Worried

[garrettbragg12]

I'm new to the forums, and I enjoy the wealth of info. I read old posts and most get up to 20+ comments. Now I barely see 5+ comments per post (unless someone sparks a fire and an argument starts),which worries me, because as a newbie, I have so much to learn, and rely on the well known guys on here for info. Am I the only one noticing this?
But honestly, I do love these forums, and the people on it seem to be A+ people.


M1/M3 Carbine: late '44 Inland
M1 Garand: late '44 Springfield

Information

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[Badger]

I'm new to the forums, and I enjoy the wealth of info. I read old posts and most get up to 20+ comments. Now I barely see 5+ comments per post (unless someone sparks a fire and an argument starts),which worries me, because as a newbie, I have so much to learn, and rely on the well known guys on here for info. Am I the only one noticing this?
But honestly, I do love these forums, and the people on it seem to be A+ people.

M1/M3 Carbine: late '44 Inland
M1 Garand: late '44 Springfield

Hello Garrett ….

.. and welcome to the forums ….

I think this same question has been addressed many times in the past six years and my answer has always been the same, however, I'll repeat it here again for other folks who may be new also, or those that may have missed it.

Yes, the people and atmosphere here are great, but I believe that stems from our Terms of Service Policy, which insists folks stay away from conversations about religion, politics and rants about government controls of guns etc ...

The reason is simple. Those discussions always lead to bitter disagreements and acrimony, even amongst friends. To validate this, all you have to do is see the vitriol spewed at and about people on Internet forums, that have a political or religious aspect to them. We saw it here for a period of time when we temporarily provided a home for the broken Jouster forums.

We're supposed to be sharing our forums to interact with a lot of like minded folks, who share a common love of old milsurps and the terrific collecting hobby surrounding them. Most of our 21,000+ registered members want to come here talk about Enfields, Mausers, M1 Carbines, 1903 Springfields, or whatever genre of collectible firearm they love to converse about.

We really don't want to see a lot of good "electronic" friends who may differ in political or religious views, destroy an otherwise enjoyable experience talking about old guns, by deliberately creating a posting environment which by its nature promotes divisiveness.

There's a huge number of political discourse sites (and forums) on the Internet already (some on gun sites), catering to both left and right wing viewpoints. If anyone really needs a "fix" of watching perfectly sane and normal people deteriorate into name calling and verbal assaults simply over their political views, we'd recommend they join one of those sites and have at it.

Our site isn't the place for this kind of behaviour, or the content that causes it …..

So, having said that, let me talk about why forums look and operate the way they do.

The use of forum oriented software such as vBulletin, which is the software product we use here, goes back to the late 1990's when the Internet started to get more general use. Forum software is designed to be a "question and answer" type environment and it's highly linear in nature as to how the software presents information. ALL Internet forums operate like this. Usually threads all follow a similar pattern. Someone asks a question and is looking for answers, or someone wants to show off their latest acquisition with pride and validate if they made a good purchase, or not. Sometimes members want to enquire about ongoing auctions or eBay items that be up for sale, or query more expert members about what certain markings mean and determine whether they are fake, or not. One of the reasons we created the MKL, was to have a separate research area for collectors to be able to read articles about specific areas of interest. For example, in your case, you may want to check United States Milsurp Knowledge Library and specifically read the Knowledge Library entries, or view the videos about. Here's just a few articles …

.30 M1 Carbine (Mfg by Underwood Elliott-Fisher)

Cal .30 M1 Carbine (1943 WWII U.S. Training Film)

Cal .30 M2 Carbine (1943 WWII U.S. Training Film)

Rifle Marksmanship with the M1 Garand Rifle (1942)

Infantry Weapons and their Effects (WWII and Korean era U.S. Training Films)

Fundamentals of Small Arms Weapons (WWII U.S. Training Films)

Collection of 12 Official U.S. Military Training Films

The Guns at Springfield (DOD Video)

Video: Commence Firing (Springfield Armory, Camp Perry, Weapons Development)

Usually, the newest threads are at the top of the forum and a thread is comprised of several additional posts within it, if there are answers to the original post that started the thread. At the very TOP of the forum, there are special threads called "stickies", which always appear first when a forum is displayed. They are usually threads which contain good information, especially for new collectors, that is important enough to have it constantly appear at the top of any forum. If the constant display of sticky threads distracts you, just click on the collapsible box arrow at the top right of the any forum listing, so that the stickies don't appear for you when you view any forum thread listing. If you want to see the sticky thread list once more to see if there's anything new, although the new posts function tells you that anyway, just click the same arrow again and it opens up the sticky list at the top of the forum. From session to session, it automatically remembers the last status (open or closed) that you left it in.

