The recent kerfuffle (such a nice word.... kerfuffle.....) over pootie diaries here at DKos started me thinking about the role of on-line communities in the crafting world.
Disclaimer: my experience is with my two obsessions, knitting and genealogy. Feel free to add your own experiences with other crafts/communities in the comments.
It's been around since before the World Wide Web started: keeping a Usenet group/email list on topic. How rigid should moderation be in terms of what's off topic? We've seen the recent comments and diaries here about whether DKos should be all politics/all the time or whether 'community' diaries have a place. It's an old story..... a decade or so ago, two email lists I'm on (one dedicated to a particular mystery author, the other focused on copy editing) spun off subsidiary lists to deal with the 'off topic chatter' that annoyed some list members. In both cases, both the parent list and the subsidiary list are still going strong.
So how does this relate to various crafting and other hobby communities? Well, one of the developments of Web 2.0 has been that lots of good community-driven on-line resources have been developed for those of us with a range of interests. A couple that I'm very familiar with and have greatly benefited from are Ravelry (where discussions in the forums are quite wide-ranging) and TalkingScot (which tends to stay very much on-topic).
Ravelry is aimed at knitters and crocheters. (If you do either and haven't joined, you are really missing out!) It allows a user to catalog yarn, needles and projects (those in progress and those that have been finished). The internal links are amazing - I can see what yarns people have used with a particular pattern (for example, do I like this lace pattern done with a multi-colored yarn or is a solid better?), or I can click on a yarn and see what patterns people have done with it. Very importantly, if I'm having trouble with a pattern, I can check to see if there's a link to errata, or I can read linked blog entries to see how someone else has solved the issue, or I can ask for help with figuring out what I'm doing wrong. One feature that is both very helpful and very scary grin is the queue - where a user can 'store' links to patterns that he/she wants to knit in the future. Mine had gotten way too long (like well beyond the three digit threshold.....). While the focus is in knitting and crocheting, like here, the discussions in the forums does wander off into all sorts of other topics (politics and religion are not excluded......)
TalkingScot has a wonderful forum for those interested in Scottish genealogy, with lots of posters who have scads of experience looking at Scottish records and figuring out what they mean. The helpful posters can track down amazing bits of (sometimes obscure) information. Just recently, I posted a question that had been driving me crazy (where a particular ancestor had been on the 1841 Scottish census, when she would have been an 8 year old girl... not necessarily necessary for my ancestor hunt but you never know....); another poster, with a fresh pair of eyes, found a good candidate (name off but linguistically feasible, a couple parishes away from where I'd found any records of her), who I hadn't noticed in my searches -- a good enough candidate for the right girl that I've entered her in my database.
So, what are you working on? And what on-line communities have helped you be better at your craft/art/hobby? Inquiring minds want to know ;-)
Oh, hoping I still have your attention..... my mother died just as the on-line knitting community was really taking off. She would have loved the resources that didn't exist five years ago! If you don't know the symptoms of ovarian cancer, please read my diary from the other day... it could save the life of someone you love! Not a great picture, but Mum and Dad, with lobster sweaters she designed and made (also showing the one thing that ever kept her from knitting: a cast on her arm, the result of a little mountain climbing incident.....):
And, since I haven't gotten him to post here yet on what he's working on, a couple of my father's photos (which will also add some color to this otherwise text-heavy diary......)
WAYWO is a continuing series about what Kossacks are working on {mostly crafts but we're flexible and (at least in my case) inquisitive, so don't be shy about sharing}, usually posted around this time on Sundays. A Yahoo group includes a mailing list to announce when the diary is posted and a schedule of hosts. Feel free to sign up for future weeks or you'll just get me blathering on about genealogy and knitting. (If you don't want to sign up for the Yahoo group {it is only one or two emails a week!}, email me and I'll add you.)