Is it my imagination...

[MrPickles]

anyone notice that prices for painted mini seems to be dropping off a bit too?

seems like even some of the good painters will work for pretty cheap

 

[Herb the bitter]

Often contentious subjects will see people come out of the woodwork who haven't posted in years (literally in some cases!) to say their two bits.

Einion

This sentiment is utterly ridiculous! (Damn the irony would have been so much better if I hadn't just posted a few days ago.) Can't believe it's been almost four years since I've posted a new picture.

Am glad for the Einons, avelorns and supervikes etc. who never seem to enter the woodwork.

 

[No Such Agency]

Also, several of the non-university members have become parents over the same holiday season, and with wee ones in the house, don't have the time for the hobby like they used too.

Oh jeez... that is the understatement of the year. I'm only posting now because the wee nugget is asleep... for now. I got a good painting session in this morning... at 5 am, before I went to work.

I agree that perhaps the forums aren't as "on fire" as they once were. A lot of high-posting members I remember have appeared only rarely if at all lately. But yeah, I think it's just the ebb and flow of a community... people here still ask questions, post helpful comments, throw jokes around and generally engage in normal web-community-forum things.

 

[Bloodhowl]

Oh jeez... that is the understatement of the year. I'm only posting now because the wee nugget is asleep... for now. I got a good painting session in this morning... at 5 am, before I went to work.

Just wait. It doesn't get better. Who ever tells you it does, is lying! Mine are 4 & 6. I usually get kicked out of my bed around 3:30am because the 4 year old climbs over me to get to mommy from a bad dream or what-have-you, and just about the time I start to go back to sleep, at 4:30am-ish the 6 year old gets up and asks "Daddy, is it time for breakfast?"

 

[uglybug]

I think it's because of all the addictive iPad games, and Facebook.
I use to spend more time reading posts then I realized that I should be spending more time painting. The forum has given me tons of tips by just reading without having to ask. As far as votes or submitting work goes, if I had a better camera I would share my work and be more involved with that part of the site.
As far as the hobby on a whole, when I went to the long island miniature show this year in november I overheard the organizers complaining about the lack of participation and they blamed the economy and you could see it on the venders faces that nobody was buying.

 

[kathrynloch]

I use Facebook but only minimally. Forums provide a greater sense of community than FB does. My RL friends don't understand my hobby when I post a pic of my latest work I may get a couple of likes from close friends but the rest just hope I shut up and go away. Forums allow more in depth conversation and greater community.

I too think any slow down has a lot to do with the economy, but the other reasons are big too, family and school.

 

[Chrome]

But hardly ever in a hobby capacity Exactly!

Erm, isn't that true of CMON? It certainly is; but there, just like you type below, the feedback is more in your face, you instantly get a notification whenever someone you know does something, even more feedback when someone you know does something to/with your part of the web. The actual feedback you get is utterly pointless when you look at it but it's right there, the instant something happens you -know-, and that's addictive, I guess you could call it a false sense of control.

Here you have to work to get your feedback, there you have to work to get rid of it


Actually I was going to include that in a way, in terms of the younger potential members compared to their versions only about a decade back they're used to a more dynamic instant-update kind of web life, versus this kind of thing.

I'm actually beginning to think that the whole forum thing might be past its heyday.
I'm not entirely sure, but then again, that might just be the "old man chrome" speaking, I myself actually like having an easily accessible database of all the crap I've spewed throughout the years online, you don't get that in those mediums, you type something, you type something else and the first thing is gone basically(I know that's an exaggeration but it's the principle here)

Einion

+++This part of the message does not exist, please ignore. -Illuminati+++

 

[RuneBrush]

Really interesting to see everybodies views & opinions. Although I think the general forum does contain quite a few "heated discussion" threads, the dedicated forums are (generally) really positive and beneficial.

Although I do use Facebook, I actually think as a platform for a hobby it's not that great. I find it fantastic for keeping in touch with friends (a lot who live in various parts of the country) and occasionally venting my anger or enjoyment at the world (of which I'm under no illusion that nobody really cares).

One thing that has occurred to me is that the concept of a forum has largely stood still for a number of years - you have a forum with a number of headings and then people create topics under those headings. I suppose that at some point somebody will sit down and develop a new style/concept of forum that provides the benefits of a traditional forum, but the ease of use and benefits of a social media site - so a top bar notification system, integrated chat, friends list etc (I know some forums have these already, but I mean an integrated set up rather than a bolt on).

