The reason I usually lurk are:
Having been in this hobby for more than 60 years, there were no forums on which to ask questions and seek guidance. If you weren't fortunate enough to have a club or a local hobby shop nearby, you were on your own to learn through experimentation. Failure was no stranger and, if one remained in this endeavor, the trashman was a busy fellow. That's how most of the knowledge taken for granted now, was accumulated. A lot of the questions asked repeatedly, could be answered by those asking them, in less time than it takes to post and get the answers on this forum if they would simply TRY. Our society has become risk adverse and fearful of failure. It is much easier to turn on the weather channel to find out if is raining, than it is to simply look out the window. After answering the same question for the sixth time in six weeks or even six months, lurking begins.
Another cause of lurking may be the inability to decipher the poster's intent. There are a number of people who post on here who's questions are clear, coherent, and concise, even though English is a second language for them. Having to read a post five or six times and still not being able to get the gist of it, causes lurking. My computer places a red squiggly line under misspelled words and, simply re-reading the post and making necessary corrections, would go a long way towards finding the information being sought. A person can be crystal clear in their intent in their mind but, that is not what shows up on the forum. Please reread before hitting submit, it may deter lurking.
One more reason some of us lurk is we have focused interests and don't participate in discussions where we have nothing to contribute. I will never engage in a conversation on DCC or double stacks because those topics don't interest me. Being in HO, I know nothing of N scale trucks or, Z scale couplers so, no comment. Rolling stock. The prototype from post WWII to the mid 1980s? Sign me up!
In closing, I had an uncle who was a man of very few words. When asked why he didn't say much, his answer was, you never gained anything because your ears close when your mouth opens. I guess that would equate to lurking.
I just realized that I kind of lurk in here.
I read all the stuff in the "Prototype Information" and "DCC" sections, but I rarely post in there. I learn an awful lot, but I rarely have anything to add.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
alco's forever!!!!! Majoring in HO scale Minorig in O scale:)
Thank you for the welcome, my nickname is from playing baseball in High School, stuck through club ball in college and into my adult league teams. I moved form second base to the outfield as a junior and every time a flyball would get hit my way, i would give the coaches a "heart attack" because they never knew if i was going to catch the ball or not. I almost always did, but was just sloppy enough to make everyone wonder.
My favorite layout was from an old forum member named Electrolove, he was working on the Royal Gorge and the Hanging Bridge. I have searched trying to find more pics of the layout, but am not sure where he went.
Heartattack19 to the forum. That's a handle that gives most of us in this forum pause. Hopefully 19 was a year and not the quantity.
Your posts get delayed in moderation. I encourage everyone to post. Look at it as a learning experience.
I wish I had a forum in the late 80s when I build my first bigger than 4x8 layout. All I had was Kalmbach How To books.
Sons, grandsons, daughters and and granddaughters are all good reasons to build a layout.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
I have lurked for years, I love reading the forums. I also have not had a layout in at least 15 years but have continued reading magazines, visiting my local hobby shop, buying on ebay, and all the fun stuff other than having a layout. My son is now 6, loves trains, and we set up ovals in his room and the living room. Last week we had an oval of Lionel and an oval of American Flyer in the Living Room and HO and N Ovals in his room. We have the most HO equipment, but he enjoys all the scales right now. I love reading the forums to get inspiration and to distract from work. I have many home imporovemnt projects to get started nad finished before we can have a "real" layout, but we are having fun, and that is what counts!
I enjoy the many facets of the hobby and enjoy seeing the fine work done by others on the forum. Have a great deal from others reading a whole host of topics. When I have specific questions, I usually post them. Over time, a few posters stood out. They always gave me outstanding advice in my threads and have always been supportive to help me improve in knowledge, skills, and avoid some pitfalls. They are my "go to guys" and we connect here in the forums and also via email or MR forum messenger. No need to mention names, you see them all over these MR forums helping others. I am very grateful for them and would never have crossed their paths without these forums.
