Where Is Everybody?

Wulf said:
Lorien, my post was not in any way directed towards you. I think you're doing a great job moderating this forum. It seems to me that the directive came from the top, and moderators were, for the most part, just trying to keep the peace. Incidentally, the super-moderator who admonished me (and I'm sure many others) has long since been banned from bladeforums for reasons unknown to me.

But the point is that, just as you said, this website and others like it derive their value from user-supplied content. The content attracts visitors, the visitors attract advertisers. Simple business model, really. Without content this website would be worthless. People should be incentivized to contribute, yet the owner of this site decided to fine them instead. Just seems like a terrible business decision on his part.
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if everything is running correctly, the incentive is the ability to contribute. And to receive useful feedback. This is why my primary mission to to destroy trolls. They are the worst.

Like advertisers, for people who use this site to directly create money for themselves there is a fee.

A knife maker who posts up their creations in this forum should pay for a membership if they sell their knives on the exchange. That is very clear.

Otherwise, I think it's up to the maker to decide whether or not they should 'donate' to a forum that helps them expose their work in a general sense, and it's not up to me or anyone else to judge.

The importance of in kind contributions has been made a few times, and if your contributions are more than just for personal exposure, that should play a role in deciding how you feel about paying for a membership. I know a good number of knife makers who provide more to others in the forum than they take for themselves. Of these, Nick Wheeler is a real standout. I think that's generally good practice, both in this forum and in 'real life'

Obviously, you got caught up in some bullshit, but things change and I hope you'll post your work here more frequently. You create some very fine knives
 
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Running Bladeforums is a dilemma. There are real costs involved and SOMEONE has to pay.

Can it all come from advertising for-non paying members? Probably not. I have NO idea on the cost vs return.

The biggest draws to this site:
Education / Contribution = Community building and intellectual growth.
Exposure / Promotion / Sales = Long and short term career needs.

Chitchat and fun stuff is value-added, yet isn't nearly as relevant.

My contributions are mentioned often. Yes, I try to be a leader and a giver....

However, EVERY image I show is an advertisement in some form. For me, and for the client. I get it.

It would be impractical/improper for me to declare my contributions as 'enough', although there's a legit LARGE following viewing them. I'll happily pay. It's the cost of doing business.

If there is some other means of drawing in money, then the contribution aspect could work. Ex: Free membership for three months? Then it costs $5 a year for a registered member? How would that stack up in a private forum. Lots of possibilities beyond the scope of my knowledge.

One thing is DEAD CERTAIN: the social media landscape is changing, and growth and retention in BF.com are real concerns. I don't have an answer. Spark Spark ought to give us some input.
 
Coop, I often find myself in awe of your clarity with words (nevermind just the photos) =)

The way you are able to articulate what is on your mind makes you one of the leaders. Also, the experience you have handling more knives then most get to.

I am not a member of USN but based on their show and "the gathering", and open presence of members on instagram, I'd assume that forum is very busy still, even though there is a decline of participation all over aside from this forum..
 
I certainly don't know anything about this site's revenues and expenses, but the internet is full of discussion forums that offer free memberships to their users and earn 100% of their revenues through ad sales. So clearly its a business model that works quite well for others. I should add that facebook, instagram and youtube operate the same way. There is no cost associated with contributing content because these people know it's all about the content.

Another thing I noticed after the great shakedown is that among the knifemakers who stuck around and continued to pay their membership fees, quite a few saw it as free license to use this forum purely as an advertising venue. They rarely, if ever participate in any other discussions anymore, only posting photos of their newest work and openly soliciting orders. This commercialization led to a subtle but noticeable change in the atmosphere here - at least to me - and the sense of community I had enjoyed in the early years was largely gone.

Has anyone else noticed this?
 
Wulf said:
I certainly don't know anything about this site's revenues and expenses, but the internet is full of discussion forums that offer free memberships to their users and earn 100% of their revenues through ad sales. So clearly its a business model that works quite well for others. I should add that facebook, instagram and youtube operate the same way. There is no cost associated with contributing content because these people know it's all about the content.

Another thing I noticed after the great shakedown is that among the knifemakers who stuck around and continued to pay their membership fees, quite a few saw it as free license to use this forum purely as an advertising venue. They rarely, if ever participate in any other discussions anymore, only posting photos of their newest work and openly soliciting orders. This commercialization led to a subtle but noticeable change in the atmosphere here - at least to me - and the sense of community I had enjoyed in the early years was largely gone.

