Thank you David.

Ok. We all believe in the mission of the ABS or we would not be members. We each give back in our own way.

Let's try to get back on track in this thread and state our ideas for increasing participation in our Forum. Master Smith Brion Tomberlin started this thread by posting: "For this month we would like to hear ideas, thoughts, or suggestions on ways to improve member participation and have a more active forum."

I would like to echo Dan's sentiments in his last post because as a board member I feel I do have a duty to serve the membership. There are those who pay their dues simply to maintain a membership that helps their business. Regardless of whether I agree I feel I have a duty to serve every member because, they are still doing the group a service simply by adding to our numbers.

Next are those who actually participate in the group, instead of a duty, they willingly assume these roles and tasks and may get a couple of photos of them doing it published for their efforts, they are the heart and soul of the group because we cannot tell them to do this, they just want to help others at hammer-ins and online. They are never thanked enough because it is not possible.

So as both a board member and a forum moderator, I feel I have double the duties to listen to the membership and give them a quality outlet that makes them want to return every chance they can, and if they don’t I need to find out how I can make it better.

At this moment that is what the membership can do to help the most, let us know how to better serve you. If it is a positive suggestion post away. If it is a compliant, or just awkward,feel free to send me a confidential e-mail.

Those who are active on this forum have our deepest gratitude, you are part of that invaluable second group mentioned above. But I am very keen on hearing from those, without any judgment, who are hesitant to participate, because it is their input that we need the most. We have the attention of those who want to be here, now I want to work on getting the attention of those who didn’t until now.

I do try and be active on this forum and have found it to be a great resource overall.

I don't know what if any thing can be done about this, but my one big complaint about this forum is the size restrictions and limitations on posting photos. I would do more WIP or use Photos more in asking questions, but I find my self daunted by the restrictions on photos.

I then end up posting this content on other forums that do not have these restrictions.

MP

One other thought I have is to consolidate some of the sub-forums. It would make site navigation easier and also ensure that fresh content is front and center. When a sub-forum hasn't had a new topic in months, few people will even bother to enter. It's like peeking into a restaurant and seeing a bunch of empty tables - which is never a good sign. Consolidating some of the sub-forums will ensure there are at least a few more occupied tables in the room, which will result in more clicks, and ultimately more participation.

I'll also repeat my point about opening the forum to non ABS-members; namely the collectors, users, and enthusiasts that comprise such an important part of our community. Fresh perspectives and opinions from these participants will breathe new life into a lot of the topics we discuss here, and we can learn from them just as they learn from us. I also believe that opening the forum to non ABS-members will help to further the mission of the ABS in educating the public about the forged blade. Who knows, we might even get a few new members out of it. <img src=' http://www.americanbladesmith.com/ipboard/public/style_emoticons//smile.gi f' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />

I believe the spark that gets things going is photographs. It's like opening an old photo album at a family reunion. It sure starts and holds conversations.

Dan and Karl passed on some tips using an IPhone to size the photos that will be helping me and I intend to make a real nuisance of myself showing pictures. <img src=' http://www.americanbladesmith.com/ipboard/public/style_emoticons//smile.gi f' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />

Before I retired my city wanted more citizen participation on our web site and it the same time need the site as a resource for the employees. While we had both sections neither were using it to it fullest.

Using what I learned there may apply here. We had our site on a shared platform that limited our size. When the site was first setup that was an ideal situation for us as we believed we were saving money. Upon doing a little research we discovered that we could have our site hosted for about $50 a month. The site once moved to the new host had unlimited storage and unlimited number of pages. Our ability to have both photos and videos online was greatly improved. Our photos were standardized for our easy of formatting pages. Photos that were uploaded by our field workers as part of the host set of tools were automatically sized to the specs we set.

Citizen (visitors) could upload complaint and event photos, comment on activities that they had went to. We even had a thread for general questions they could ask.

Just before I left we added a benefits, and training section for the employees that linked to outside resources, in our case Microsoft online classes on their products we used.

Another suggestion is one we started at Florida International University while I was on the Masters in Information Systems Curriculum Committee. We setup a virtual mentoring program where we paired professionals with students. They communicated via email, Skype, and telephone.

