Forum etiquette question.

[RHammer9]

I am new to this forum, and quite excited to have found it. Designing, refining, and building tools is one of my favorite things to do. From expierence every forum has a tone and etiquette that supports the culture within the forum. Most of the people I know who enjoy building tools are efficiency minded, hence looking for a better way of getting a job done. For me this often involves refining others ideas. Is the general consensus on HomeMadeTools.net that people enjoy seeing a new spin on their ideas? Or do people take offence as though their design is being criticized as inadequate? I have experienced each on many occasions and would rather avoid causing waves or deflating peoples sence of accomplishment in a place I frequent for enjoyment.

Much thanks in advance for any and all input. -Ryan

[DIYSwede]

Welcome aboard HMT, Ryan, and thanks for putting up this relevant question.

I find seeing others' approaches on project designs, choice of materials, machining methods and final fitting most interesting,
as I can compare, wage and decide for myself in how I would do it, given my own limited workshop.

The steps (as I see them):
1) Devising a solution to a hopefully well-defined problem, using your finite knowledge of theories, practices and experience.
2) Choosing the materials, methods and order of operations, given your available and limited (intellectual and physical) resources.
3) Executing these whilst learning thru mistakes as you go along.
4) Return to 1)

As for myself (joined only last May) sharing my relative successes as well as my shortcomings is absolutely crucial,
as sharing ideas and methods here makes us all hopefully more knowledgeable and skillful.

I've never been flamed around here for posting my suggestions, solutions or even outright warnings against some dangerous practices,
only when I entered the irrational domains of pure beliefs, prejudice or superstition.

Personally, I learn more from my own and others mistakes, than merely by seeing someone executing "Machinist's Handbook" practices,
instantly achieving a top-notch result - having edited away all the interesting mistakes just to show off an immaculate final product.

Just my 2 cents
Johan "the "Swedish Cheapskate"

[Jon]

Hi RHammer9 - welcome to HomemadeTools.net

We often get tool building ideas from others' tool building ideas, and we all seem to appreciate that dynamic. On the net, it's easy to believe that the person who first displayed an idea to you is its originator; really, that person likely got the idea, or parts thereof, from other people too. Someone who first introduced an idea to a group can also benefit by having that idea bounce around the group, and then back to them for a second iteration.

People rarely take offense around here, and our level of civility is quite high for any community, online or off. I can still count on one hand the number of people we've had to ban over the years we've been online. We also have multiple different means of building and displaying merit-based reputations (thanks counts, tool builder pages, manual filtration of posts into our Best Homemade Tools subforum, and weekly contests), so there is a constant incentive to play nicely and build new stuff.