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FrozenGate by Avery

Community Goal?

Community Goals?

  • Good idea

    Votes: 12 66.7%

  • Good idea, but ____ (elaborate)

    Votes: 3 16.7%

  • Bad idea

    Votes: 1 5.6%

  • Bad idea, but ____ (elaborate)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • This is not what the forum is for

    Votes: 1 5.6%

  • We don't have the resources for this

    Votes: 1 5.6%
  • Total voters
    18
This is a rather interesting graph. Thanks for sharing it.

Love your gifs Razako. :p
 
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When I started years ago, we were buying the newest Disk writers to harvest the red diodes to see how far we could push them. 50 mW was WOW and then we got 100 mW!
Everyone was testing, building the LM317 drivers and posting graphs. 50 mW of green was way expensive. Popping balloons was a competition. We were alive with ideas. I noticed the "knee" in the power graphs and advised keeping below that peak.
Now we read: "Where can I buy a burning laser for $30? I want to burn stuff. I want 1 watt of blue. Why did my diode trash out? How much voltage do I need? Do I have to solder these wires? I can burn paper - How much power is that? My dad says he will give me $100 -- what burning laser should I BUY?
LPF has become a market place for "buyers". True, there are a number of us still experimenting but not many.
The laser field has expanded into fiber lasers, disk lasers VCLS etc and becoming expensive - beyond the kid buyers.
Times have changed from hands on building to hands on iPad buyers.
HM
 
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I've started to post this comment on a few laser related you tube videos:

Anyone interested in building their own lasers should check out laserpointerforums.com - Free to join, never any charge, just a community full of laser hobbyists.
 
Alaskan said:
I've started to post this comment on a few laser related you tube videos:

Anyone interested in building their own lasers should check out laserpointerforums.com - Free to join, never any charge, just a community full of laser hobbyists.
Click to expand...
Spam!!! :crackup:
 
Oh, no, one mans spam another mans information.... but they could come here and start spamming us, hmm... I better change the text to appear more astro turf.

Changed to this: Reaching out to find others who might be interested in the laser hobby, we have a community at laserpointerforums.com where we post our projects, share ideas or just ask for help.
 
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That's better Alaskan. less spammy! :p
I do think it is a good idea however. There are some pretty knowledgeable people on youtube that don't appear to be on here.
At last I can rep you. :)
 
I found 20 different youtube video's to add that comment to today, half laser related videos, half high power flashlight related. There are plenty of video's for all of us to find which might draw more hobbyists into the forum.
 
Good job. We should have a new role on the forum. Forum Marketer. :p
If you don't mind, I will use your marketing strategy as well. I will also add it to my signature so others can do the same.
 
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Hemlock_Mike said:
When I started years ago, we were buying the newest Disk writers to harvest the red diodes to see how far we could push them. 50 mW was WOW and then we got 100 mW!
Everyone was testing, building the LM317 drivers and posting graphs. 50 mW of green was way expensive. Popping balloons was a competition. We were alive with ideas. I noticed the "knee" in the power graphs and advised keeping below that peak.
Now we read: "Where can I buy a burning laser for $30? I want to burn stuff. I want 1 watt of blue. Why did my diode trash out? How much voltage do I need? Do I have to solder these wires? I can burn paper - How much power is that? My dad says he will give me $100 -- what burning laser should I BUY?
LPF has become a market place for "buyers". True, there are a number of us still experimenting but not many.
The laser field has expanded into fiber lasers, disk lasers VCLS etc and becoming expensive - beyond the kid buyers.
Times have changed from hands on building to hands on iPad buyers.
HM
Click to expand...

This is the future of the forum. It is much the same with other "emergent tech" sites when the tech is no longer "emergent" but turns common.

We need more reviews of off the shelf products as well as simple mods that can be done to those products by your average "tween".

This forum needs to shift from it's RnD roots and turn to customization and evaluation of existing products.

Those big shiny impressive projects (like my Wand Phaser, the 30 Watt saber and Fabry–Pérot interferometer) need more exposure. People need to post links to favorite projects on their facebook pages and post more vids on youtube.



Beyond that, we need to focus on paying the bills for this forum. I'm guilty of it too, we all need to be donating.

I would really like to see several major laser sellers get together and pay for the forum operating costs. I think my above idea fits with that.

This forum needs a little back scratching from the big boys in the lazer biz. In exchange we need to return the favor and test, review, evaluate, mod their products and post about it here and the links on social media.
 