Has anyone else noticed this?
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yes, I definitely have noticed that and I'm really not sure if that's part of a larger cultural shift, or something specific to here. It bums me out, especially since I feel like it's kind of on me to do something about it. This is where the rules are bendy and weird and peeps can kind of ride the edge. That said, I know it's on all of us to deal with that, or not. I prefer that forumites diplomatically correct each other for questionable posting behaviour to having some authoritative presence. I'd rather keep the peace than disturb it

Still, there's no more active nor all encompassing forum dedicated to the broad topic of custom knives as this one, so far as I know
 
Noticed as well. ever since the 'great shakedown' as you put it, things changed and have never recovered. Prior to that, you had a ton of people on here, almost all the big names in custom knifemaking were here. Showing their work, giving advice, making tons of WIP threads, and how-to examples and really helpin keep the site thriving, and engaging.

Most of those makers had no need for BF to promote their work or generate them sales, and their knives were FAR too in demand and expensive to even consider listing them here for sale or utilizing their own forum subsection(does anyone even really use that feature anymore?). This was purely a place to socialize and share their experience. So when mods starting hounding them left and right and publicly shaming them for not 'doing their part' most of em said F that and fled. And who could blame em, they were the content creators of these sub-sections, and then to be told they gotta pay the site money to contribute to it? yeah, not gonna happen. It also didnt help that all of that drama was going down right at the time facebook was peaking, instagram was rearing it's head, and a lot of other free knife forums were starting to take off more. gave the content creators here every excuse needed to bail and never look back.

From my perspective there are only 2 options to even have a chance of making BF great again for custom knives and makers. Either remove paid memberships for knifemakers. Likely never will happen since the owner here is stuck on the idea obviously. OR add things that make the paid membership worth it. As it stands currently, it's got no value for a knifemaker in all honesty. Sure some here will say the value is in the friendships, bonds, etc etc. But those things are free everywhere else too.... To charge for something, you need to be giving the customer something they can't get free elsewhere. BF doesn't have that anymore, not even close...

BF is quickly becoming the SEARS of the knifeworld. ignoring all the signs, letting everyone else take their followers, all the while refusing to make any changes to right the ship.
 
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as the moderator for this forum, I will commit to not hounding knife makers for membership.

If you actually sell knives on Bladeforums, whether you're a collector or maker, you need to have a paid membership. That's a golden rule. If you don't actually sell knives on Bladeforums, it's none of my damn business whether you pay for a subscription or not. That said, I will continue my efforts to discourage this forum from becoming overly commercialized

in a perfect world, where an honour system functions well, people who frequent the forum will help support it with a membership because they want to. Not because they're enticed, coerced or for any other reason than they want to see the smoke coming out of the chimney
 
Lorien said:
as the moderator for this forum, I will commit to not hounding knife makers for membership.

If you actually sell knives on Bladeforums, whether you're a collector or maker, you need to have a paid membership. That's a golden rule. If you don't actually sell knives on Bladeforums, it's none of my damn business whether you pay for a subscription or not. That said, I will continue my efforts to discourage this forum from becoming overly commercialized

in a perfect world, where an honour system functions well, people who frequent the forum will help support it with a membership because they want to. Not because they're enticed, coerced or for any other reason than they want to see the smoke coming out of the chimney
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that's awesome to hear. and what ya said is how i think everyone expects a forum to function. If your going to directly sell off it, of course you should have to pay some sort of membership fee, or per sale fee. Now ya'll just gotta figure out how to get the word out to everyone. I think a LARGE portion of past userbase is still under impression that any activity on this site by them showing their work constituted rule breaking here. I bet you could get a lot of makers back if it was made clear that they don't have to have a membership just to throw their hat in the ring for Bowie Knife of the year, showing off their latest build, shop updates, WIP, etc etc.
 
Taking part in discussions isn't an advertisement. Showing your work off & soliciting sales? Different story. We've never required knifemakers to buy a membership to take part in the discussions. If they want to advertise their wares? You get the picture.

Yes, FB, Insta, Reddit & other venues have made it incredibly easy for people to go their own way. That's the nature of social media. We've also seen FB, eBay and other venues clamp down on things that don't suit their "morals" - some sites will be happy to take your ad dollars to promote things, but if you actually list something like a switchblade for sale? Cancelled, "Zucced" or whatev.

We're here as a discussion site first and foremost, providing a service to the industry as a whole at all levels. That's what we'll remain.
 
So what would the definition of advertising wares be here? this is the gray area that caused so much drama a while back, and to this day doesn't seem to be really defined and even in this thread now has conflicting info coming from mods.

Lorien saying its none of his biz unless the maker is trying to sell a knife using this site. e.g. impression given is that showing off your latest build, posting a WIP of it, showing off new shop layout, posting pics of your best bowie knife you want entered into the contest, etc etc is A-OK..

Your comment throws that into question spark. By showing off their wares & soliciting sales, do you mean anyone posting a picture of their latest piece? or presenting a WIP of their latest build? Or mentioning anything for that matter related to their business of knifemaking? Or would they need to be specifically saying something is for sale and or have a price on it too, or linking to their site?
 
