Ben,

I have only been a member for a few days, and love the site........great work!

There is one improvement I would suggest straight away, though...........I hope you don't mind.

When you view someone's work in the "Gallery" and comment on it, it starts a new string in the "Forum"  under "Projects & Design" and under your own name. Firstly, this makes it look as though it is your own work (eg "Oak Stair by Mike Garnham" appears currently.....clearly not my work), but more importantly it means that you generate a whole lot of very short strings..........one or two comments in each, and seemingly disconnected. This seems to me to cause unnecessary confusion.

I am sure it would be possible and preferable to have all the comments about a gallery item under one heading. That is,  if 5 people comment on a photo, all 5 comments would occur in one string (preferably under the photo). At the moment, it could be that 5 people commenting produces 5 new strings in the Forum (if they comment from the "Gallery" rather than from the "Forum"). Wouldn't it be better if the comments actually stayed as part of the gallery anyway, rather than ending up somewhere else?

On another topic......... 

I read somewhere that you have just acquired your 2000th member, and that this number is rising rapidly. Given that number of members I can't think why there are only 46 galleries, which is about one gallery for every 43 members. Surely more than 2.3% of the membership has made something! What can you do to encourage more people to post their work? 

I know I am not speaking from a position of strength as I have nothing posted yet............but I promise that as soon as I can get the photos together I will start a new gallery. 

I really don't think that the scoring idea works.......I can't imagine ever scoring anyone's work, especially from a tiny jpeg on a website. Woodworking shouldn't be competitive. For example, there is currently a chap showing a rather nice dining table and chairs........his very first project, (and who knows what tools he has and whether he even has a workshop?). How on earth do you compare that with something made by a full-time professional with every possible piece of kit, a big workshop, a dozen employees and years of experience?

Anyway, keep up the good work, and try and do something about gallery comments generating a new topic in the forum if you can.

Regards

Mike 

Ben,

I see!!! I missed the existing thread symbol underneath the picture and went straight to the comments box.

I reckon the solution to inadvertantly starting a new thread is to remove the box headed "Mike Garnham says:"  because if you provide a place for people to write, that is where they will write, even though there might be an option for adding to an existing thread.

You could have each gallery item generate an "empty thread" when it is uploaded, and that would be the only place for comments on that item.

 A temporary solution might be to have the existing thread more prominent, and the option of starting a new thread not available immediately from that page, or possibly have it entitled something like "Start a new thread on this gallery item".

Anyway, this is just a minor niggle with what is going to be a great site.

Do many people "rate" other people's work in the gallery? I just couldn't bring myself to do it....I'm sure nobody would miss that feature if it was abandoned! 

I'm getting some photos together tomorrow, should have a gallery of old stuff posted by the weekend. On another subject......I have noticed a "MY Articles" section in the "All My Pages" section of the member's details. Does this mean that you are looking for people to submit articles? If so, what are you looking for, and where abouts on the site will they be published? I have a home-made dust-extraction system in my workshop that could easily be copied and might make for a readable few hundred words........would that be of interest? Or should that just be a thread in the "Tools & Workshop" part of the forum?

Many thanks for your reply

Mike 

Another one on the way the site works. I agree that for comments on a gallery picture the default should be that new comments should be on any existing thread.

But more important could the owner have an email when someone comments on a gallery item (like we have in a thread). Most of us arn't so vain that we keep looking at our own pictures, so we dont know when comments are made or questions asked!

Roger