WIP's

[xy mosian]

It is a shame that these disappear into the annals of time, sometimes lost behind a slightly misleading title. I was reminded of this by the completion of Rogers latest work. I no particular order others I remember include, a Toy Farm and indeed Rogers Clock. What a shame to loose these. Is there any way they could be saved, and easily indexed or accessed? Perhaps as downloadable pdf's? Of course there are copywright issues etc. Still a shame that fresh woodworkers will perhaps not get the benefit of reading these readily.
Any thoughts anyone?

xy

 

[marcros]

there was a brilliant one of somebody carving a lady from a piece of lime. I dont recall who it was, or know whether it was finished.

 

[CHJ]

....Any thoughts anyone?

I first tried to give some thought to this some years ago and return to the subject from time to time but I've found that even if you spend time collating threads things fall apart sooner or later.

There is also a need for continued interest with any such project, not only from the initial coordinator but thread contributors to trigger inclusion.

Off site hosting of images is the biggest killer.
E.G. Boxes

 

[AndyT]

It's a nice idea, but too unwieldy to expect a mod or a volunteer to take it on. The threads that are top-notch fascinating to one of us will be uninteresting to another, and there is quite a lot of material to review.

There are plenty of ways to save any content that you find on-line and make a local copy of it. I've used an add-in for Firefox called "ScrapBook Plus" with which you can grab a whole page, including the pictures, store it locally and save it to a static file format (eg pdf). More info here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/scrapbook-plus/. It would be an ideal way to do what you describe - but as your own personal selection, whenever you see something and think you would like a permanent copy. I expect other similar programmes are available.

Strictly speaking, this ignores copyright and licensing restrictions - but I expect that most of us are mature enough to realise that once we put our words and pictures on-line, we lose control of them, and will just be flattered that anyone might be saving what we write for future reference.

 

[xy mosian]

I cannot disagree with anything that has been said and I must admit to taking virtual notes of threads that interest me. However my saving a thread, or part of a thread, does not make that available for others to view. Mods have enough to do without piling more work on them and has been said what interests one woodworker is not necessarily for others. This is obviously something without a simple solution. WIP's with 'WIP' in the title are easily found by searching, but of course not all such threads have that. Then of course there are WIP's which do not start life in that way but grow into them.
xy

 

[AndyT]

Ah, yes, I see what you mean now - we have collectively written an encyclopaedia of woodworking - but it's not as easy as it could be to find the real nuggets of goodness lurking within it. I guess it's up to us to give threads sensible titles which might help them show up in searches, and choose a host for pictures which isn't going to disappear!

Maybe what would help would be a set of tags for threads - if the forum software offers that. So a thread could be tagged (regardless of which section it was in, and what its heading was) as a WIP, or a technique, or a tool review, or an argument about sharpening...

 

[marcros]

Ah, yes, I see what you mean now - we have collectively written an encyclopaedia of woodworking - but it's not as easy as it could be to find the real nuggets of goodness lurking within it. I guess it's up to us to give threads sensible titles which might help them show up in searches, and choose a host for pictures which isn't going to disappear!

Maybe what would help would be a set of tags for threads - if the forum software offers that. So a thread could be tagged (regardless of which section it was in, and what its heading was) as a WIP, or a technique, or a tool review, or an argument about sharpening...

Tags would be useful, and you make an important point about sensible titles- there seem to be a lot recently where they sound like they were written by a pirate because all of the "h's" have been replaced with apostrophes!

 

[MickCheese]

I don't think you can do a search for the word WIP it is too short.

You can however do a search for *WIP* and that will bring up some results, but it also brings up wiped and similar so not a proper solution.

Mick

 

[Alf]

A Google site search with WIP as the exact phrase seems effective, for what it's worth.

 

[bobscarle]

Problem I find is if you search something and find a WIP thread for it, the pictures will have mostly disappeared. I know when I post a thread I leave the pictures there for a while, but not for ever.

Bob

 

[brianhabby]

Problem I find is if you search something and find a WIP thread for it, the pictures will have mostly disappeared. I know when I post a thread I leave the pictures there for a while, but not for ever.

Bob

Curious - why not leave them there, most of these websites are free?

regards

Brian

 

[Paul Chapman]

Problem I find is if you search something and find a WIP thread for it, the pictures will have mostly disappeared.

If there are any pictures you might want to reference in the future, it's easy enough to copy them and save them to your own computer or hosting site.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[Alf]

Problem I find is if you search something and find a WIP thread for it, the pictures will have mostly disappeared. I know when I post a thread I leave the pictures there for a while, but not for ever.

Bob

Curious - why not leave them there, most of these websites are free?

Time passes and sometimes they die. Some of my old posts are sans pictures because of that. I always assume if anyone really wants the pics, they'll get in touch and ask me to repost. Mind you, then I'd have to find them...

 

[xy mosian]

Problem I find is if you search something and find a WIP thread for it, the pictures will have mostly disappeared. I know when I post a thread I leave the pictures there for a while, but not for ever.

Bob

Curious - why not leave them there, most of these websites are free?

Time passes and sometimes they die. Some of my old posts are sans pictures because of that. I always assume if anyone really wants the pics, they'll get in touch and ask me to repost. Mind you, then I'd have to find them...

As this site is, I believe, hosting images now perhaps this is a snag which will go away.
I cannot really satisfy myself with a solution that doesn't involve more work for moderators or more detail to think about for contributors, adding tags or specific naming as in 'For Sale/Wanted'. I suppose most WIP's, will be in the 'Projects' section. Unfortunatley the nature of the web is that searches work best if specific. My use of magazines tend to be a flip through the pages to see if anything grabs my interest before purchase. So the question becomes 'How to browse the WIP's for inspiration?'. Is that answered by some sort of index, but then again that requires work from someone to create.
xy

 

[Alf]

Have you tried a Google site search for WIP? For some reason I get about twice as many hits via Google proper instead of the search box top right of the page, but even that'd get you started. Then you can start an index post listing them all, and before you know it... No? Just a thought.

As to getting folks to name their threads a little more helpfully, I think that'd be a good thing to encourage all round anyway.

 

[AndyT]

I do like the idea of making it easier to find the treasure in this big collective resource bran tub, but I doubt that it is practical. One of the perennial challenges is that indexes are hard work, because of the many different ways we can classify information. Just thinking about the WIPs for a moment - it would be good to be able to list all of these:

- how to make a particular thing - eg chair, cupboard, window, door, Davenport
- projects using a particular technique - eg steam bending, letter carving, veneering
- projects using a special tool - eg what can I make with my new Domino; Stanley 55; pocket screw jig
- projects using a chosen material - eg mdf, mahogany, old pallets
- projects inspired by a named maker - eg Ingham, Krenov, Malouf
- projects at a chosen skill level - eg beginner, skilled, stand back in awe
- projects suitable for a gift - eg jewellery box, music stand, bowl

and I'm sure the list can be easily extended. (And this is still quite a tidy list. For a famous example of how messy human categorisation can be, see Borges' list of animal categories.)
It's a huge undertaking for anyone to work back and classify every project under each of those headings.
If we changed the software so we all had to categorise our projects before we could post them, most of us would not bother, and the number of posts would go down.

So that leaves us with the search options as they are now.

There is always the option of just paging back in time and looking at any likely looking threads, and I do that sometimes when the new postings are a bit thin on the ground.