered how much they shared be it build threads or advice to drum up business or just because they wanted to be helpful and or share.

Either way I see it this way. Who cares if someone’s sharing is a attempt to drum up business for themself. Good content is good content and without good high quality content this place will become less and less valuable and people will just go away. Honestly I have been feeling like that is the case for the better part of a year or more now.

I can see both sides of this. Well you know that’s not all true but it kinda is. What I don’t understand is how limiting what one is sharing if it is being limited because it’s being seen as the person is trying to drum up business matters a darn thing. Everything in life is a give and take. If I have learnt anything about life and people in my short 41 years it’s that humans are largely self motivated self seeking and take care of number one first. Very few of us do anything without at least the intent of what’s in it for me.

So I say let’s not let this place go down the pooper. I have learnt quite a bit here over the years, I’d like to continue to learn and I’d like to see others at c]various stages of the learning game have quality content to learn from.

[Dave Zellers]

Either way I see it this way. Who cares if someone’s sharing is a attempt to drum up business for themself.

No need to go any farther than this. SMC isn't Facebook. Period.

I think your post is good. But if SMC were to allow what you would allow, it would turn into a runaway train crazy fast. What you refer to as 'sharing' would morph into "BUSINESS" at light speed.

Keith is on the right track and IMO, needs to be encouraged to follow on that track.

There will absolutely be growing pains as we all adjust to the new realities of ad blockers and the necessities of subscription web sites. We are all feeling our way through the forest in the dark here.

CONTRIBUTE PEOPLE!

[Derek Cohen]

Mike and Patrick, thank you both for writing essentially what I would have done.

I have visited a goodly number of woodworking fori over the years. There are probably just three that I consider to be capable of producing thought-provoking posts. SMC is one of them. To be so, it is due to the quality of the membership. These qualities centre on experience and creativity, along with a willingness to share. The situation is analogous to "you can have it fast, good or cheap. Pick any two". We strive to make all three are available in one thread. There are many here who do.

I have seen excellent forums losing the "leading" posters, and then the quality of the forum declines until the posts are predominantly about show-and-tell. A forum may continue, but the life is sapped from it, and slowly it fades away as standard remain low. It is absolutely imperative that experienced posters are encouraged. The only moderation I consider important is for personal attacks. Keith - please take note here! By-and-large, good fori are self-moderating. We are not fools when we read self-serving posts, those prompted by jealousy, or posters with just plain oppositional or pig-headed attitudes. Them we can just ignore.


Regards from Perth

Derek

[Dave Zellers]

Keith - please take note here! By-and-large, good fori are self-moderating. We are not fools when we read self-serving posts, those prompted by jealousy, or posters with just plain oppositional or pig-headed attitudes. Them we can just ignore.

You are looking at this situation from a personal viewpoint. YOU, and others, will ignore them, but if allowed, they will grow. And then SMC takes on a very different personality. And that is EXACTLY what Keith is trying so hard to prevent, IMO.

[Stewie Simpson]

Mike and Patrick, thank you both for writing essentially what I would have done.

I have visited a goodly number of woodworking fori over the years. There are probably just three that I consider to be capable of producing thought-provoking posts. SMC is one of them. To be so, it is due to the quality of the membership. These qualities centre on experience and creativity, along with a willingness to share. The situation is analogous to "you can have it fast, good or cheap. Pick any two". We strive to make all three are available in one thread. There are many here who do.

I have seen excellent forums losing the "leading" posters, and then the quality of the forum declines until the posts are predominantly about show-and-tell. A forum may continue, but the life is sapped from it, and slowly it fades away as standard remain low. It is absolutely imperative that experienced posters are encouraged. The only moderation I consider important is for personal attacks. Keith - please take note here! By-and-large, good fori are self-moderating. We are not fools when we read self-serving posts, those prompted by jealousy, or posters with just plain oppositional or pig-headed attitudes. Them we can just ignore.


Regards from Perth

Derek

This forum site is currently struggling to survive financially due to a lack of both Corporate and membership sponsorship. That reality is not being helped by those members who still feel its their right to treat this site as a free for all advertising conduit.

regards;.............

[Frederick Skelly]

Mike, Patrick, Dave, Derek and Stewie all have valid points. My thoughts on those and others.....
* Most of us understand that Keith's not "going private" because he wants to. He's fighting to keep the site alive - literally keep the lights on. To me, this is this is like a medical triage situation - we must save the site first, and handle the side effects of what we did to save it afterwards.

* Membership loss is one side effect. Lack of new blood is definitely going to be another. That is the one that worries me the most - far more than paying a subscription fee. I found this place via google and got hooked. And there will also be other side effects we havent thought of yet.

* Keith's looked at the options he feels are credible and going Subscriber-only is the best fit in his view as Proprietor. By "credible", I mean the option is affordable to him and within what he is willing to do.

* The depth and breadth of knowledge here keeps me coming back. I consider myself a pretty decent hobbyist woodworker. Many of you are better. You constantly awe me.

* I strongly favor the serious efforts made by the Mods to "keep things friendly" here. If I ask a dumb question, I don't want a rash of crap about it. And yes, I think we can and should be more self regulating. Don't just ignore it. If you see someone getting out of hand, call them on it. (It has happened to me and I immediately got the message.) Or just use the "report" to moderator button.

* I too have noticed a change as we lost "Leading Posters". I don't know if that is a cyclical thing or if it indicates a real, long-term negative trend. We've lost David Weaver, Phil Thien, George Wilson, Stan Covington, Steve Voight and others. Some faded away and some left because of TOS or moderation issues. They all added greatly to this place.

