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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?

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  • Hi Doug,

     

    The people on the forum who participate and also hold down a full time technical job are special beyond special in my opinion. It is much easier for a retired person to allocate the time and effort. Personally I really enjoy the sharing and camaraderie of the forum. I spent my career working a job where for the most part I was without associates. In my childhood I had a good friend with whom I could interact technically and together we built gadgets, machines, and electronic contraptions continuously. I missed the fun of sharing and exchanging ideas like I had done with my friend until I found this forum. Now I share the joy of technical interaction again with friends all over the world. There may be many reasons why some people participate and others do not but I believe that they all boil down to personal needs. I too have tried without much success to get technical friends to join us. If I asked them they would probably tell me that they are too busy with work or family but what they are really saying is that they don't feel the same need to be part of this group of technical friends as I feel. They have time for all sorts of other trivial activities outside of their work and away from the family so it really isn't the time or the family that is keeping them from the forum. All we can do is continue to do the best we can to make the forum a welcoming and civil place. We have had some very good successes in the last couple years with new members who have joined and have made the forum a much better place because of their participation. Thank you for your poll and for opening up this conversation as it points out how rare a good new participating member is and how we should continue to do our best to welcome them and get them integrated into the group as quickly and seamlessly as possible.

     

    John

  • in reply to jw0752

    There are definitely lots of benefits, reasons, and motivations why members participate, but I guess we aren't born with these motives, somehow they become significant in our value systems and we gravitate to them. Many hobbies are like that, people who don't do them never make the leap to finding value in them. Your story highlights a good example of how some of the forum features became valuable to you before the forum even existed. Just talking about it and thinking about it and seeing what others think is giving me better insight into the phenomenon.

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  • in reply to jw0752

    There are definitely lots of benefits, reasons, and motivations why members participate, but I guess we aren't born with these motives, somehow they become significant in our value systems and we gravitate to them. Many hobbies are like that, people who don't do them never make the leap to finding value in them. Your story highlights a good example of how some of the forum features became valuable to you before the forum even existed. Just talking about it and thinking about it and seeing what others think is giving me better insight into the phenomenon.

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