Because of the inherent software design of forum software, The secret to finding good information in the thousands of old threads is to use the SEARCH function. Try out our Milsurps site Google CSE custom search engine, located in the top right corner below the words "Advanced Search". It only searches our site using Google techniques and can be quite efficient. For example, in your case, type in the words m1 carbine inland, or m1 garand springfield and see what happens. You can also vary the search phrase, so if you just wanted to get "bolt" information on carbines, type carbine bolt as an example. Perhaps you want to see what members have recommended in the past for good books to learn about the M1 carbine, so, type in m1 carbine research books, or some variant of that.

I checked and there are hundreds of posts covering topics that will help you as a new collector

I apologize for the long winded post to answer you question, but I thought that it might serve to help all members here, new and old, as to how the forums are designed and possibly some tricks to get the most out of their use.

Thanks for your interest…

Regards,
Doug

[Bill Hollinger]

Doug is so right on this. Political topics can and do destroy an otherwise great thread. They start arguments and fighting amongst the closest of friends. I have a friend with an apposing political view and he and I can BBQ, drink beer, talk WWII jeeps and trailers with nary a sour word. Let politics get in the mix and we are at one another's throats! We don't talk politics!

Another reason people my not post as much to a thread is some of the discussion may have been extensively discussed in an earlier thread. Garrett, watching over all the posts you've made is nice to see. You are inquisitive and you are very polite. People like that. It is not just the old timers that makes Milsurps the best firearms forum on the net. It is you and all the new members as well.

[garrettbragg12]

I appreciate your response! And I see where you guys are coming from with the repetitive posts. I imagine answering "what parts do I need" every day, year after year gets old, but hey, gotta make sure you "old timers" don't start slacking off and forgetting things! all joking aside though, I just worry that as a very young, new collector, there's so much I haven't learned from people such as yourself. I do keep a few guys that I can email/call anytime such as Paul Imbraguilio (one of the nicest guys I've met) and nick dailey, if I'm ever completely at a loss for info. It just surprised me how much activity was dying down I guess!


M1/M3 Carbine: late '44 Inland
M1 Garand: late '44 Springfield

[Badger]

It just surprised me how much activity was dying down I guess!

It's not really dying down here specifically, but it is across the Internet in general ....

With the ever increasing age demographic of people collecting these old milsurps, combined with ever increasing prices due to lower availability and rarity, there's less new blood coming into the hobby, particularly the younger set, who can't afford it.

The result is that gun oriented web sites catering to old milsurp collectibles are seeing less activity compared to historical levels and in fact, most are seeing a gradual decline in active members and postings.

As far as our site goes, we have 21,000+ registered members over the last 6 years and we average 10-15 new registrations per day. According to our Google Analytics program which monitors our site, our traffic is up month over month for the past year, by an average of 10-15% per month compounded. If you type the word milsurps or milsurp into the Google search engine, our site has consistently been the #1 site to appear in their search output results, for the past 12 months, or more.

Finally, not every visitor (guest) registers. There's a lot of "lurkers" who just read posts and learn a lot, but never register and participate in forum posting.

Here's an example of today's current statistics.

Total new members that have registered on the forum in the last 24 hours: 14
Total guests that have visited the forum in the last 24 hours: 9,068 (doesn't count search bots)

So, perspective is everything …

Regards,
Doug

[Bill Hollinger]

... such as Paul Imbraguilio (one of the nicest guys I've met) and nick dailey...

A huge ditto to both of those fine members.

[HOOKED ON HISTORY]

Let politics get in the mix and we are at one another's throats!

Or discuss whether or not to unwrap and shoot an No 4 Enfield.

[garrettbragg12]

Or discuss whether or not to unwrap and shoot an No 4 Enfield.

I kept up with that post and got a few good laughs!


M1/M3 Carbine: late '44 Inland
M1 Garand: late '44 Springfield

[HOOKED ON HISTORY]

I kept up with that post and got a few good laughs!

It got a bit contetious . Seeing valid points on both sides of the issue I chose to keep my head low to avoid friendly fire.

[garrettbragg12]

It got a bit contetious . Seeing valid points on both sides of the issue I chose to keep my head low to avoid friendly fire.

I'll share a fox hole and do the same, lol!


M1/M3 Carbine: late '44 Inland
M1 Garand: late '44 Springfield