I lurk more often than not because I just enjoy reading and seeing what people are doing. I'm without layout at the moment, and sporadically have interest in seeing what's going on in the MRR world.
This space reserved for SpaceMouse's future presidential candidacy advertisements
Overmod,
Thank you for your thoughtful comments.
I lurked for a while before I joined because I had not joined any online anything at that point and once I did join I was not sure of forum etiquette. I got some nasty comments at what I was doing as far as using foam and spline went, even though I explained I wanted to try something new. There were an army of moderators back then that compensated for the nastiness and offered me encouragement that kept me here.
Working on the ramp at the airport for 36 years with three radios and two phones hanging off me trying to communicate over these devices while wearing double sets of ear protection and standing next to running jet engines makes you say what you have to say in as few words as humanly possible. Away from work, I carried this habit of saying what I want to say in a very matter of fact way in as short of sentences as possible. My wife, kids and friends say I am softening and now use six or seven words where I would have used one or two in the past. That being said, it is, for this reason, I believe I have rubbed some people the wrong way and I feel bad for that, I am getting better, so I have been told.
I am not sure how much I have contributed over the years, but this is a good place to park my butt when the Arthritis makes me take a break from moving.
I have left some MRR FB groups because of some of the sickos that were not dealt with and found them quite toxic. This forum is moderated well and I hope it stays that way as it is a good group.
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
Ian R.I've also done as you suggested - repeating the question in the precise wording you used. That, however, almost universally leads to silence from those who replied with "X".
What I sometimes do when I don't have a good or detailed knowledge to post, or don't have enough information, is to 'first post' after a few hours, just to get things rolling among the actual knowledgeable people, or to 'bump' the topic periodically (hopefully in a nonannoying or nonintrusive manner!) to ensure the greatest chance of its being recognized. I also don't hesitate to suggest other places to try asking, even if that flirts with the Kalmbach TOS against promoting other forums in place of this one. (When there is a multi-year thread about an aspect of preservation, like the 'Rainier Rails' series on railroad-car documentation, there is little point in attempting to recap or summarize it, or try to copy more than a little information over, when the other community is the place to ask. I trust most of the people here would be no less inclined to return after their 'visit' ... )
Rarely have I gotten a "I misunderstood your question" response.
Even so, many questions subsequently go unaddressed, perhaps because of their technical (usually electrical) nature. Those pesky electrons!
I do try, when I see that happen, to make a short post saying essentially "I think there is an answer and I'll try to find out", as I did regarding Arnold Haas' story about the S1 on the Trail Blazer exceeding 140mph and the "ICC" giving them some kind of enforcement action for it. That took the better part of a year to research, including a couple of trips to specialized libraries. Some of your more esoteric electronics-related questions might involve that level of research or tracking down. Fortunately the process could be greatly accelerated ... before the pandemic shut down many of the actual primary sources or put their staffs largely out of contact with the material. This, too, shall pass.
(Electrons of course are a special case -- they are very ill-understood even today, and are often just used as convenient black-box placeholders possessed of their external physical characteristics. What is still more interesting is that to my knowledge electrons are not observed to 'tunnel', protons have 10^32 year stability before tunnelling, yet the half-life of free neutrons (which are the equivalent of an electron associated with a proton) is only about 10 minutes... yet their decay follows an exponential characteristic. It would be nice to get answers to this behavior on a forum, but I suspect you won't...)
... what is an "email reflector"?
This subsequently grew into 'groups' software, where access and participation permissions, a presentation and threading interface, automatic conversion of different email client or composition protocols (much complicated by HTML conventions applied blindly to creeping-featurization of emails in the early years of the popular Internet and Web!) became added around the reflector idea, and the preservation of an 'archive' of past posts, and the ability of moderators to edit and amplify them, became of potentially tremendous importance.