I have talk with Bruce Bump, J. Neilson, Ed Caffrey to mention just a few and have gotten answers, guidance, and friendship from all the members here. I connect with at least 30 members on a regular basis.

I haven't posted much in the past 10 months due to a small medical issue that has kept me out of the shop but, I read on here 3-4 times a week and have notifications turned on in the areas that are of prime interest to me.

I enjoy the classes, time in Bill Wiggins shop, and hands on with Daniel Warren when in North Carolina. The extension of that fun is this forum. Maybe setting up a program via a subforum that would let folks participate in and send their finished piece for review. Kinda like a KITH, except what you get is the opportunity to have your piece reviewed and the advice on what you need do to improve it. Limit it to 6 students to on mentor. I would participate in one or two a year realizing that I would bear the cost of shipping each way.

Well just a few off the cuff ideas...

The Catch-22 here is that we want to engage those who are not participating, but how do we reach them if they are not participating? So I think the one thing we could focus on is that outreach, that way the people who are here and participating have a way of making that connection. From my experience in moderating, administering and participating in chat forums one thing that gets results is being mentioned and referenced elsewhere. If you have gotten great info here how often have you made a point of mentioning where you got that info? How often do you see a question that you got answered here and say “hey, you should check out this thread at the ABS forum.”

You see talking about how valuable this forum is while on this forum is only so much patting ourselves on the back, but praising this forum out there spreads the word. But more importantly, when people hear all kinds of chatter about a place they are not visiting they get an idea of how much they are missing by not being a part of it. Folks won’t know that this is the go-to site for bladesmithing information unless they hear it mentioned, and they won’t believe it is the go-to site for bladesmithing information unless they hear it everywhere they go.

I agree with Kevin on this. I'm on a couple of other forums and mainly on Facebook Groups these days. I normally refer folks to the ABS YouTube Channel but, rarely send anyone to this forum. I guess I view this as a members only kinda of group. I do urge folks to join our group and talk about the family ways of the group and how everyone helps each other.

I'm also sure with all the members in the group we are not reaching them. Maybe a page in our magazine that talks about the forum and it's benefits. Like an article, not an ad, would help interest current members to join in. Also on the website make an obvious link to the forum that doesn't require you to login. The way it is today gives the impression that you can not see anything without a login, which is not true. Before I joined I would not of ever tried to look at the forum if not for a conversation I had with Bill Wiggins. He's the main reason I took my Intro class and joined. Let folks see what's there, then if it interest them they can join.

Gentlemen:

I have had this topic on my mind for several weeks now. I didn't frequent those "other" knife forums for a long while, but these days I find myself migrating to them more than I come here, and I considered myself a fairly active contributor to this forum. I have been considering writing a letter to the ABS or the forum moderators (or taking one or two of them aside after the show in KC) about the reasons I think the participation lacks here and not on those other sites. I feel very cautious about discussing my true beliefs in this arena because what I have to say is going to undoubtedly upset some folks. Some people might even feel insulted or personally offended, even though I would never name names. That being said, I think I will stick to some of the lighter fare until I feel comfortable believing that everyone is willing to take some pretty harsh criticism of the way our forum is structured.

As for the idea of not posting a question because you are embarrassed and think you "should already know that", I find that peculiar because I frequently ask questions that I do already know the answer to (or at least I think I do). Partly because I truly believe there is more than my way of doing things and would welcome a different method, and partly just to try and stimulate some discussion. Two people come up with four times as many ideas as one person.

Now for something Cal Harkins pointed out: "One of the reasons that I don't post pictures is the size requirements. I have to really work to get the size of the file down and still have pictures that have some decent size and quality." This is something those "other" forums seem to have over our forum in a big way. On those forums, anyone, can post any photo, of any size, any quality, at any time, and in any quantity. This makes it much easier for folks to participate. Here the only option seems to be to create a photo album on a different site and post links to it (at least for some of us it's the only option). Not user friendly.

Now for Derrik Wulf's last post: "I'll also repeat my point about opening the forum to non ABS-members;" I will ask the obvious question: Is this forum a venue just for ABS smiths/members, or is it a tool for the ABS to further its mission? If the answer is the former, you are always going to have limited participation. If it is the latter, you might find the participation growing and some of that will surely flow to the ranks of members. If we want more participation and more members, open the forum to anyone who cares to join.

