Yes, there’s no discussion or back and forth. They don’t answer the “how’d you do this” type questions. They don’t check out your posts or other people’s posts and add anything to the bulk of the forum beyond the pictures of their work.
Yeah, nothing personal against people who do that but I don’t generally comment on people’s threads that just post their stuff and ignore everyone else.
Yeah, I’ve stopped commenting or even looking in on those guys threads. If they don’t have the time to at least acknowledge a comment, respond to a question or critique, or comment on other folks work, I return that favor.
Most forums like this have the same issue, given that they’re all a 00’s method of communication that has long since been superceded by other forms of social media. Forums just aren’t as popular as they used to be, not since Facebook came along. It takes a dedicated group (like the good people in FSM’s editorial and IT offices) to maintain this type of platform these days. The same problem exists for anyone running their own blog. Those creators are lucky if they get any views & viewers at all, which makes it kind of surprising they’re even bothering with a blog at all given that a Facebook page pretty much provides them with every feature they’ll ever need plus gives them all the feedback opportunites imaginable.
Blogs also come with their own toxicity that typically run the gamut from maddening to hilarious, with the bizarreness coming directly from the creator/owner themselves. There was this one guy in China way back in the 00’s and early 10’s who used to do the shill work for Dragon Models, calling himself “Blogger Hiroshi”. The guys on the Missing Lynx forum absolutely detested him because he went out of his way to ferociously tear down every other company even more than he was boosting the Dragon products. To make it even weirder he wrote exactly like how a villain from a 1980’s Hong Kong kung-fu movie would talk. Nothing but mean-spirited emoji-saturated commentary that was usually nonsense like “You built a kit from (e.g.) Two Star (Tamiya)??? HAH HAH HAH, you poor deluded fool who threw away your valuable money on trash, you should have gone with DRAGON’S greatly superior FIVE STAR product! HAH HAH HAH!!!”. Gotta give the clown some credit for the extra effort, because as obnoxious as he truly was he really did earn the money that Dragon was paying him to be part of their promotional team.
I forgot about that shill Blogger Hiroshi of the “Mighty Dragon Fan Club”. He posted using Pidgin English and had nicknames for the various modeling companies, often based off of the company logo or name. Tamiya was “Two Star”, Tristar was “Three Star”, Trumpeter was “Bugler”, Bronco was “Pony”.
Because of this, many modelers called Dragon “Lizard”.
Generally speaking, forums fell out of favor because our hobby is a visual one. Most forums required modelers to take photos, upload the photos to a hosting site, figure out how to embed the picture into your forum post (so it appears as a photo and not as a link to click), and then once photos were removed to make room for newer photos, the original thread became useless for viewing.
Just click on our testing forum and you’ll see folks trying to figure out the whole picture in post issue.
Then there was the anonymity thing. Many modelers were very mean spirited when posting in forums, but once you saw their kits online and then saw their kits in person at a show, it was easy to call them out. You knew who they were.
Those types of guys took their bat and ball and went home because they couldn’t be their mean self on forums. I had my own detractor here and once I identified him by his actual name, he virtually went invisible here. While I don’t think we ever interacted in real life, I know we went to the same shows a couple of times.
Going way back into the 1990s when AOL had a model making chat room (I met Al Lefleche there first), most of the “serious” modelers were on the old USENET (User’s Network) newsgroup rec.models.scale (Recreation: Models, Scale).
I can remember if you missed a day of discussion, it could take hours to catch up.
To some folks on that newsgroup, only true modelers built kits from scratch. Anyone else was a “kit assembler”.
What I like about the forums I frequent is that they do not tolerate nasty posts .Keeps the fool trolls out!
Guity as charged, I just haven’t been online much anymore, and I have really been struggling moving models past the finish line this year. My progress has been so slow, putting WIP posts up isn’t even worth the effort for the amount of progress I have in an entire week!
Busy Summer season , perfectly understandable
I haven’t been building for about two years now. Too many things going on. I try to hang out here but the pop-ups are still giving me trouble.
Pretty much echoing others, but chiming in to show I’m present!
I will not do FB or any other social media; I cannot abide by the deep privacy intrusion (as I tell my kids, if you don’t pay to use it, you’re the product) and the anonymity seems to always lead to trolls and other behaviors you (generally) wouldn’t see in face-to-face situations.
I’ve been a lurker on this forum for a while, usually because I only get time to visit once and a while and feel like I miss out on a lot of the conversations as they happen - always hate to be the guy that posts into a thread weeks or months after the last comment. But I’ve been trying to do better lately, even if I don’t have photos to post, etc. It’s more about the community, for me. 
daniel
Seems to be a case of modeling “blahs” going around. It’s not just “summer doldrums”, it’s “winter blues” also. People just aren’t building as much as they used to (and for those still producing a model a week, I apologize). Several important members have vanished. Many reasons for this. I myself find I am in a funk when it comes to modeling because of a lot of things. I suppose it’s the same for many people. That and the people who run the forum seem to have abandoned any attempt to improve it makes for a stagnant situation.
That’s about it, IMHO.
I installed a free ad blocker and see nothing but white in the margins and no pop ups.
[dto:]
Double [dto:]
I can’t use YouTube without Adblocker installed anymore thanks to this mental conditioning.
Triple [dto:] on the adblocker.
Only have one skinny one on the right side of the screen but it’s not blocking anything. Can’t seem to get rid of it yet.
Stay safe.
Jim [cptn]
I just noticed this, but the “Ditto” emoji is spelled wrong, it should be “ditto”.
Baron, it’s been that way for quite a few years now. I remember someone trying to get it either removed or fixed but nothing ever became of it.
Stay safe.
Jim [cptn]
It doesn’t help that most of forum software changes were buggy, with months of trouble and each time led to a significant number of members giving up on the site. Seems like things would start to recover and them, bam, time for new software and the process started again.
I was an active member since the early 2000s, but dropped off following a poor roll out of software in 2011 (give or take). Had lots of trouble logging in and my participation dropped significantly. In 2015, I had to have a new account created, but at least they were able to give me the same user name. Again constant trouble logging in, add in personal life putting a huge damper on my modelling activity and I’ve pretty much just become a lurker, rarely decloaking (if I can log in) to make an occassional comment if something catches my eye.
Most of the modelling forums I used to participate in have similarly become a shell of what they once were. It is a shame as I still think this format is far superior to Facebook for sharing ideas and work. I’m not anti-FB, it is useful for somethings, and is fine for showing off your latest work, but its format does a poor job of archieving in progress threads, tips & tricks, group builds etc. Very much, a “what’s hot today, forget about yesterday” environment.
I still enjoy seeing what people are up to here but with the troubles participating I’ve lost most of my connection to individual members (many of whom have gone elsewhere for similar reasons) so don’t have the sense of community here that I once had. At one time this was pretty much my go to modelling forum.
I’m looking at my favorite forum,the Armor section,I’m building,i build all year round,not a model of week,but everyday i do something,people are building,there are hundreds,even thousands of looks,but very few comments or feedback,why would anybody take time to do a photo blog when no one cares?
You are right,many old members have abandoned the site,a good indicator that things are stale,is the Ready Room that’s where the banter took place,that’s where people got to know one another,now the newest post is 4 days old and before that it’s 20 and 22 days.Its not all forums,I Belong to a few others that are really buzzing,and I think it’s sad,I’ve been here since 2003 with almost 10000 posts and I want it to succeed,why’s its not,I guess it’s a variety of reasons.
Yes, the Ready Room was always hopping. Now, if you discount many of the posts that Tankerbuilder starts, there is virtually no movement in there.