Considering that i am on this site, constantly reading articles and of course, commenting on many of them, I am surprised that today is the first time I knew anything about this forum, and now you are Considering closong it.
Had i known, I’m sure I would have been on here, adding to the community and conversation.
I’ll have to be more active, and if it goes the way of MySpace, so be it, but if it lasts a little longer, even better.
So I’ve been out of the forum for a while. Long story but I was in the hospital
Anyway I don’t do social media as insta or face or ?
I hate reddit
So I love the forum for tool and repair discussion
I would offer if it would help you could delegate some work to administrators. I’d offer to help. Otherwise if you have to drop it so be it but I hope it stays.
Thank you
Nathan
Welcome back and hope you’re on the mend!
I’m sorry to hear that, and hope you’re okay/recovered!
I’ve been here since the start. I was at Drill Sergeant (DS) School at Fort Jackson, SC when I saw the forum was started, and it looks like my first thread was 15 February 2016. In 2018, as my DS tour was nearly over, I made an effort to check the forums daily, just to earn that 365-day badge. Never did, I’d get to 8 or 9 months and then forget to log in one day. 
I’d hate to see the forums go, and I really enjoy the format, where I can post an often-long-winded thread and engage in casual conversation with those who take the time to comment. With that said, I’ve noticed for years that the days of the internet forum are basically over. Back in 2005, I discovered LivingWithStyle (LWS), a large forum that was pretty successful. Around 2006, I took Moderator duties for their gun subforum and spent countless hours generating content to ensure the forum stayed busy. The founder of LWS started Zoints in 2006-ish, which was a collective of forums. I was Admin for f15.com (a military site) and theroadtowar.com (a military history site) and was a Mod for mymetallunchbox.com (a nostalgia site). None of those forums took off, despite thousands of hours’ worth of effort in creating threads, replying to comments, addressing concerns, and doing typical Admin and Mod work like deleting spam and banning trolls. In 2008, LWS itself went offline, having been bought out. Internet culture is counter-productive, and long-time members revolted to some unpopular changes made by the new owner, ultimately causing the new owner to delete the site entirely.
Ah, internet forum history. This is your site, but it’s also ours. We have some time invested in it, but at the end of the day we’re merely unpaying tenants on a site that you have invested in with not only time, but money. I fall on the side of helping to manage the site, if needed, and could probably even toss in a little to help financially. Being ever-cynical, though, especially after my experiences with LWS and Zoints, I doubt that things will pick up. LWS’s “successor”, casualdiscourse.com, was dead in the water from nearly the start (but still around somehow, and I can’t figure out my log in info), and the TIA forums see only a handful of posts per week.
One of the things I love most about the forum, and even blog-style, site format is the willingness that members have to pitch in. I’m sure some hyper-successful sites pay their staff, but the ones I’ve always been active in do not, being more of a volunteer additional duty for regular and trusted members. It takes a like-minded collective of passionate individuals to run a quasi-successful site, and monetary gain is not a thing, in my opinion. I just like to share my thoughts, opinions, and whatever knowledge I have about any subject, hence why I stick to tools, guns, history, and the military.
That’s the part I’m really trying to be sensitive to, and why I didn’t pull the plug a long time ago.
One thing I might do is close the forum to new registrations or require invite codes from established members. That would make me feel better about some things. (The blog has been getting hit with an incredible volume of problematic comments from bots, trolls, and individuals of suspect intent, which is what led me to move closer towards shuttering the forum.)
I’ve noticed the bots, trolls, and spammers posting. That’s a problem we were seeing even 15 years ago.
Not like what I’m seeing now.
The ones that you do NOT notice are an increasing problem.
I removed a couple, and new attempts have gotten even more sophisticated.
I can only imagine. Within the past year our browsers and phones have increased the use of AI, which is probably easily manipulated into becoming “super bots/spammers” on forums like this.
Regardless of where these forums go, I’m glad that you have maintained ToolGuyd for so long and have shared your wealth of information, knowledge, and experience over there and on these pages. I’m not the most active commenter, but I often visit ToolGuyd for references and to see the latest tool deal or release. Thanks for all you’ve been doing.
I don’t do many forums because the signal to noise ratio is high. Also the quantity of content can be a rabbit hole and time vacuum of distraction. For example if a thread has 100 posts maybe only 10-5 have valuable information and the rest is comments, questions, and critique. So you spend a lot of time just scrolling through trying to find the gems of information.
I now mostly lean on blogs or newsletter, like your own, for information on releases, project, tips etc l. I believe they use to call that special interest magazine, before the interwebs. I miss good project write ups.
Perhaps a good hybrid between the vastness of a forum and the curation of newsletter would be the value add that makes a forum stand out. Maybe curated/ rewritten project post from the forum to the newsletter/blog or in a curated section of the forum.
Obviously the effort, writers, editors, etc is probably more than the ToolGuyd can do by himself. On the other hand your project post are really enjoyable and maybe the forum might be good content mine for the main newsletter even if they are other people.
While I do visit Toolguyd often for reviews, education and deals, like many, I generally go to more populous social media sites with questions. I consider that having this forum and your Facebook page does seem redundant as well as costing you valuable time for little reward. Perhaps moving the forum over to Facebook is simply a modernization move.
Please do not move the forum onto a Facebook type group. I deliberately avoid social media, and this is one of the few places remaining on the Internet, where they don’t seem to be too many trolls
I feel the same way. Facebook is an automatic non-starter.
Absolutely. Facebook would be exploiting both you and us.
I like this smaller community way more than the festool owners group and the like.
Sure we may go weeks without a post here, but in the end, the discussions are better quality without trolls and typically we don’t have a bunch of nonsense that it eats up a thread for post into it.
I keep deferring the decision, but I don’t intend to continue hosting/supporting the forum long-term.
One thing I did was close new registrations and make it invite-only. That buys a little more time where I don’t have to worry about an influx of spam or manipulative trolling as much.
The next decision will be to either sunset/close the forum, or maybe move it to a separate domain where it’s not under ToolGuyd, which could potentially facilitate an eventual transfer.
If it remains supported for a time, do I open registrations again?
The decision to reopen registration would be your decision. I’ll say this: the few forums I visit now (mainly this one and TIA) seem to have an influx of scammers, spammers, and trolls who abuse open registration. I think that we have a dedicated core group of semi-regular users here, though it might be nice to allow pre-screened new users with their initial 10 posts requiring Moderator approval.
In the end, we’ve had some great discussions and have learned a lot from this forum. I’d hate to see it go, and would like to have some place where we can continue to collaborate, but I think the best days of the internet forum reigning supreme wear 15-20 years ago. Now, everyone is on social media, or mega sites like Reddit.
I just wanted to second that I learn a lot from this forum, even though I’ve rarely to never participated. If the maintenance burden is financial, I would definitely be willing to support via “donate” link, etc.