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss this subject.

This topic woke me up, a few things to add maybe: the ABS is worldwide, a lot of members/users probably hesitate because they don't know how to formulate a question in your language.(like me,sometimes)

When checking some statistics below the page, you can see that most of the visitors are non-members, sometimes more then 90%. I don't know what that means but there is interest in the forum from outside.

Another thing: the topic"uploading pictures" has more then 500.000 views and is the 2nd in place on this forum. What does that mean? Is it more popular than knives or is it too difficult to understand how to upload a picture to this site?

I'm still unable to upload anything, I like to keep it simple when it can but after clicking on the link in the "uploading" topic, some unwanted stuff came into the laptop and made it running like an old diesel.

For the rest, it's a nice place here, even when it's quiet for a while!!

Admin Note:

It was the Topic on Videos and not photos that has had 579,019 views. It was the topic "Making Videos- Topic for January 2015 - Cameras, Editing Software, and Techniques for videos".

Dan Cassidy

[email protected]

The picture topic really seems to be an issue.

When placing pictures in posts - don't upload photos to the forum.

Use an off site host and link them.

Before placing them on the off site host like Photo Bucket - resize them here to meet requirements.

It takes all of a couple minutes, but then you have photos you can share everywhere.

Living in the sticks in northern Minnesota, I don't have the privilege of anything that even remotely equates to "high speed". When people send me photos of 1-2-3 MB I just cringe.

If I was to upload something of that size, I would never get anything done.

It does NOT take long, and then you have a library of photos that can be used anywhere.

If you can make a knife - you can resize a photo.

http://webresizer.com/

|quoted:

The picture topic really seems to be an issue.

When placing pictures in posts - don't upload photos to the forum.

Use an off site host and link them.

Before placing them on the off site host like Photo Bucket - resize them here to meet requirements.

It takes all of a couple minutes, but then you have photos you can share everywhere.

Living in the sticks in northern Minnesota, I don't have the privilege of anything that even remotely equates to "high speed". When people send me photos of 1-2-3 MB I just cringe.

If I was to upload something of that size, I would never get anything done.

It does NOT take long, and then you have a library of photos that can be used anywhere.

If you can make a knife - you can resize a photo.

http://webresizer.com/

For me this is a huge pain and to be honest I tried to figure it out got frustrated and just abandoned it, instead using sites I found easier to upload pics to... also I really dislike when I am looking through an old post and the pics are gone.. this happens on this forum both with attached off site hosting and when using the global storage due to needing to remove old photos to post new. but on other forums it only happens with off site pics..

These days photos and video are assets I know the band width and server space costs more but, that is Content, and Content is what drives traffic, content is what makes a site valuable.

MP

just to be clear with the global storage I am not referring to anyone on the site removing photos but to the fact that once the limit is reached you must delete old photos to be able to post new ones, losing or destroying portions of the sites content.

MP

|quoted:

The picture topic really seems to be an issue.

When placing pictures in posts - don't upload photos to the forum.

Use an off site host and link them.

Before placing them on the off site host like Photo Bucket - resize them here to meet requirements.

It takes all of a couple minutes, but then you have photos you can share everywhere.

Living in the sticks in northern Minnesota, I don't have the privilege of anything that even remotely equates to "high speed". When people send me photos of 1-2-3 MB I just cringe.

If I was to upload something of that size, I would never get anything done.

It does NOT take long, and then you have a library of photos that can be used anywhere.

If you can make a knife - you can resize a photo.

http://webresizer.com/

Karl, I understand your point completely, but think about it for a moment. What would Etsy, Craigslist, and Facebook be right now, if that were the way people had to work with photos on those sites? The sites we compete with are capable of allowing folks to upload photos straight from their phones and as George pointed out, the website automatically resizes the photos to the specs the administrators set. This is the way my own website handles photos I upload to the site. I upload anything I want and the website does the rest. It doesn't take 2 seconds to open a photo. I'd like to point out that I already have a library of photos that can be used virtually anywhere....except here.

Thanks Karl, the webresizer works great but the photobucket is making trouble to let me sign in <img src=' http://www.americanbladesmith.com/ipboard/public/style_emoticons//smile.gi f' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />

Also wanted to say that it is the "video" topic with +500.000 views, not the photos...