Blog- Gauging Interest @ RMWeb - A different kind of RMWeb blog

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Does a RMWeb Blog have to be just about your modelling efforts? Apparently not, so let's try something different to 'the norm'...

 

Around the end of 2008 I started to get disillusioned with the way that existing modelling forums worked. While nearly all had the standard 'my layout' and 'my workbench' -style discussion areas on them I felt that one advantage the printed modelling magazines had over forums was the editorial at the front. Here was an opportunity for the editor to give their views on a particular subject and to perhaps discuss a current modelling 'issue' that the hobby faced. Other websites had 'editorials' along the same lines - many of you will remember Steve Jones' Electric Nose website and his often 'colourful' comments on various modelling matters, and it could also be argued that Model Railway Express magazine's more discussion-based format also gives an opportunity for people to present their views on more general modelling matters.

 

While forums did indeed have their own general discussion areas where such subjects were often raised and discussed, there wasn't an easy way for all of someone's thoughts to be collected and corralled into a single area within a forum. In addition, it has never been possible to collect all your modelling efforts into a single area within a website - instead layout and modelling efforts would be spread across multiple threads and scattered around the forum. What I wanted was effectively a series of mini-websites for each modeller within an overall modelling forum/website. Think of a shopping centre with different shops, each with their own identities and different things in the shop windows, you can wander around and look at the different things, and with it's all under one roof - that was what I was after.

 

RMWeb3, the previous version to what you're viewing now, had a 'Weblogs' area but typically you had to 'be' someone (usually a modeller of high standard) in order to get one, and they weren't available for people to set up as they wished. And the missing ingredient was still absent - those chosen used the area to showcase their modelling talents, and no one used them for 'editorial' -type general comments on hobby matters.

 

There was no way my little voice was ever going to be enough to change the format of a behemoth like RMWeb, and discussions at the start of 2009 with the owner of another, smaller, modelling forum that I'd had a small hand in creating to see if the 'blog/coralled area' concept was doable there indicated that they were unwilling to try the idea, so around March/April I decided that if I really wanted to have my own soapbox for making comments about general modelling matters, and to showcase my own very average efforts of railway modelling, and to keep all this in a single location, then my own website was really the only way to go. And so on 01 May 2009 Gauging Interest began.

 

 

Fast forward 6 months and what do we find?! RMWeb now has blogs. And you can keep all your modelling stuff in the same place if you want to. And even - after a bit of clarification - we learned that you can use your blog as a soapbox if you wish. Essentially everything I wanted to do... 6 months too late!

 

But wait, because everyone seems to be using their blog to showcase their modelling efforts - where are all the editorials, the soap boxes, the speaker's corners, the 'thought of the day' posts, the opinions and viewpoints? Well that's what this blog is about.

 

Now I definitely won't be abandoning Gauging Interest and jumping ship to here. Apart from practical aspects (I paid for the website name and it's mine for a few years yet so I may was well get my monies worth out of it!) I like my little online area where I can say and post whatever I like. While I include an email address for comments and receive them, it's not a discussion area - it's more like keeping a personal diary of thoughts and ideas, except I choose to publish it. What I would like to at least try however is to highlight how the RMWeb Blog could be used for something other than simply putting your layout progress into a blog. Essentially I'm saying to RMWeb users 'Hey look, you could always create your own blog and use it as your soapbox instead'.

 

One final but important point - these aren't 'new' thoughts as such, because the entries made on here will be duplicates of those that appear on Gauging Interest, and I suspect that not all will get copied across. Generally speaking 'The Diary' section of Gauging Interest (I can't stand the term 'blog' as it happens!) includes the 'thought of the day' stuff, and then I keep my current modelling activities on their own, seperate pages, but occasionally there have been posts in The Diary that relate to an aspect of the layout I'm currently building. I can't see much point in copying those over, so it's only the more general, off-the-top-of-my-head stuff that will get duplicated here.

 

At the end of the day I'm just showcasing a possible alternative use of the blog feature on RMWeb, that's the aim of it. So let's see how we get on. One advantage over Gauging Interest is that you can, of course, post comments and add your own thoughts on these modelling aspects that I've raised, thus further highlighting how the blog format works.

 

 

 

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