I’ve just been reminiscing about my pre-newbie days on ELR. Yes , you read that right, pre-newbie. I shou’dn’t be surprised if we’ve got a good few of those floating around.
There was I, just got the notion of mixing my juices for myself, so I got onto Google and soaked up information all over the place, like you would. Pretty soon I noticed that most of my Google enquiries were directing me to threads at ELR (besides other places) and that the ELR discussions tended to be more informative, by-and-large than those other discussions. So did I think of joining? Nope. Seemed to me that the forum search engine couldn’t possibly be better than Google at finding appropriate threads (they never are) so might as well continue with my utterly invisible lurking. Besides, i never once thought of a question that hadn’t already been answered by at least half-a-dozen seriously knowlegable members. So where was the need speak up?
That’s not to say that the answer was always clear cut (some questions just led to hot debates, ofc, same as ever ) but I quickly got to learn that if certain forum members don;t know the answer, then nobody does
I really don’t know how long i continued in that vein. I’m no good with dates unless I write them on a label then slap that label on an amber glass bottle. 6 months? A year? two years? Yeah, yeah, I found the “other side” too but IIRC , i thought it was just a nifty calculator, not unlike several similar nifty calculators, and had no idea how much power i’d unleash if i actually logged in.
Well, that’s lucky for ELR, isn;t it? or else i might have done the same as thousands of other newbies and filled the database with gibberish . But I was a pre-newbie over there as well, and IIRC , I eventually signed up for both sides pretty-much simultaneously, after soaking in yet more info, experimenting, gaining experience, and finally beginning to feel that i actually had something to contribute to one or two discussions.
That’s really not a good way to go about it , BTW. Forum newbies don’t contribute to discussions. Newbies post qestions and then shut up and listen to the answers. I quickly found out that you’ll seriously get up some peoples noses if you try to skip that stage . But that’s all water under the bridge now
I mean, ELR forum was way too good, IMO. I surely needed ELR, but the idea that ELR might need me was thoroughly ludicrous. I suspect that there are quite a few like myself floating around. Some eventually joined, and some still haven’t. And just in if they happen to read this thread, i should say: don’t wait. Sign up, say “Hi” and “Thankyou” then just carry on lurking if you like, But you’ll never know how good it is to be part of this community until you try it.
But what about that other sort of pre-newbie? The sort that joins the other side, fills the database with gibberish and doesn’t even notice there’s a forum over here? I guess they’re not the sort to type questions into Google? but that’s not to say they don’t need to read the answers.
I wonder if it might be best to restrict new sign-ups to the recipe side to people who’ve already joined the forum? And if it might be best to pointedly direct all new members to the "beginners " board. Yeah, there will be some that don’t need to read that. But there are surely many more who never, ever find it. :tearing hair out …godddamn! there’s no smiley for that!
It’s an idea…maybe.
But, anyway, many thanks @daath and everybody else for creating something that’s just too good in some ways.