I've kept 1-50, but all the remaining MRJs are chopped and gone.
Les' comment below throws up and interesting question: 'But I assume you're not doing it just to please other people'. The response to this is yes, and no.
Point 1: I've been performing since I was 13 - I'm a show off. The psychology of that is open to discussion, but most would say that this is in some ways a small extension of that.
Point 2: If there was no audience to this, then what would be the point? I may as well get a scrapbook from Wilko's. At that point the question is do I a) hope for an audience (the 'build it and they will come' method) or b) tailor the content to said expected audience? Or indeed write about what I like, or write about what others may like. i.e. I'll bet Graham Muspratt would get a lot less traffic to his blog if he didn't write on Southern Railway modelling, but instead on mining techniques of the Andes. What he likes coincides with the interest of a solid audience - they just have to find him.
The response therefore is: I don't write specifically to please other people, but I'd be stupid not to take the audience into account. Unlike some I have over a decade of data to analyse to work this out.
What then is the future? Sure I could keep doing this and look forward to waving a 20 year birthday GIF at you... of I could move subtly to another something. A while ago I put a video up here. This didn't get an overwhelming thumbs up. Stephen Fulljames of Narrow Planet put a comment up about 'not rushing to video'. He is of course a proper computer type and it made me pause for a minute, but that is one way forward. Another is to attempt to drag the existing braying multitudes across to another non modelling waffle platform, but I doubt that would succeed, not at the same numbers anyway.
'If there was no audience to this, then what would be the point?'
ReplyDeleteI write about things that interest me, and whatever project(s) that I have on the go at the moment. If folk read my posts, fine, if they don't, fine. Its the writing that interests me, creating content that I'd want to read, rather than trying to find an audience that shares my slightly odd tastes. It won't win me lots of views or followers, but its nice and quiet here on the backroads where there's less traffic.
I would add a C)
ReplyDeleteTo get constructive feedback on what I am doing. that might sometimes be helpful criticism, or it might be learning something new.
Lurkinh in the background of my mind is that dreadful modern use of the term curation. Write on SocMed and you are beholden to an audience that might not be of your choosing. With a blog you can be more selective.
That's bold to cut up MRJs... Must admit they are one of the only ones I keep whole as they keep their value quite well.
ReplyDeleteI love the variety of your blog, Chris. You raise topics that I would not research for myself. I think we all start blogging to show off but for some it then also becomes a teaching avenue which is great if you have the skills in the first place and the ability and the ability to explain things well.
ReplyDeleteI have added a page for my layout to the non-modelling waffle platform, as you described it, which does create interest but I've given up on being on it as an individual - the politics does my head in.
I've tried blogging but it's never really "caught on" with me, in much the same way as I've never kept a diary going beyond a few weeks. I suspect that I'm too lazy and disorganised to bother. I haven't even written much on NGRM lately other than responses to others' posts even though I've got quite a bit of modelling done during (not quite) lockdown.
ReplyDeleteInteresting about the MRJs; I'd independently reached a similar conclusion (ie:keep 1-50 plus selected bits of later issues) although I haven't got around to diposing of the rest yet. The low numbers of the "Review" I'll also hang on to and one or two Voie Libres.
I have thought about more or less giving up on the internet, at least on a mobile basis...the phone is up for "upgrade" and its battery is starting to go. I could happily go back to an old Nokia for actually communicating on and perhaps a tablet or Raspberry Pi for doing stuff like programming radios. Dunno.
Simon, I find recent MRJs have returned to having broad enough content to be worth keeping. Voie Libre on the otherhand is a subscription I'm beginning to struggle to justify.
DeleteHi James, yes, I've started buying MRJ again; when the latest issue appeared in WHS I would usually check it out but put it back...lately there's been a lot more creativity and thought provoking stuff as well as pure finescale modelling. I won a years subscription to Voie Libre in 1999 as part of a prize my layout won at Expométrique and carried it on for a few years but eventually went back to buying it at MotorBooks near Charing Cross...which ceased when it closed down a few years back. I sold most of my copies last year at ExpoNG as looking through them i found my interests had changed.
ReplyDeleteChris, You are not alone in decluttering. I have been steadilly and slowly going through what had been a complete collection of MRJ ans scanning the bits that might be useful and then binning them. To make scanning easier I first cut out the pages I need.
ReplyDeleteI am adopting the same policy with other magazines.
As a point of reference I udertook a similar cull way back in 1990 a few months before our second son was born. My then workshop had to be given up to become a bedroom. That time it was Railway Modeller and Model Railways that bit the dust.
Geoff