My two cents..


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H2Oxide said:
Poll added.



I wouldn't say spiraling so much as a steady decline:

LPFI_zpsuj5lmbdn.png


Smoothing out what we can assume was inconsistent data collection back in 2007 (The graph changes all the time, but it usually looks somewhat similar to how it does now), it's apparent that people are losing interest in the hobby. Granted, the graph doesn't showcase forum activity, but there is almost certainly some sort of correlation between the search results and the popularity of the forum. In July of last year, there were next to no searches.

As for the causes, I can't say. If I had to guess, I'd say the recent influx of trolls has certainly made us more hostile towards newcomers, so that may be a contributing factor. But it can't be the root cause, this has been happening much longer than that.

I'm not even a vet, so I certainly can't speak for the history of the forum. All I can do is make suggestions.
Click to expand...


Your keyword is a bit insufficient..

If people are interested of laser pointer, I doubt they will search with "laserpointerforums" at a first place

GoogleTrends Data >>
 
ElectricPlasma said:
It's much more calm now from when I first joined, but we've still got a pretty solid community going. I agree with you though, I've definitely noticed a lack of activity/interest at times.

You've got an idea going, but that's all it is right now, just an idea. Got a plan of action? I'm interested.
Click to expand...
Just a thought. Some people may come and go as finances allow. For example I am on more when I can afford to do builds, buy parts for new setups etc. Could be a reason some people evaporate?
 
ArcticDude said:
Your keyword is a bit insufficient..

If people are interested of laser pointer, I doubt they will search with "laserpointerforums" at a first place

GoogleTrends Data >>
Click to expand...

The graph was meant to showcase forum interest, not the general public's interest in lasers. :p

It seems like this thread really (d)evolved into a discussion on a lot of topics that I never even intended to bring up, and that's partially my fault for not steering the discussion in the right direction. Plus, I'm sure Avery doesn't appreciate us talking about starting a new forum and making changes to his without even so much as a "hey, this is what we're doing."

From now on, let's try to stay focused on the topic at hand. Responses are about 80% in favor, which is honestly way higher than I expected. Granted, it's a small sample size, but even if only the people who voted in favor contributed, I still believe we could reach our goal to a degree.

Since interest seems to have waned over time, I'm going to give you guys a chance to retract, change, conditionalize, or otherwise modify your votes. All those in favor say "yea". All those against say "nay". If I can still get 12 "yea"s then I think we should go ahead and proceed with phase 1 (idea suggestion and discussion). Please only vote "yea" if you plan on helping in some way. If you're voting "yea" then feel free to suggest an idea along with your "vote." Even if we don't get 12, it's still something to think about.

I'm sorry for derailing your guys' discussion on how to increase forum popularity (I think that this is definitely is worth investigating and discussing), but it's not what this thread is for. The whole idea behind this is to get the current community to work together.
 
I'm not speaking about starting new forum, just to consider to change the platform. I just offered an "Easy" option for that, nothing else..

Implementing new features (that some members have discussed before) to vBulletin e.g. new user sandboxing, spam blocking and inline moderating will require HUGE amount of work.


Secondly, I am really grateful for Avery of his huge input and hours that he has spent for building this amazing forum. :thanks:
 
ArcticDude said:
I'm not speaking about starting new forum, just to consider to change the platform. I just offered an "Easy" option for that, nothing else..

Implementing new features (that some members have discussed before) to vBulletin e.g. new user sandboxing, spam blocking and inline moderating will require HUGE amount of work.


Secondly, I am really grateful for Avery of his huge input and hours that he has spent for building this amazing forum. :thanks:
Click to expand...

Avery and the other mods have said many times that the forum software will not change.

What kind of "platform" would you be talking about?

H2Oxide, it still seems really vague what you're trying to get at. I think you might get more feedback if you offered a specific (though possibly hypothetical) "goal" or activity that you've got in mind. So, my vote is still the same (Good idea, but...).
 
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ElectricPlasma said:
Avery and the other mods have said many times that the forum software will not change.

What kind of "platform" would you be talking about?

H2Oxide, it still seems really vague what you're trying to get at. I think you might get more feedback if you offered a specific (though possibly hypothetical) "goal" or activity that you've got in mind. So, my vote is still the same (Good idea, but...).
Click to expand...

My thought also, there isn't any way the "platform" is going to change-- the existing LPF is well a developed and a great forum --it represents a lot of work, toil, trouble, and effort evolving it into what it now is.
 
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