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Move Antique Machinery and History to Replace Manufacturing in America and Europe...

Your point about this forum being the most civilized in the PM domain is reason enough to leave it in the hinterlands of the website. Why would we want to move it into a rude and disrespectful neighborhood ,just to make scrolling easier? I'm happy where it is and appreciate the lower-traffic, civil conversations one can have here.
 
If it is inconvenient to scroll down the PM menu looking for the forums in which you are interested and opening them one at a time, there are alternatives. Yes, it is a long list, and my interests are scattered around from top to bottom, so here is what I do, and it works for me. In my browser, I have a default tab group that I open after each reboot. The first five tabs on the list are the five PM forums that I watch. All I need do is click on one of the five tabs to see if I have any notifications. Then I can click on the other tabs to see what the new posts (in bold type) are. I am in the habit of looking at those five several times a day.

My method makes it immaterial where my five forums are on the master list of all forums. They are always the left hand five tabs in my browser.

Larry
 
Personally, I never browse the forum the way you describe. I never have.

I use the "new posts" button. The latest topics are displayed regardless of the section they occupy.

This is a non issue for me.
 
You don't understand, ........we plot to take over the world from here, ......but being in a quiet backwater ''they'' don't know we even exist, let alone what we get up to.

So ''mums the word old chap''
 
Easier way

IF . .one logs-in, as I do, directly to your "Subscriptions" page, Eg:

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/subscription.php?folderid=0

THEN, regardless of forum, only the threads one is participating in or "watching" show up at all.

Distractions - of any kind - become "optional" entirely. Up to your personal curiosity level.

Posting auto-subscribes to a thread. For Lurking, one uses the "thread tools" to subscribe without posting.

Once caught up with current events, one uses the technique Wes mentioned. Open a second tab to see what may be of interest - forum immaterial - in "New Posts".

I "unsubscribe" from about a dozen threads each of several times each day. IF/as/when "New Posts" renews interest, they go back on the list. Then off again. It is a mere box-tick, right inside PM. No browser bookmarks required.

Next step, if you need this, is to create folders from your subscriptions or passing interest to store the internal links. Content is NOT duplicated, so very, very little extra load on PM's server. VB and its Database were BUILT to do this stuff.

Ex: reference work. rebuilding 10EE HS, separate from 10EE apron rebuild, separate from belts, bearings and lubricants .. etc.

Use of these tools on the PM site itself leaves you less dependent on which device or browser you are coming in from. There is no need to maintain off-site bookmarks, scroll, or otherwise "navigate" much at all.

You enter "right there" already in your favorite spot. Tailor that spot with PM's own toolset. Different for every member. Different by the weeks, days and hours.

Saves a great deal of time, too.

I don't REALLY live on PM.

I simply log in "many, many" times most days with a browser optimized for PM - simplifying PM's stylesheet, using local fonts for speed, see zero adverts nor await their loading, can do other things in between the visits.

2CW
 
Personally, I never browse the forum the way you describe. I never have.

I use the "new posts" button. The latest topics are displayed regardless of the section they occupy.

This is a non issue for me.

Me too ,the only forum I avoid is the gun forum ,some funny folks on there! LOL.
 
I look at "gunsmithing" first,cause thats what Google thinks I want,then to AM&H.The whole of PM is quite extensive,and I dont want to go right thru it.I also cannot understand why so much rudeness and bad attitude is prevalent on various forums.Why would anyone be rude to someone they dont even know.
 
I look at "gunsmithing" first,cause thats what Google thinks I want,then to AM&H.The whole of PM is quite extensive,and I dont want to go right thru it.I also cannot understand why so much rudeness and bad attitude is prevalent on various forums.Why would anyone be rude to someone they dont even know.

If you stay out of the manufacturing forum, the rudeness level drops by at least 2 orders of magnitude.

PDW
 
I pretty much only read and post in the Antique or heavy iron forum. Way too much drama out in the other forums.

Im generally on Tapatalk through my phone now days, and it displays the posts chronologically. So I dont search for anything.
 
I have found this forum to be something akin to a fraternal lodge meeting that never ends, or being in a bar or pub with excellent company such that one forgets about drinking and time. I have found this forum to be therapeutic when things were getting me down in other areas of my life. I have found the members to be supportive, generous with their knowledge, helpful, and people to look up to. I've made many friends whom I may never meet in person in this life, but still I consider them as friends. I go to this forum at least once, if not more often during the days and into the nights (being retired, I can be a night owl).

The members are polite, and write well-founded posts, and if there is humor or taking someone to task, it is done in a gentlemanly manner.

As for moving the physical location of this 'board to some other location on this 'board so less "scrolling down" is required, I also see no reason to pursue the idea.
Like any website or similar, some "navigating and scrolling" is a fact of this new "information age". If moving a cursor or hitting the "down arrow" is too much work, we are coming to a sad pass in our society. Anything good is worth hunting down or working a little more to get.

