First off, if you’re a newbie, welcome, welcome, welcome! [:)][:)][:)]
I was thinking about the questions that newcommers have and I noticed that very often the same questions are asked by newbie’s.
Thats not bad, not at all!
Newbie’s are great and so is their thirst for knowledge. Let’s by all means feed that hunger!
I got to thinking about it though, so in an effort to make it easier to find the information that they need how about we put it in one place for easy reference?
We who have been around could collaborate and put together a place where basic questions are addressed, links to helpful sites are posted, and useful mathmatical calculations are given in an effort to help the greenhorn’s (said with affection) out.
Think of this as kind of like Joe Fugate’s DCC forum (someone please post that link) for the general newbie.
I’ll go first…
The most important thing for the newbie is to read. Read anything and everything that interests you about trains. Arm yourself with knowledge!
Secondly, ask questions. We love to answer questions on this forum, and there’s no such thing as a stupid one (I know, I asked a few that I thought were stupid and I always got a response that answered it).
Now it’s time for me to step back and let the REAL experts have at it…
the real problem is that no matter how useful a thread is , it quickly gets pushed off the first page (and 2nd , 3rd and 4th!) by the volume of new posts and replies we have here . that’s a good thing in a way , it shows that this is a very active community . so what we really need are sticky posts , that our moderator(s) can pin to the top of the 1st page so they’re easy to find
One of the things that I have done is go to the last page of the Proto type Forum and work forward reading older posts. The posts are here for a year then disappear unless there is a new comment is added to it, when it returns to page one.
There are volumes of information and knowledge in this group of forums, read absorb and enjoy the hobby.
One word of caution, once you have read one “rant” on E-Bay you have read them all!
New bees, welcome to a great pasttime, when you master something new, share it with your fellow modellers! And as P. Carrell puts it so well “Preach the Gospel at all times, use words if necessary!”
Aggro’s thead is great start to that idea. It would be great if Bergie and Co. could come up with a separate link/storehouse for those often-requested topics. Even so, there’d still be need for clarification for some inquirers.
You bring up a good point about the activity on this forum. My wife frequents several dollhouse forums (what kind of hobby is that? - seriously, I think it is great that we both have a hobby and we often work on our projects together - way cool) and it is interesting to note that there are threads on their page 1’s that haven’t had a post in months. I love the questions of newbies. It seems that in the hundreds of answers that are posted there are always at least one method or solution that I haven’t heard of before. Many times these methods/solutions are better than the way “it’s been done since the beginning of time.”
I suggested earlier, in Electrolove’s recent post, that we need an archive of the most consistently accessed threads …based on numbers of searches for threads, subject-by-subject. The sticky, only one (!!!), should be the one stating that new folks will find the answers to their most vexing concerns raght hyar.