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Gavin Kisebach




Location: Lacey, Wa US
Joined: 01 Aug 2004

Spotlight topics: 1
Posts: 650

PostPosted: Thu 15 Dec, 2005 6:38 am    Post subject: Excuses Excuses         Reply with quote

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.
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Chad Arnow
myArmoury Team


myArmoury Team

PostPosted: Thu 15 Dec, 2005 6:51 am    Post subject: Re: Excuses Excuses         Reply with quote

Gavin Kisebach wrote:

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.


Gavin,
The articles, reviews, and comparison tool will not go away if no one steps up, but they will cease to be updated. The forums will likely go away, though. Those of us who've authored things on this site have worked too hard to have the whole site vanish, as the articles will continue to have relevance, as will the reviews (for a shorter span of time, though).

We've found that many people who read the articles never log on to the forum, while many who log onto the forum don't read the articles and reviews. It's frustrating, for sure.

Let me try to debunk your reasons further (and this is all in good-natured fun):

Quote:

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.


I'm a trombone player, for crying out loud. I'm no expert or professional writer or academic. I'm a trombone player with an obsession. Happy

Quote:

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.


If only there were a Bookstore of some kind where sources were available. Happy You probably don't know everything about everything (we don't either), but I'll bet you know something someone else doesn't. By the way, I don't think any of us speak old Norse.

All you need to be willing to do is read sources you can get ahold of and put together a well-thought out article with lots of team support.

Quote:

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


And there's the crux of the issue. It's not a community if a few people do all the giving and a few do all the taking. In fairness, there are many ways to contribute: authoring articles, composing insightful posts, etc. There are many people that give and take, for sure.

Our current team of "core writers" includes less than a half dozen people. We have some outside authors, too, but not a staff of hundreds (or even dozens).

Happy

ChadA

http://chadarnow.com/
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Thomas McDonald
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Location: New Hampshire
Joined: 17 Aug 2003
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PostPosted: Thu 15 Dec, 2005 7:21 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

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
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Russ Ellis
Industry Professional




Joined: 20 Aug 2003
Reading list: 42 books

Posts: 2,608

PostPosted: Thu 15 Dec, 2005 7:54 am    Post subject: Re: Excuses Excuses         Reply with quote

Chad Arnow wrote:

Gavin,
The articles, reviews, and comparison tool will not go away if no one steps up, but they will cease to be updated. The forums will likely go away, though.


That would be unfortunate, this is probably the single best sword discussion forum on the web.

TRITONWORKS Custom Scabbards
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Chad Arnow
myArmoury Team


myArmoury Team

PostPosted: Thu 15 Dec, 2005 7:58 am    Post subject: Re: Excuses Excuses         Reply with quote

Russ Ellis wrote:
That would be unfortunate, this is probably the single best sword discussion forum on the web.


It would be unfortunate, but as you can read in Nathan's post (and as has been discussed before), an active discussion board does not make this a content-driven site. The forums alone don't fit Nathan's vision for the site. They are one component of the content offered here.

Happy

ChadA

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William Goodwin




Location: Roanoke,Va
Joined: 17 Nov 2003
Likes: 1 page
Reading list: 20 books

Posts: 1,001

PostPosted: Thu 15 Dec, 2005 8:06 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

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

Roanoke Sword Guilde

roanokeswordguilde@live.com
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Gavin Kisebach




Location: Lacey, Wa US
Joined: 01 Aug 2004

Spotlight topics: 1
Posts: 650

PostPosted: Thu 15 Dec, 2005 8:56 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Quote:
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


Ditto to you, Thomas. If you do a writeup on the Basket hilted broadsword, I'll go after the Dane axe. Fair dinkum? Wink
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Nathan Robinson
myArmoury Admin


myArmoury Admin

PostPosted: Thu 15 Dec, 2005 12:35 pm    Post subject: Re: Excuses Excuses         Reply with quote

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.

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Thomas McDonald
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Location: New Hampshire
Joined: 17 Aug 2003
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PostPosted: Thu 15 Dec, 2005 1:23 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Gavin Kisebach wrote:
Quote:
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


Ditto to you, Thomas. If you do a writeup on the Basket hilted broadsword, I'll go after the Dane axe. Fair dinkum? Wink


Fair enough, my friend ..... but we'll need a timetable on submission !
*Life Support*
A man and his wife were sitting in the living room and he said to her:
"Just so you know, I never want to live in a persistent vegetative state, dependent on some machine and fluids from a bottle. If that ever happens, just pull the plug."
His wife got up, unplugged the TV and threw out all of his beer.


;-) Mac
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Gordon Clark




Location: Purcellville, VA
Joined: 28 Aug 2003
Reading list: 1 book

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Posts: 501

PostPosted: Thu 15 Dec, 2005 1:58 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

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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Gavin Kisebach




Location: Lacey, Wa US
Joined: 01 Aug 2004

Spotlight topics: 1
Posts: 650

PostPosted: Thu 15 Dec, 2005 6:43 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

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. Wink

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. Big Grin
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Glen A Cleeton




Location: Nipmuc USA
Joined: 21 Aug 2003

Posts: 1,968

PostPosted: Fri 16 Dec, 2005 8:28 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

>>*Life Support*

Lol. too funny Mac

Cheers

GC
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