Nathan has put up the call for articles again, and I'm either desperatly trying to talk myself into, or out of (not sure which) writing an article on the Danish long axe. It's a great weapon (no pun intended) with a long and storied history, and we've discussed it at some length (again, not trying to be punny here) on the forums.

My reasons are as follows:

I look forward to each new featured article. As Nathan pointed out, they are a great introductory digest to some areas I'd never taken notice of before, and inevitably a jumping off point for further study. The thought of losing these, or the hand-on reviews, or the compare-o-meter, frankly, horrifies me (though I do wish for more, newer weapons - next gen, anyone?)
I think everyone should read all of the featured articles before signing up for the forums, as it saves a LOT of redundant, if well intentioned questions. Theres just a whole lot packed in there.

The hands-on reviews are insanely valuable to the new collector, or the seasoned fanatic. I have saved hundreds of dollars and a lot of buyers remorse just by perusing a few articles, which were fun to boot.


My excuses are as follows:

1 Grossly underqualified: no matter how you spin it, I'm not an industry professional, nor a learned writer, professor, or academic. I'm a guy who digs differentially tempered pointy shiney things. Many of our forumites are. No doubt the majority of you feel the same way.

2 Lack of sources. Some of you guys spout sources like you were autisic savants. I consider myself a Norsophile, but I'm dead sure one of you has memorized entire sagas in old norse. I watched the fencing scene in the Princess Bride, some of you understood every word, and knew what dusty tomes they came from.

3 Lazy. It's easy to sit around and wait for one of the core writers to do it for me.

So what's your excuse? how many of you haven't noticed anything outside the forums? or like me just feel underqualified? or don't care? This site has a lot to offer, I'd hate to lose it for the lame reasons listed above. Especially when we have 3,653 potential authors just waiting for someone else to do the work.

Hi Gavin

Just reading what you put together in your post proves to me that you can easily write a decent review, or article, should you decide to drop that TV remote control ;-)

Seriously, you've got what it takes .... you don't need a PHD !
Your observant, enthusiastic, and have a genuine love for the subject(s), so go for it !
Good, bad, or indifferent, I'll read what you write and probably learn something from it .
(besides the boys in the back room will help polish it up for you, no problemo )

I feel alot of guilt , myself, for dropping the productivity ball (article-wise) around here..... this past year has ben a roller-coaster ride for me ! Between selling & moving twice (maybe soon again ?), business partnership desolving with my brother, and dealing with my little girl reincarnated as a teenager, I'm lucky not to have a bed at McLeans Mental Hospital.

One of the scary things about reaching a point of knowledge, on a given subject,is that you start to realize how little you really know ? I used to be able to whip up a paper in no time, now I spend hours hitting the delete key and second guessing myself *sigh*

But hey, maybe the new year of 2006 will bring me inspiration, greater knowledge, and a big bundle of renewed confidence !

Here's hoping, Mac

Hey if I can write a review, then anyone can. I never even used a Microsoft Word program until I started
doing the couple of things here. At first, it seemed at bit overwhelming, but the team members here are very helpful, so
it's a pretty painless task. Like Nathan said, it just takes a wee bit of time & research, which is half the fun of doing these
things. Knowledge is power and fun too!!!!


Bill

I might as well chime in with some good natured self-depreciating comments about myself.

Gavin Kisebach wrote:

1 Grossly underqualified: no matter how you spin it, I'm not an industry professional, nor a learned writer, professor, or academic. I'm a guy who digs differentially tempered pointy shiney things. Many of our forumites are. No doubt the majority of you feel the same way.

There is no spin. If you think it takes a genius to create this stuff, you're over-estimating us. I'm a designer and Web developer. That means I'm a creative tech geek. I dropped out of college before it even began. The only thing I know about arms and armour is what I've read and observed. My only skill in this area is the ability to understand what I read and distill it again into something else. Anybody with any reasonable amount of intelligence can do this. Honestly, I'd love to say that we're curing cancer behind the scenes, but what we do really isn't that hard.

When you compare what we're doing to what real academia is doing, this place looks to be exactly what it is: a Reader's Digest version of articles pertaining to Arms and Armour aimed at the enthusiast and written by the enthusiast. That's who we are. I'm cool with that. That's exactly what we're supposed to be and I think it's a needed and valued resource on the 'net. But let's not kid ourselves into thinking myArmoury.com is in the same league as stuff written by learned writers, professors, or academics doing hard-core new research on these subjects. We're not that. That stuff probably wouldn't fit very well on the 'net, and certainly wouldn't be properly aimed at our audience.

If you know any learned writers, professors, or academics with free time, send them my way. Our current team would love to work with them. Typically, though, those people have been turned off of the 'net and really don't show much of an interest in these things due prior bad attempts they may have had on the 'net elsewhere.

Gavin Kisebach wrote:

2 Lack of sources. Some of you guys spout sources like you were autisic savants. I consider myself a Norsophile, but I'm dead sure one of you has memorized entire sagas in old norse. I watched the fencing scene in the Princess Bride, some of you understood every word, and knew what dusty tomes they came from.

That's not me. I don't memorize anything. I walk over to the shelf and pick up books and page through them trying to find things that are relevant to what I'm seeking. I "dog-ear" them with post-it notes and go to the next one. We all have the opportunity to buy books or check them out from libraries.

Gavin Kisebach wrote:

3 Lazy. It's easy to sit around and wait for one of the core writers to do it for me.

I don't have much to say about this one. I'm generally lazy, too, but I find a lot of joy from being productive and doing this sort of thing. Waiting for the core writers to do it for you has been a good strategy so far, but it won't continue. I wish it weren't true, but that road isn't there any more. We all need help: simple as that.

Since you asked (and because I am feeling just a little guilty) - my excuses are:

3 daughters 7,5 and 6 months. A demanding job. 1.5 to 2 hour commute each day.

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Let me be clear: it's not that I'm fishing for compliments, and I do realize these are superfluous arguments. I just thought that these were the most common reasons that people don't contrubute.. The Busy arguement is one I'd not mentioned because based on the number of posts that most regulars put out, we obviously have some time. I've not written an essay in ten years, and some of our esteemed forummates may have gone a bit longer. ;)

I was curious to see what was slowing everyone else down because I see a huge pool of knowlwdge, but as Nathan points out, most of that energy is directed to the forums. Perhaps it's just too easy to post a line or two, a snippet here and there. Again, what stops you? how can we work around it?

I'm gonna get to brainstorming on my lil project now. :D

>>*Life Support*

Lol. too funny Mac

Cheers

GC