[Clifford_Parker]

Did "we" REALLY need to divide up the board even more?? Isn't this whole board a place for discussing and presenting tips, WIPs, and questions on woods, materials, tools, and finishing techniques????

Remember all of the "leave it as close as possible" posts when we moved to a new board? As a number of us said then, "more isn't always better" and "new isn't always improved".

I enjoyed seeing WIP posts but really didn't see the need for yet another area just for them either. The placement of the different areas does not seem to follow any logic either. The WIP, Tips, and Woods and materials topics should be grouped at the bottom with tools and finishing IMO. It is getting difficult to navigate the topics and could be intimidating for new members who worry that their question will be in "the wrong place" and "get them in trouble".

[BobD]

I'm sorry you feel that way Cliff.


You make a good point about the order. I will definately make that change. And I'm in the process of trying to create sub groups that you can access in a number of ways.

Unfortunately, the board has grown--not only as a community but also as a resource. We average 50-60 people on the board at any given time--and while many don't post, they are reading the threads and referring to the information.

So it's my job to try to make that information as easy to find as possible for everyone.

My thought right now is to create sub groups under the main threads (General, Holiday, Caricature, Animals, etc.) for WIP--then you can access them from the main thread, or if you want to look at WIPs, you can just click on that thread. But I'm still working out the technology.

I understand your concerns, and am trying to find a happy medium.

Bob

[Callynne]

For me, it's not a case of too many topics, it's a case of too little time! Yes, here I am....whining and complaining again! Callynne

[kaiserb]

Bob,

I know the too many catagories can be a real challenge. You might look at some of the other boards that have 50-60K messages on them. There are a number of them that divide everything up logically using different criteria.

There are a lot of topics on this board that do not fit into any of the catagories we have. Therefore more categories are needed to organized and create order on the board. Encyclopedia Britanica used to be just three volumes....Today it is 32 volumes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclo...dia_Britannica




Cliff:

As for the WIP ... One of the reasons I suggested it was to have one place to look at all of the WIP items. Many of the topics get hijacked (topic changes content) as someone posts a Work in Progress, gets kudos and questions, then others post thier WIP in the same thread, then you get a number of other kudos, thunderstealing and other off topic items. I for one, do not want to read through 120 messages to see someones WIP. Additionally it is bad style to post your work onto someone elses thread to either intentionally or unintetionally say "That is nice... but look at mine"

All of this makes a thread that is hard to follow. A good example of this is the "Whatcha Carvin'" thread from earlier in the year (this thread was created to have multiple WIPs in it), [I did not post this because I do not like the thread, it is merely as an example of multiple WIPs, comments, etc].

I really like the way the WIP is handled on the forum Susan suggested in the Hall of Fame Topic.

http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=295160

[Please use this example instead] http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/show...hreadid=298480
If you look at this there is a fairly thorough discussion of making the piece followed by questions and the thread ends.

[Irish]

Brian,

FYI - the thread you have linked in your posting is not a WIP but instead a WIP-Tutorial! There is an edicate on WetCanvas where the title of the thread not only tells you what the thread is about but also how to respond to that thread.

A WIP - Tutorial means "I am going to show you how I do something, step by step, please no comments until I am completely done." A WIP means "I am working on something right now and would love for you to chip in, help, offer suggestions, and even post what you have done to show me where I might go next or how I might deal with a problem area."

Each section of WetCanvas is treated as an independent forum, the one that I have been on is the Colored Pencil forum. If you take time to look you will see that they do not use topic headings at all. The CP forum uses only two topics. The top section or first topic is active threads. And the second sections, dare I say it out loud, is their Hall of Fame - now Reading Library sections. That's it! Instead they have a strong system of titling their posts.

Because they don't use topics, titling a thread is extremely important and there is a vast difference between a WIP, WIP-Tutorial, Brand of Pencils, or What CP Paper posting. On this forum it would be equavalent to taking away the topics then posting threads as "Relief - Landscape Box Top", "Bird Carving - Saw Whet Owl", "Holidays - another twig Santa", or "Pyro - Dragon Plate".

WetCanvas works their system off the principle that any member is going to want to read all of the active threads at that time or coming in to look up an old thread (Library) that had some tid bit they wanted to read again.

I might add that Colored Pencil artists are an extremely small group, not many of us out there. Wood Carving has so many more artists than the CP area. Yet there are times on that forum that there will be two full pages of currently active threads to go through. I have seen times when there were 60 to 80 active members posting once a week and about 25- 30 strong members posting daily.

Susan

Oh ... another quick FYI ... "Watcha Carvin" wasn't a WIP. It was an invite to members that weren't posting and weren't active on the forum to join in the fun in hopes that they would become active members. And I do believe that several of the now very strong, very active member of this forum came from that thread.

[kaiserb]

Originally Posted by Irish

Brian,

Because they don't use topics, titling a thread is extremely important and there is a vast difference between a WIP, WIP-Tutorial, Brand of Pencils, or What CP Paper posting. On this forum it would be equavalent to taking away the topics then posting threads as "Relief - Landscape Box Top", "Bird Carving - Saw Whet Owl", "Holidays - another twig Santa", or "Pyro - Dragon Plate".

One issue on this board is the titles of the new threads people post. When you look at the board in a linear manner and drill down into the topics you find a number of terse non descript thread titles. We all need to work on this and keep this in mind when creating new threads.

Originally Posted by Irish

Oh ... another quick FYI ... "Watcha Carvin" wasn't a WIP. It was an invite to members that weren't posting and weren't active on the forum to join in the fun in hopes that they would become active members. And I do believe that several of the now very strong, very active member of this forum came from that thread.

It was just used as an example of how not to do a WIP thread. It was not used as an example of someting bad or good. The thread did generate a number of new posters which is a good thing.



As for the thread from the other board I stand corrected and will use the following in its place. I think this is a WIP only thread:

http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/show...hreadid=298480

[Irish]

Brain, That is an excellent example of just a WIP! Nice pick too, I am going to slip back after this and read it all the way through! Thanks for finding it.

I agree, perhaps the simpliest idea-solution-change right now might be discovering how we all can better Title a thread so that anyone would know right away what it is about. Just the simple WIP at the beginning of a thread tells everyone it is a work in progress. Maybe there are other ideas that we can find for things like finished projects, show experiences, maybe something like WS could stand for Walking Sticks ... Then it would be easy to browse through a topic and know which you might or might not be interested in clicking on.

Good ideas Brian and perhaps the ultimate solution here!!!!

Susan

[kaiserb]

Back around to Bobs solution having a WIP Catagory, with a Walking sticks, Characatures, etc. threads would work if everyone stayed in the threads and did not carry the topic of the thread off to who knows where.

I think we are lacking on Catagories and overly heavy on small threads.