Well said by many people.

Honestly, a $25 membership fee is not holding knife makers from participating or joining in these discussions.

most knife makers I have spoken to - who have decided not to post or comment - have never mentioned membership cost as prohibitive. Basically, they have said that "trolling" is the main reason why they hesitate. You get one disgruntled "troll" and the maker has a problem that might take a lot of effort to fix.

Not saying there are trolls in this forum....but you get the idea. The internet can be very helpful to a maker...but there are risks.

Disclaimer: I am not a maker. I'm just relaying what I've been told.
 
the trolling in this forum has diminished greatly over the past few years
 
Ron Sabbagh said:
Well said by many people.

Honestly, a $25 membership fee is not holding knife makers from participating or joining in these discussions.

most knife makers I have spoken to - who have decided not to post or comment - have never mentioned membership cost as prohibitive. Basically, they have said that "trolling" is the main reason why they hesitate. You get one disgruntled "troll" and the maker has a problem that might take a lot of effort to fix.

Not saying there are trolls in this forum....but you get the idea. The internet can be very helpful to a maker...but there are risks.

Disclaimer: I am not a maker. I'm just relaying what I've been told.
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knifemaker membership is $75. And it's not that its prohibitive, it's just many don't view it as worth it if they aren't even selling on the site. As evident by almost all the major content creators vanishing within a very short timeframe after the "shakedown" took place. I know a handful of MS and JS who bailed after that. None of em sold knives here, none of em viewed it as advertising, they were just talkin with other makers, showing off their latest crazy designs, and helping other makers learn the tricks of the trade. To be told you had to pay to share your knowledge was a huge turnoff.
 
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there's a cop who's gotta tell the kids at school that he's gonna bust their ass if they ever catch them smoking weed, who lets them off with a stern warning when they catch those kids smoking weed.

rules exist in order to bust wankers. People who are just looking to have a good time at no one else's expense are gonna be aight
 
Haven't posted a anything here in years. I must have left before the "shakedown". Life happened -wife, 2 kids...it's just easier to post and sell on Instagram. I have been planning on coming back but just haven't got around to it. Something that I would miss is how we used to be able to post a knife here for feedback and discussion and if it was available in the For Sale area we could mention that too...no pricing, just a reminder that it could be had. If makers aren't selling what's the incentive to post? Some of us have a family to support.
 
Ben Seward said:
Haven't posted a anything here in years. I must have left before the "shakedown". Life happened -wife, 2 kids...it's just easier to post and sell on Instagram. I have been planning on coming back but just haven't got around to it. Something that I would miss is how we used to be able to post a knife here for feedback and discussion and if it was available in the For Sale area we could mention that too...no pricing, just a reminder that it could be had. If makers aren't selling what's the incentive to post? Some of us have a family to support.
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Hey Ben,

Don't know if you're aware of this but knife makers are not allowed to even mention here the knife is available.......I've seen a few get chastised for this. For the $75 fee we pay to post, it seems rather unfair to not be able to mention that a knife is available in the For Sale threads. I just paid my "dues" - I'm going to be thinking real hard over the next 11 months whether it's worth it to continue.

Keep your banjo tuned buddy!
 
I'm aware of that...something that has changed since I left. I don't think it has helped anything. I get it that this isn't a sales part of the forum but really, who's it gonna hurt if it is mentioned by a paying member that a knife up for discussion is available in another part of the forum? Seems like a burdensome regulation that removes incentive to post. As long as we're actually selling, then what's the problem? If you want to attract professional makers to post their knives here then cater to them a bit. Professionals do this to sell knives...it's not just a hobby.
 
I think its unfair to solely blame knifemakers for the lack of content/posts in this forum. There may be less of them, but there are also far less collectors like me posting....

Years ago this forum was full of collectors like me discussing customs of all kinds....kinda like how "the Porch" crew discusses traditionals in their forum. In fact, collectors far outnumbered knifemakers in posts. There was always the "what's your next purchase" and "this or that" threads that were quite active. You get the picture.

I'm thinking...and this is just my perspective.. that there has been an overall decline in custom knife interests among collectors, coupled with an increased interest in production knives as production knives have gotten better and better with modern technology, and as more custom makers are pairing with production companies (e.g. Pena, Rogers).

The currently active thread "what custom is in your pocket today?" hasn't had a single post in 2 days. Years back, it would have 20-30 posts in a single day.

So less collectors are participating, as well.
 
I think the younger collectors are using social media. They can get daily updates of what makers are working on...and the opportunity to buy, right at their fingertips. It is what it is. Makers have to go where the buyers are.
 
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