a small note of appreciation

i have been looking online for a site like this ine that caters to the ceramic enthusiast without success.

all the boards i see require you to pay to be amember just to view the forum and see if you like it, are fully of fussy know-nothings or have a nasty attitude form the the get-go.

in a field where more cooperation could help so many i have found secretive taunts, hidden agendas and and an unwillingness to share ideas and formulas. on one site i was chastised for sharing a glaze recipe without charging for it!

i realized not long ago that i was simply making all of thses sites suffer by comparison. some jewels are to be found here and there, and you can get something out of most of them if you can just avoid the knuckleheads and negative people long enough. BUT...

i think 18 months ago would have been thrilled to find any of them and now i am spoiled by this great community. i wasn't around here early enough in the life of this place to have a guess at what factors made it such, but i can see what decisions and actions keep it the awesome community it is, and i appreciate.

thanks to those doing, and those that did. and the newbies who will

Yes, yes it is a very fine community!

alsih2o said:

in a field where more cooperation could help so many i have found secretive taunts, hidden agendas and and an unwillingness to share ideas and formulas. on one site i was chastised for sharing a glaze recipe without charging for it!

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YOU DID WHAT?!?
That would be like, say, posting history web resources to a messageboard where you could just let people steal them from you. What if they go and design a game around them or something? You might never get compensated for it! They might improve their abilities! My god man, you can't just go giving things away! Next thing you know, you'll be trying to sell us ceramic d20s that use that glaze!

Mark, I think its people like you who actually take the time to provide things to this community, and then thank the community for allowing them to do so that make this a great place to hang out. Thank You!

Gamers are a strange bunch.

Even on boards with more open moderation, we'll chastize one another, and call each other names and insults just because of a difference in styles or game systems -- and then we'll turn right around and offer each other 15 tips on how to be a better GM, or the best place to go buy miniatures, or what the best source for miniatures paints is.

We'll offer things for free, even things that aren't ours to offer and we'll get outraged when our hobby costs people more than we think it should.

Conversely, when someone outside the hobby insults one of our number or the hobby in general, we band together like a pack of inch-high wolverines, and nip the flesh off the hand doing the condescending.

On these boards in particular, I stay and don't range very far because many places tolerate merciless verbal abuse of its members one toward another, and because of the community support rarely found anywhere else. Maybe I don't lurk enough elsewhere, but I just don't see threads on many gaming forums wishing one another happy birthday, or healthy pregnancies, or sharing health concerns. It's a "family" feel that fosters the ability to share everything from pottery glaze recipes and food recipes, to unofficial legal counsel, and this is what the boards alsih2o refers to likely lacks; the familial sense shared here.

I'll quit before I break through the soapbox I'm standing on, but one of these days, I feel like taking a prose poll on the types of professions found here. It feels like we have members from Aeronautical Technicians to Zookeepers around here!

Henry,

You said it all..... Amen, brother!

Henry said:

I feel like taking a prose poll on the types of professions found here. It feels like we have members from Aeronautical Technicians to Zookeepers around here!

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I think something like this was done back in the spring, but I may be mistaken. Then there was the "Who are you?" thread back in July or August. Why not start a "What is your Job and where do you work?" thread? It would be interesting to see how wide ranging the membership here is. I'd like to see just how many librarian-types we've got here, out of perosnal interest.

wow, henry said that so much better than i did

Henry said:

We'll offer things for free, even things that aren't ours to offer and we'll get outraged when our hobby costs people more than we think it should.

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On that note, I'll offer Henry's job to the first person that posts a 1000 word essay on why our hobby costs more than it should. It has to be about this topic, or you don't win.

Secondary contest, first person to tell me what my last name (Szkotak) means (and I do know), wins a copy of everything from ENPublishing.



Obviously this is a joke...

Cthulhu's Librarian said:

I think something like this was done back in the spring, but I may be mistaken. Then there was the "Who are you?" thread back in July or August. Why not start a "What is your Job and where do you work?" thread?

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Except you accentuated (is that a word?) it wrong...

"What is YOUR job and where do YOU work?"

Sorry, just never understood the capital second-person thing. It's not like they connotate anything else... right, I'm a dork.

You can add out-of-work Biochemist to that, though hopefully Bristol-Myers-Squibb gets back to me...

Oh, so this isn't totally off-topic, well said Henry!

It is so true!

I wuv, you guys (and Gals)