Overmod So you ask questions, don't get the answers you expected, and that makes you stop asking questions? That would be the time to post again saying some polite or not version of "that wasn't what I asked; how well did xxxxx work when you used it" -- and then using the delete key on email reflectors or backspace on forums if you then see further Facegotistic posts that ignore the honing-in. That they don't get it shouldn't damage your ability to get it.
So you ask questions, don't get the answers you expected, and that makes you stop asking questions? That would be the time to post again saying some polite or not version of "that wasn't what I asked; how well did xxxxx work when you used it" -- and then using the delete key on email reflectors or backspace on forums if you then see further Facegotistic posts that ignore the honing-in. That they don't get it shouldn't damage your ability to get it.
Irrelevant and unrelated replies to simple, precise questions are certainly "unexpected", even shocking and sad (talking about "X" when "A" was asked) to read.
I've also done as you suggested - repeating the question in the precise wording you used. That, however, almost universally leads to silence from those who replied with "X". Rarely have I gotten a "I misunderstood your question" response. (Kudos to those few individuals, for now we can have a discussion.)
Sorry to say that in my experience the Facebook syndrome reigns.
BTW, what is an "email reflector"?
Bayfield Transfer Railway Maybe because they don't have anything to say?
Maybe because they don't have anything to say?
As Mark Twain said, better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
I used to spend a lot of time on this forum, and made plenty of posts. Now I visit quite frequently (usually at least once a day), but I simply don't have the time to reply to people or make posts. I would if I had more time, but I would much rather spend that half hour in the basement making some progress on a model.
Harrison
Homeschooler living In upstate NY a.k.a Northern NY.
Modeling the D&H in 1978.
Route of the famous "Montreal Limited"
My YouTube
I realize not having anything to say doesn't stop a lot of people from speaking up.
Disclaimer: This post may contain humor, sarcasm, and/or flatulence.
Michael Mornard
Bringing the North Woods to South Dakota!
Ian R.So now, I've opted to be more of a reader-learner and infrequent (due mostly to lack of expertise) educator and strictly limit the questions I pose.
I have the problem, fueled by the relatively long absence of a functioning community-search feature, of someone who asks a less-well-defined question about doing something (often because they don't know either best practice or alternatives yet), and I include all sorts of details and issues about doing it to have everything including the caveats and 'gotcha' details in one place for reference. Many people don't like this, and I'll be among the first to cheerily admit that I have the New Yorker's tendency to stack contingency plans on top of contingency plans, define exactly what to do when you won't have time to think about it, and not have to make mistakes you only suffer and don't learn from. As a case in point: I had someone staying with me in the '80s who was trying to get herself established in theatre -- that meant she was riding the bus from suburbs into upper Manhattan and taking the subway to get to midtown. I gave her specific instructions on where to go, where to stand on the platform, how to be in the second door of the second car going downtown and the first door of the third car uptown ... she started complaining about the overcomplication. Then she actually rode the train, and found the stairwells right opposite the door to be ahead of the cattle call, and the exit to the street up and around a corner rather than the length of a platform the wrong way from where she wanted to go.
Of course this presumes that the advice is sound. I try at least to make any advice I give objective and reproduceable, rather than opinionated or habit, but I suspect I fail some proportion of the time (for which I only say, 'ignore me next time if it bothers you!).
(Incidentally: one sure way to keep me out of a thread is to tell me (politely or otherwise) to butt out. As I said, I'm from New York, where that is how people who respect each other talk, and from New Jersey where chop-busting is almost a cultural ritual. So if you find it distracting -- say so. I'm not above redacting posts if I misunderstand the point, too -- so say so if so.
We're all friends here -- or ought to be.
The primary reason I visit this and other model railroad forums is to educate myself by reading topics of interest and those related to a problem I may be trying to solve. I read much more than I post, something akin to listening more than talking. We all learn more that way.