As I watched this thread develop, I was struck with the similarity to a water well. The water well for our house was drilled through a variety of strata, and was finished at 500 feet of depth. Admittedly, my buddy "witched" the site with his dowsing stick and got a "good pull" on the spot we drilled the well. He said there'd be water at 180 feet and about 5 gallons a minute. The well driller, using a rotary rig, went hell bent for election with the drilling. At 180 feet, he hit the first vein of water, but decided the flow was not sufficient (the oldtimers in our hills tend to think rotary well drilling rigs smear drill fines and mud over the open veins, reducing the initial flow of water into a new well). 500 feet, and we called it done. As the driller worked, he noted the depths and types of strata encountered based on the drill fines that were blasted up out of the well. When he was done, he handed me a copy of his driller's log. 500 feet into the ground is a long way to go down, and the number and type of stratas encountered was quite interesting.

The well has produced good sweet water, fairly soft, low in minerals, no objectionable tastes or odors (not too far from here, people get sulphur water, and other get high dissolved iron content). When it rains, I think of how the water must percolate down through all the different strata to reach the aquifer. That percolating thru all the layers of hardpan, shale, and bluestone (layered sandstone) tends to purify the water.

So it is with our Antique Machine Tool 'board. Scrolling thru the other sub-sites is akin to the path groundwater takes to reach an aquifer. Leachate from our septic field, gray water from washing, and ground water that may have road salt in winter all pass through the different strata, and wind up as good sweet water.

This 'board is akin to that good sweet water. Filtered through fissures in rock strata, layers of sand and broken shale, and similar geological stuff, the water is naturally filtered. So, we meander down the site, passing the sub sites dealing with current topics and the latest in machine tools and manufacturing, we play second fiddle to a site for a firm selling imported machine tools from that unmentionable source, and we arrive at out site. We have some good neighbors in the form of the site dealing with scraping and rebuilding of machine tools, so we are in good company.

I say we stick right where we are. I can't say moving the site to some "higher" location on the menu would affect much, but it is akin to moving an old established place that is a kind of second home to some of us.

As for the notion that scrolling down a website menu is "work", I am reminded of an old saying we had in the powerplants: "A hard day's work or a good piece of a-- would kill him". This was said when some wannabe or other poser let it be known that we had to be crazy to work the way we did. I am old enough to remember walking a mile to the branch of the public library to do research for school work, and winding up roaming the shelves and reading books on subjects that I liked and were totally unrelated to the assignment from school. I remember having to learn the Dewey Decimal System and the use of the card catalog to look up references, and hunting the shelves for books I needed only to find someone had beat me to them. With the modern wonder we all enjoy, the personal computer, we have the world at our fingertips, and it comes to remote places on winter nights, connecting us with not only the information we need, but people of like minds and interests, such as this board is populated with. People bitch if their computer is slow, and I chuckle inwardly, remembering the walks on winters days and evenings to and from the public library. I also remember when correspondence meant writing or typing a letter which one recipient got (or a few carbon copies if needed). The nearest thing to the internet was posting an letter or inquiry in a magazine and waiting for it to be published and then waiting another month for the responses. Now we get it all done nearly instantaneously, and we reach a global group of like minded people. I may be a dinosaur and love the old iron and doing things the old ways, but there is no getting around the wonder and potential the internet and sites like this hold. Small matter or no matter whether we are at the top of the line of way down it. We know what we are about and we gravitate naturally to it on this 'board. All kidding aside, thanks to everyone for making this site such a hospitable and great place.
 
Good humoured p taking
Us brits lurk here
Sensible chat on any manual machine
No plastic gangsters with attitude
No gordon ramsey or whatever his name is
Perfect
 
#15 pb1 "No gordon ramsey or whatever his name is"
I hope you do not regret this statement.

#14 Joe Michaels
Another, as always in my experience, interesting, reflective contribution.
"Retired", a "night owl".
I suggested on PM a couple of years ago that that you write your memoirs.
I was not the first.
"Joe Michaels" Amazon.uk Books 1659 results.
"Joe Michaels" Amazon.com Books 2214 results.
No titles that I saw indicated that you might be the author, although I did not look in the erotica section.
Your experiences are being recorded for posterity Joe, I hope.
If you are not working on your magnum opus Joe you need to start, PDQ.
Not that you would be doing it for the money, but I believe you would sell thousands of books just on PM.
Best wishes.
Rich
 
OT Tapatalk Footer

Im generally on Tapatalk through my phone now days, and it displays the posts chronologically. So I dont search for anything.

Off-topic, but I have a question you can perhaps easily answer. We see footers on many posts such as:

Sent from my <device name> using Tapatalk.

Is that forced on users? Added during the transmission process by a "middleman", somewhere along the way?

Or may a user choose to option it off?
 








 
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