* I agree we need to be careful of turning this into a facebook or craigslist. I agree that our TOS have occasionally driven away people who's posts I valued, occasionally for reasons I didn't agree with. But remember that Keith has always said the TOS were written by the members. So I'm guessing we could vote to change or loosen them sometime. But let's save the site first.

[Flamone LaChaud]

For those who are still following this thread, and are contributors . . . I invite you to go into The Lumberyard part of the forum and start going back in history looking at threads. When I did that yesterday (or the day before, I forget), I noticed about every year there was a wake-up call kind of post asking the contributors (and to a degree the moderators) to play nice, debate points of view without making personal attacks, and to stop those who like to dogpile just for the sake of beating the dead horse. I also remember more than a couple of posts reminding people to be more welcoming of new people, greet and show encouragement to even ugly dovetail posts, cutting board posts, my first box posts, etc...

For those who aren't contributors yet but are members (like I was for years) . . . this isn't the first time strong personalities clashing has had an impact on membership. But with the impending move to contributor/subscriber based access . . . not playing nice might have a larger impact than ever before. Just a thought.

[Tony Zona]

. . . I agree that our TOS have occasionally driven away people who's posts I valued, occasionally for reasons I didn't agree with. . . .

Can somebody tell me what it is in the Terms of Service that so many seem to be greatly perturbed with?

[Nicholas Lawrence]

Can somebody tell me what it is in the Terms of Service that so many seem to be greatly perturbed with?

I have seen two things over the years.

If you want to advertise you have to pay to do that. Some of Stan’s posts (and some posts by other members) looked like thinly disguised advertisements of his willingness to sell chisels from hard to find Japanese blacksmiths (apparently not at any significant profit). Everybody liked him, he wasn’t making any money off it, and he thought that rule should not apply to what he was doing. Management thought it was the camel’s nose under the tent or whatever, and was not willing to look the other way. There was a big blow up and he left. Now he has his own blog/website/tool store, and seems to be happy, but people here would rather complain about it then go over to his website and talk to him there. My impression anyway.

The second is the rule against insulting people or making personal attacks or whatever. We get a lot of people who rightly or wrongly view themselves as experts at something. They generally want to be helpful, but there is sometimes friction. The first ten times they see the same question, they manage to respond to it and explain it with a helpful grandfatherly tone, and everybody is happy. As time goes on I guess explaining the same thing to a new batch of new people who want to make the exact same mistakes the last guy wanted to make starts to get harder.

About the 20th time, they will try to help a new guy (usually an engineering degree is involved on one side or the other) and the new guy will want to argue with the expert that they are wrong because the new guy watched some video posted by a hack/snake oil salesman on youtube. At that point the expert gets mad and says something ill considered about either the new guy, or the hack, or somebody’s mother, and that violates the rule against personal attacks. The offending remarks then get deleted or edited by the moderators, the expert gets mad that the management is allowing new people to be mislead by snake oil salesmen, etc. and we have a big blow up.

[Tony Zona]

Thanks, Nicholas. That seems reasonable. I guess terms of service are there for a reason. And it sounds like they aid in sorting out these vagaries.

If I’m correct, isn’t that the way it’s on most all forums?

[Jim Koepke]

Some of Stan’s posts (and some posts by other members) looked like thinly disguised advertisements of his willingness to sell chisels from hard to find Japanese blacksmiths (apparently not at any significant profit).

Maybe since it wasn't my intent to purchase Japanese chisels this soft persuasion never occurred to me.

Surely then at times my own actions have violated the Terms of Service. Occasionally when someone makes an inquiry about where to obtain a part, if there is a spare in my accumulation of parts, arrangements may be made to send it to them.

Mostly my only request was for postage. Now my financial situation can afford to pay postage so even that isn't requested.

When it comes to selling something, it is either listed in the Classifieds here or on ebay. One caveat on that, my better items will be listed here first. If it is something that isn't up to my fully liking the item, it is listed on ebay. So if something of mine is on ebay, ask me before you bid.

jtk

[Nicholas Lawrence]

Surely then at times my own actions have violated the Terms of Service. Occasionally when someone makes an inquiry about where to obtain a part, if there is a spare in my accumulation of parts, arrangements may be made to send it to them.

I don’t think sending something to somebody for postage is a violation (you aren’t selling anything). But my opinion really doesn’t matter. I was just trying to answer the question about why people seem to get mad and leave.

Tony, I am not on a lot of forums. But the couple I have looked at over the years all have some kind of rules or they turn into pretty rough places. Keith wants kids to be able to come here, so it is more moderated perhaps than some.

[James Pallas]

I remember the posts thru my eyes. We forget that another poster was involved and pushed for an answer. I don't believe that Stan intentionally did anything for personal gain. It reminds me of two friends years ago. One got a new car his friend egged him on to see how fast the car was. The driver got the ticket that cost him dearly for years, assigned risk insurance, reckless driving ticket and all that. The one doing the urging paid no penalty. They were never friends after that. It's too bad sometimes that things happen but they do. Stan got upset about it and made his decision, his choice. He could have accepted the admonishment and just gone on, again his choice. I sometimes get unhappy about things that are said on this forum and think about giving it up. I haven't done so, my choice. There is always some penalty for breaking rules. Because you were coerced to do it usually doesn't work out as an excuse. I have to stick with the forum administrators on this one.
Jim

[steven c newman]

Soooo, is this post about the Chisels the OP bought? OR, should this be moved to the Off Topic threads, before someone closes this down?

maybe show the new chisels in action?