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  • Author Author: dougw
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Speculation in Absentia

No, not the TV series. This poll is speculation about why most technical people do not participate on element14. The absentia part is because by definition those people are not hanging out here to provide feedback. My motive for exploring this topic is I think the forum would be even more interesting and beneficial to everyone if there was more participation, and I definitely don't understand the main motivations and value systems at play here.

I'm sure their reasons are as varied or even more varied than the reasons why people do participate here. It could be anything from not wanting to endure the possibility of criticism to having more interesting things to do to simply not knowing about the forum. I know many more technical people who do not participate than the number I know who do. But I do not get a clear picture of why any of them do not participate. I will pose some poll options, but expect the comments will highlight many more motives than I can postulate.

First I want to explain something I noticed when I first visited England as a young boy. As a hint about how long ago that was, one leg of the trip was flown in a Vickers Viscount and one was a Stratocruiser. You can imagine how long that trip took - from Jamaica to London, but you would probably underestimate. Another hint about the era of the flight - the BOAC pilot let me sit on his knee for part of the flight. One final contrast with those times is something my Dad just related to me. He carried his handgun on the aircraft and asked the crew if he could clean it during the flight - and they let him. One of the crew came and chatted with him while he was doing it, but that was the extent of security. He wasn't a law enforcement official - he was an articulate engineer from a colony. But obviously a very trustworthy individual.

As  a youngster, many things about England impressed me (we were there for 3 months I think), but just to mention 5 of them:

  1. ice cream sandwiches - I had never had one before - now they are still a favorite of mine
  2. castles - we visited a bunch - I still like castles a lot
  3. penny arcades - they just blew mind - I'm obviously still interested in clever technology
  4. the blue whale at the Natural History Museum - I went back to see it a couple of years ago - it is still there, but surrounded by a bunch of other animals
  5. everybody in England seemed to have a hobby - miniature boats, miniature towns, miniature everything, models of everything, gardens everywhere, whatever, they all seemed to have interesting hobbies. Every park had people playing with hobby items. I didn't see this in any other country.

My question out of that long story is what motivated so many people to take up hobbies at that time? Is it similar to why members here do hobby electronics? Does it provide any insight about what type of people or what value systems or what circumstances to target for more members?

Poll question:

Which reason below do you think is the most prevalent reason why technical people do not participate in this forum?

  • in reply to beacon_dave

    Good points.

    Those that aren't members definitely can't participate, but they still form a class of potential participants that might be addressed by getting the word out to them.

    I am sure you are right about some of the members only signing up for a single interesting activity. (I have done that on other forums)

    It would be useful to devise a strategy to encourage some of those single-use members to expand their involvement, but it is tough to come up with methods that are not already in place.

    I know internet storefronts use habit profiling to target advertising - maybe more could be done in that direction.

  • The first reason suggested "They do not know about the forum" can probably be ruled out as I would imagine that most people would 'know about the forum' if they had managed to register for it as a user.

     

    I suspect that a significant number of registered users only ever signed up to either:

    • access a specific topic which was located behind the login page
    • to have a chance at acquiring a freebie

    which showed up in a search engine or social media site and after which they probably never visited the site again. Activity stats should identify these class of registered user quite easily though.

  • The answer to your posts, became an ever increasing series of questions for me, each requiring a poll in itself, in order to gather sufficient data for analysis. Analysis paralysis is a common malaise I suffer from.

     

    I'm fascinated by what I call marketing type questions. I enjoy looking for sources of data for analysis. We like to believe that we are smart, rational creatures, always acting in our best interests. This is not case.

     

    I lead a team that developed a process for product testing. I apologize for the vagueness of my post but non-disclosure agreements restricts what I can share. Individuals were compensated for participation. This didn't ensure 100% participation. Threat of expulsion improved participation but water down results. A two year labour of love gave me fantastic insight into achieving effective testing results through customer feedback. The one factor that impacted results the most was the questions themselves.

     

    Experience tells me, the answer to your question is not simple. I joined and participate because I get a return on my investment. The return takes many forms.

     

    Sean

  • in reply to dougw

    If not for the core people (Top or otherwise) this site would wither and die. Thanks for the poll @

  • in reply to Jan Cumps

    Absolutely. There is an excellent membership here that helps make this by far my favorite forum. But if we understood all the reasons why most people don't participate, maybe we could find ways to encourage even more participation.

  • There is decent representation of professional technical people here.

    I guess it depends on the subject if they get out of the caves or not. Several of the FPGA, analog, sensor, power electronics and industrial threads get their involvement.

  • in reply to rusgray

    Your observations are right on. That apparent lack of interest and different way of looking at technology is noticeable in some technical people, and I always find is surprising.

  • I've only been an engineer for a short while, but I was interested in building, tinkering, and electronics long before that. On my way through engineering school (EE/CS program) and its attendant summer internships, I was consistently surprised by the number of technical people I encountered who had basically zero interest in using their skills outside the context of work/school. It seems like people in this category would not even consider something like participation on e14 as a leisure-time activity, because they don't consider electronics/software/firmware work to be a leisure-time activity. You somewhat touch on this idea in one of your poll options ("They feel electronics is their job, which is work and they don't work for free), but I don't think think the choice is quite as transactional as the poll option speculates.


    Personally, I joined e14 a few years ago to get access to EAGLE footprints while I was working on my first major personal electronics project in school. I lurked a little here and there while finishing school, but never had the time or energy to participate. I graduated last December, and started participating in the community more and more as the brain-fog from school lifted and I got more comfortable in my job.

  • in reply to neilk

    2 greenhouses - serious gardening - sounds like full blown farming...image