When I do post (save for rare replies to others' queries), it's always with a very specific need, idea or problem in mind (typically technical), one for which I'm seeking a specific, direct answer. I try to write clearly enough so that there's no doubt as to what the question is (e.g., If I do "A" will it work? Or, Is "B" a better solution? It's, in essence, a "yes" or "no" question). Sure, there is more than one way to skin a cat or cook good BBQ, and such a question can assuredly be answered either way, followed perhaps by some elaboration as to why or why not and/or hopefully, a workable solution to the problem. But almost always, the latter is lacking.
However, 95% of the replies I receive are a combination of posters talking about themselves or, at best, related to the question by a factor of light years. I've come to call that the "Hey, look at me" Facebook syndrome. The most egregious such reply I've received occurred on another forum. Regarding a new product in which I was interested, I asked if anyone had used it and how well it performed. Simple. One responder proceeded to tell me how he had built such a product himself. Nothing more. To that, I and a third forum member replied that the question was "How well it performs, not how to make one." The reply was, "I did."
So now, I've opted to be more of a reader-learner and infrequent (due mostly to lack of expertise) educator and strictly limit the questions I pose.
1) Quality over quantity in posts.
2) Consider that 98+% of much of "sports talk" radio is listened to by people who never call in. There's a lot who look in to see what's going on
I lurk more now than I used to or maybe a better way to put it is I don't comment as much as I used to. I joined several forums because I have been a modeler for 50 years, have a civil engineering degree, and 37 years experience in the operating department of a railroad. My own hobby interests are a bit niche, so I am on forums more to answer questions than ask them. I have had a unique set of experiences and I think I have information to share.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
SoupyPosting when you feel you can contribute is a very good comment. Some folks, not on this forum, only like to see themselves in print. It drives me nuts when product questions on Amazon are answered, "I don't know." Why bother to post if you don't know.
I've thought the same thing.
Another thing like that are people who rate something one star, and then write that they haven't used the product yet.
York1 John
Not sure if i like the term lurker, when one really is just reading for informative reasons. Lurker, has connotations of bad behavior.
I post more than read cuz i just love running my big mouth i guess. If i didnt post, then id have to talk to myself. You can imagine how fun that would be.
Honestly Occifer, im not loitering.
PMR
JoeinPA I lurk to learn and post when I feel I can contribute. Joe
I lurk to learn and post when I feel I can contribute.
Joe
Same here. Quality over quantity.....
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
trwroute ... Problem is, I don't have an opinion on every topic, so I only post when I feel that I can actually help...
... Problem is, I don't have an opinion on every topic, so I only post when I feel that I can actually help...
I wouldn't call that a problem. It's a good quality, and probably one that more of us should emulate.
SeeYou190 Engi1487 I was mistaken for a troll when I first joined this forum, when though I was just asking questions and getting used to using a forum. I never thought you were a troll. I think a lot of it was misunderstanding of your old user name and the misinterpretation of a couple of your early questions. In the four years I have been here, there have only been two real trolls, and one borderline troll, that I know of. I hope you feel welcome now. -Kevin
Engi1487 I was mistaken for a troll when I first joined this forum, when though I was just asking questions and getting used to using a forum.
I never thought you were a troll. I think a lot of it was misunderstanding of your old user name and the misinterpretation of a couple of your early questions.
In the four years I have been here, there have only been two real trolls, and one borderline troll, that I know of.
I hope you feel welcome now.
Posting when you feel you can contribute is a very good comment. Some folks, not on this forum, only like to see themselves in print. It drives me nuts when product questions on Amazon are answered, "I don't know." Why bother to post if you don't know.
Now that I'm mostly retired, I plan to post more. Problem is, I don't have an opinion on every topic, so I only post when I feel that I can actually help.
This is the only board that I post to, and there is a good reason for that. This place has the best mix of beginner to expert. Keeps things interesting.
Chuck - Modeling in HO scale and anything narrow gauge