What is going on

[Handplanesandmore]

May be the busy forums are those political ones! In fact, I often see comments in the thousands under some political news headlines.

There is one woodworking site that I go to occasionally (not a member of it), occasionally because it more or less has occasional postings. Like 3 or 4 postings a day, sometimes none over days. If I were the owner, I would simply shut it down (it is hard I know because it is his baby, but it really serves little purpose when all you have are the same two dozen or so who hang out there).

Simon

[Stwood_]

................   .

[Axehandle]

Just logged in and its been a few months since I did.  I am busy on projects mostly.  Once my shop became well equipped I started working in it so much I forgot about the internet.  I still have mostly.  I feel great doing constructive things and don't miss all the opinions on the forums.

[John Walkowiak]

A friend alerted me to this site: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1410047249324398/   The amount of traffic is amazing! For whatever reason, it looks like the people posting there would have been posting here in the past. From what I looked at, it's the blind leading the blind there. If they would come here with their questions, they would get answers from knowledgeable folks.
Maybe it's easier to read and reply to Facebook while driving than WoodNet!

[Cian]

Norm and the NYW retired.
His replacement was not the same old shoe.
His audience was maturing....and still are.
I know he was not into hand tools.
But perhaps it was a turning point for hobbyist woodworking, and forums.

Just a thought.
Ag

Good points.

[hbmcc]

A friend alerted me to this site: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1410047249324398/   The amount of traffic is amazing! For whatever reason, it looks like the people posting there would have been posting here in the past. From what I looked at, it's the blind leading the blind there. If they would come here with their questions, they would get answers from knowledgeable folks.
Maybe it's easier to read and reply to Facebook while driving than WoodNet!

31k members restoring handplanes? The first post I saw read, "Thinking of making a lamp out of this." FB is not conducive to posts longer than a couple sentences. I despise FB for that reason alone, not including the rest of the crap. John, you got the reason nailed. I would add a few social points of contact, also. 

I thought a Blog could substitute for a journal, the type like Derek has; a more permanent record of woodworking progress then you can expect in a one year cycle that WN follows. After seven years, a handful of posts have been made. Most have been revised several times--really just edited. I wait for the inevitable death of the host, the surgical slice and disposal of non-profit. Or, I expect losing the scraps of paper where I keep passwords. But mostly, blog posts require statement, support, finish. All the editing and grammar.

I do what I could never afford to do in business. I plan. I fine tune. 

Rather, I open a Word doc and convert ideas into hundreds of pages of notes, references, stolen images for detail ideas. Then the true record of a project is created, a reduction of the research into a concept. The plan is hashed further, from the idea that spawned all of the research. The plan, plans, are created in CAD, images imported, and the concept tuned. It can continue to what I know will be good, or abandoned. 

The good projects earn a trip, maybe, several trips for lumber and hardware. The acclimation and learning wood idiosyncrasies proceeds. Western Big Leaf Maple moves, dramatically. I may burn several feet of figured maple, unless I find a way I like to keep it stable. The projects in WBLM wait in limbo.

None of my journey, so far, with a project will interest anyone here. Conversely, by the time I have designed a project and know exactly how to proceed with construction and finish, I am bored and ready to move on. That is what is going in my neck of the wood.

Oops... This post is not Facebook material.

[Bibliophile 13]

I've been on this forum for a dozen years now, which is about as long as I've been working wood.  (I think the forum itself is about 18 years old.)  Twelve years wasn't so very long ago, but back then, think about where we got information about woodworking with hand tools. 

There were books and magazines, of course.  But with magazines, you had to wait for relevant articles and projects to come around.  And while there were a few good books, Lost Art Press didn't exist, and most of the books focused heavily on power tools.  YouTube didn't have many hand-tool-centric videos, and there wasn't much video sharing on social media. 

If you wanted to know something, you could Google it.  Google sent you to the websites, particularly blogs and internet forums.  That's how I ended up on WoodNet. 

And there weren't that many forums: Sawmill Creek, Lumber Jocks, and WoodNet were about it.  So a lot of people looking for hand tool information landed here on WoodNet.

Now there's Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and a whole host of other social media sites.  They're not nearly as helpful as a forum, obviously, but they feed the need for quick information.  There are a huge number of blogs out there, many with detailed tutorials and lots of pictures.  And of course there are lots of good books--Lost Art Press being one of the most prolific publishers. 

So, yes, we've seen fewer people participating on WoodNet of late.  It seems that a lot of people have left the forum.

But you know what?  People are always leaving forums.  People get on, they post a lot, then they taper off--either because their interests change or because they've gotten the info they needed.  (I know I don't post as much as I used to.  I'm still doing a lot of woodworking, but I know how to do what I want to do, and I'm more interested in working wood than in posting about it.) Some people do get offended by other members, and others get annoyed at the software, but I think those are in the minority.  Membership on WoodNet has always been fluid. That's the nature of forums.

The problem is that fewer and fewer people are joining the forum to replace those who leave.  Many of the people who would have replaced them are getting their hand tool information elsewhere. 

What does that mean for WoodNet?  I don't know.  I certainly value this community, though it's gone through a lot of changes over the years.  I intend to keep looking in and posting occasionally. 

I hope you folks do the same.

[Handplanesandmore]

There are a few more forums out there including, but not limited to, Festool (hand tools sub forum in there), Woodcentral and forums owned outside America.

Blogs these days are either for business (online schools - Paul Sellers etc; products - Lost Art Press; magazines - FWM) or for personal shops. The personal side has gone out of my favor when people started bringing their personal non-woodworking stuff into it. Frankly, who cares you have just adopted a new pet or have a new partner move in to live with you (true story!), etc. 

Forums can be educational and/or social depending on what one comes here for. When people don't find a forum meeting either/both of the needs, they will leave. Instagram has just announced an enhanced video feature; we can expect more people are drawn to it.

Simon

[Nordic]

It’s not just WoodNet.  Page views on Norse Woodsmith have been on a downward trend since it peaked in 2015.

[Handplanesandmore]

NS is more about blogs and your graphic confirms that blogs are losing their appeal. Instagram had 800 mn users in 2017 and
is growing non-stop. I know a few who have dropped updating their blogs in favor of sharing on the Instagram.

Simon