Whats up with HMEM?

[stevehuckss396]

If you click to go to the home page there is a flood of information about alternative energy and free energy devices. This is supposed to be a forum for people who want to build engines. If I were to find the home page before knowing what goes on around here I would leave and never look back. Is that where this forum is heading? Whats the rub?

 

[Tin Falcon]

I see what you mean. I agree it is not the focus here . It appears someone submitted a bunch of articles about an off topic subject.
Maybe Austin can shed some light on the subject.
Tin

 

[canadianhorsepower]

I see what you mean. I agree it is not the focus here . It appears someone submitted a bunch of articles AND MONEY about an off topic subject.
Maybe Austin can shed some light on the subject.
Tin

that would be nice

 

[John Rus]

Indeed, I would like some of those articles to be removed.

John.

 

[Till]

This is annoying, dispels new members and will ruin the community sooner or later.


Please remove this *article* from the main page.

 

[charlesfitton]

It's not real?

I'm shocked...

 

[ShopShoe]

Swifty posted 12-16-2013:

"What's happened to the project of the month, we haven't had a new one since 3rd of October."

Paul.

--

Austin posted 12-18-2013:

"Dropped the ball, sorry about that.

We will be changing format in the new year. We have gone through a few revisions, but I would like a more community oriented one."

--

The thread was "No new project" here in The Break Room.

--

Seems I am not alone in my concern. "... a more community oriented..." Great Buzzwords. What is the "community?" I think it is home machining and hobby engine making and modeling and topics related to those things, although I would not argue against most posts I have seen here, even if off-topic.

If HMEM is being re-molded and re-branded to fit into a concept of a community that is too far afield from hobby machining and learning about the tools and techniques that support it I am afraid that more of us will move on.

All in all, we have a great bunch of members here and one of the best mentoring groups online. Thanks to the great work of all the Moderators who have kept the the spirit of courtesy alive here and thanks that we don't have too much of the OT ranting and blatant personal-agenda-pushing that we see elsewhere. No one likes to be flamed and I am glad that that is kept to a minimum.

I have been especially grateful that some of the most truly skilled members here have been genuinely helpful to those of us who are
attempting to learn and become better, even if it seems to take forever.

I understand the need to pay the bills and that most media nowadays needs to create an audience to deliver to the advertiser in exchange for revenue.

Rant off. No offense meant but concern to be noted.

In friendly spirit of cooperation as far as I can attempt. Best wishes for the new year.

--ShopShoe

 

[Philipintexas]

It's like everything on the internet, sooner or later it devolves into advertising $$.

 

[Niels Abildgaard]

Where?

and a happy new Year to all

 

[stevehuckss396]

Where?

and a happy new Year to all

Home page

Click home instead of forum.

 

[Sshire]

Caution: Rant follows

I agree that the forum has changed. When I started this hobby 2 ½ years ago, HMEM was my school.
I asked a LOT of newbie questions and was always given an answer without making me feel like an idiot. If I followed a build and didn’t understand the setup, the technique or the tooling - I asked and was answered.

The change that I see is not in the answers. Any question here usually gets a good, informative response. The change is that very few questions are asked. Either everyone has so much experience that they know everything or only a very, very small percentage of the people here are actually building (or have ever built) an engine.

It seems that the largest number of questions were previously about Works in Progress.
Chuck Fellowes’ latest build has had over 7,000 views and only 47 responses. I haven’t looked, but I’m sure that many aren’t questions, but rather in the “Nice part, Chuck” category.
River Gypsy has a great engine in current work in progress with nearly 11,000 views and only 56 replies. PhilJoe’s new build? over 12,000 views and a whopping 141 replies.

I believe that this is one of the reasons that John Moore (Bogstandard), who taught many of us how to do so much of what we do with small engines, left the group to start MEM. There are many more who have abandoned ship.

I agree that if I were a new person, who was interested in what we do and happened on the current home page, I’d move on without digging deeper.

I know that business is business, but the HMEM business is based on free content from members who willingly do so to help less-experienced folks. Doing a build thread with pictures takes a lot of time that could be used in the shop, with family or whatever. The “business” is built on our effort.

Personally, I hate the homepage. If I needed to gasify something or go solar, I’d find a forum for those issues. This is NOT how we should be presented and if some things don’t change, I’ll probably go the way of Bogs.

End Of Rant

 

[RonGinger]

Use Firefox with the ad-blocker addon. I dont see any ads on any page.

 

[stevehuckss396]

Use Firefox with the ad-blocker addon. I dont see any ads on any page.

Hello Ron!

It's not ads. It's actual content on the home page. It's not my forum so I have no say in what it contains. I was just asking so I could find out if that is the direction the forum is going. I hear rumor that there will be some changes made for the new year and wonder if this is just the start of that. Will the forum focus on model engines or will it expand to include builds of any kind.

 

[t.l.a.r. eng]

I almost left after the last water down changes took effect, seems we lost a lot of the more advanced engine guys.

I agree with stevehucks396, if we blend in non "engine" builds, looses the fabric of what this sight was about. :fan:

 

[Nerdz]

As a new member, I'd really hate to see this forum go down the tube. Its happened elsewhere on the net (Im a former member of a really well known PC modding/Tweaking forum) and would hate to see such a knowledge base lost.

If alt energy is where this is going, why not make a sister site and leave this site alone?

 

[Kaleb]

To be fair to these articles, all but the most recent of them are ideas that are perfectly sound, at least in theory.

 

[stevehuckss396]

To be fair to these articles, all but the most recent of them are ideas that are perfectly sound, at least in theory.

This is true but the sign does say "A worldwide hobby community dedicated to machinist built model engines".


Look, I don't care one way or the other. Like I said before, It's not my forum. But there are signs of change and rumors of things to come. I brought this up because I just wanted to know what's going on. Just wondering.

 

[John Rus]

If alt energy is where this is going, why not make a sister site and leave this site alone?

Well for one I don't think that's going to happen and I don't want that to happen else the knoledge base of people will be lost due to comepletely different interests. I'm sure there are more apropriate forums out there to post alternitave energy and if not make one, no need to post this kind of stuff on a hobby forum.

We aren't interested in wind mill's or magnet motors for powering your house, we are interested in completely non-usefull, time gobeling, noisy, smelly, oily, small, finiky at times, unreiable at times, MODEL ENGINES and things DIRECTELY related to the subject. I still can't beleive some people don't get that....:shrug:

Oh well back to the drawing board,
John.

 

[stevehuckss396]

finiky at times, unreliable at times,

Only when there is a lot of people watching.

 

[idahoan]

Would be interesting to see what Austin has to say; I thought he was the one picking these articles although I also agree that they don't belong here.

Dave