 

[Tommie Soule]

the method is erelephant. just promote!

 

[Einion]

Just to clarify, past its heyday ≠ dying a slow death :glasses-nerdy:

It certainly is; but there, just like you type below, the feedback is more in your face, you instantly get a notification whenever someone you know does something, even more feedback when someone you know does something to/with your part of the web. The actual feedback you get is utterly pointless when you look at it but it's right there, the instant something happens you -know-, and that's addictive, I guess you could call it a false sense of control.

Aha, feedback loop, get it. Thanks for the details, having barely looked at Facebook I tend to forget what I might have heard of how things work in detail.

One thing that has occurred to me is that the concept of a forum has largely stood still for a number of years - you have a forum with a number of headings and then people create topics under those headings. I suppose that at some point somebody will sit down and develop a new style/concept of forum that provides the benefits of a traditional forum, but the ease of use and benefits of a social media site - so a top bar notification system, integrated chat, friends list etc (I know some forums have these already, but I mean an integrated set up rather than a bolt on).

There are a good few of those (and presumably dozens more that I've seen). I've used a few, and IMO none are not as good as vBulletin and any similar forum software in some fundamental ways.

I'm of the opinion that the paradigm of a traditional forum like this is not broken and therefore doesn't need to be fixed, but I have to be biased as a long-time and sometimes heavy user. Many of the "kinda-sorta like a thread" things you see online are just less in some way - more akin to the ability to leave comments on a blog post, news page or YouTube vid (and just as futile or empty compared with something that at least attempts to mimic regular converse).

Since the Internet is so linkable it's easy to manually produce more of a fully-interactive experience, without having to build in more features while throwing away some of the core concepts that make this kind of conversational form as good as it is and as satisfying to use.

One of the things that really might be 'broken' and in need of fixing or re-imagining is actually the browser itself; with widescreen becoming the norm and most pages being of a certain fixed maximum width there's a lot of unused screen real-estate and a single-pane window no longer works as well, and for many people they want something that can really aid them viewing more than one thing at a time... I can feel the weight of sediment coming down on me already, before you know it I'll be fossilized!

Einion

 

[RuneBrush]

One of the things that really might be 'broken' and in need of fixing or re-imagining is actually the browser itself; with widescreen becoming the norm and most pages being of a certain fixed maximum width there's a lot of unused screen real-estate and a single-pane window no longer works as well, and for many people they want something that can really aid them viewing more than one thing at a time... I can feel the weight of sediment coming down on me already, before you know it I'll be fossilized!

Einion

Tell me about it. One thing that has happened recently too (and it's the bane of web designer & developers lives) is that more people are using smart phones and tablet devices to view websites and users expect to have exactly the same experience on their iPad to a computer with 20" widescreen. I think it won't be long and companies are just going to have to accept that you're going to need multiple aspect ratio versions of the same site...

 

[kathrynloch]

Tell me about it. One thing that has happened recently too (and it's the bane of web designer & developers lives) is that more people are using smart phones and tablet devices to view websites and users expect to have exactly the same experience on their iPad to a computer with 20" widescreen. I think it won't be long and companies are just going to have to accept that you're going to need multiple aspect ratio versions of the same site...

Some companies have already realized this. The company that hosts my WarHorseMinis.com domain, I can design a mobile site right along with my website. I can also post up forums, Meebo, and instant chat relatively easily as well as update Facebook and other social media with a click of a mouse. In fact, part of my package deal comes with free FB and Google ad credits. They are focusing on the aspects of social media and encouraging not only webmasters but visitors to the website to hang out because they can get a lot under the same umbrella without having to go anywhere else.

It's up to me to figure out the CONTENT to have on my site to encourage everyone to do that - and that's the hard part. lol!

 

[Tyrannus Libris]

Wow nice responses all I really appreciate it. I guess what surprised me when I came back to all these stuff was the dichotomy between the amount of chatter, which in my mind maybe reflected a lack of interest, and the sheer number of amazing miniatures and miniature companies that weren't around all that long ago. I can certainly understand the lack of time thing. I really got out of it when my youngest was born and had no more time to even breathe. Now that he is older and my wife and I moved into new digs I have the time and the room to start up again. Bigger and badder than ever. Even so it has taken me a very long time to set everything up. I am very interested in all of your opinions so thank you for all the activity!

 

[supervike]

My lack of participation stems mostly from the fact that ive run out of things to say....:confused2: