I have been thinking about this place quite a bit as of late and I have a bunch of random thoughts posted below. As you read through them, please give things some thought and respond if you have any thoughts, questions, or ideas.
The number of people that come here regularly is dropping. We have 51 members and two of them are deceased. Two are test user accounts that I use to verify proper forum function after making changes. That leaves 47 valid member accounts. Nine of those have never ever made a single post, and only 33 people have made two posts or more.
Billy G has passed on. It is sad, but his fate will be upon each and every one of us at some point.
Mark Frazier has come back after many serious health issues. It is great to see him back!
GrumpyGator more or less fell off the face of the earth when his wife passed away four years ago. He was not in good health either. I never knew his full name, so there is no way to look for an obituary or anything else. I was friends with him on Facebook, and managed to message a friend of his, listed as a family member. Amazingly, I got a response just this morning and was told that he passed away coming up on two years ago. He had been suffering from Lupus and cancer and was in a lot of pain. His family and friends lament his passing, but say that his passing was a blessing considering the circumstances.
Shawn (Adasha_Machining) hasn't posted in over two years and has not logged in since May of 2026. Granted, since he is running a commercial machine shop now, this forum does not fit his interests or needs. Additionally, there was a problem between Shawn and Billy G at one point. I tried to mediate behind the scenes, but that blew up in my face with Shawn more or less going off in a huff.
I believe we all remember Woodchopper (Woodchucker?) from Machinist Gazette. He's never actually been a member here at HMJ. I don't want a repeat of that mess with him, but I am aware that it can happen.
Uncle Buck more or less disappeared too. I do not know if he went back to H-M or not, but they did get a new forum up and running in January of 2025 called the Garage Hangout. They couldn't use Garage Gazette just like we couldn't use Machinist Gazette. Both names were still held by Rusty, the old admin that suddenly went AWOL.
Our rules are really no different than over at H-M, so I do not think we are too strict. In fact, our list of rules is shorter and much simpler.
Getting a membership established here is difficult, and I admit it. But without that, screening members becomes a full-time job. I don't need another job! Our screening methods do keep out spammers for the most part, but every once in a while one will sneak in and we show him to the door in short order.
So many people will register for a forum that they find, log in, ask a question or explain a problem, get an answer (maybe) and then disappear, never to return. Those kinds of people are not willing to invest the time and effort required to obtain a membership here and that is okay with me.
Younger people just do not get into this hobby. The few that do often disappear after a very short time. I think that many get started with an easily available mini-lathe but get discouraged after a while when the true costs and inherent limitations become apparent. More appropriately sized machines and tooling cost significantly more and younger folks simply don't have the expendable money to get deeply into this hobby.
Forums have become somewhat outdated. Groups on Facebook and other platforms seem to be more popular, but even they are losing ground.
Forums are a HUGE time sink. When we were back at H-M and running the place, I for one was starting to hate it. Don't get me wrong, I loved doing it and sharing the hobby. I shared a lot and learned a lot. Made many friends, but the time investment was out of this world. For that reason, I really like this place. It is small and takes only small amounts of time.
The recent events with my wife have been an epic reminder of just how fragile life can be. Jimmy and I need to get some time to go through the admin side of this place.
Forums are fickle animals. Everybody wants to be a member for free, but they don't want to see any advertising. They also think that they can misbehave and write in any fashion that they wish, meanwhile others go away because they are offended by bad behavior or spam. It is a really fine balancing act, and I thought we were on the right path, but the lack of growth has me rethinking that.
Our three-year web hosting contract runs out in April. The forum software is free, but the web hosting and domain name cost us a little over $100 per year and I don't know how much our renewal will be going up, but probably in the neighborhood of $25 per year. If we had more members and more traffic, we could implement some level of advertising to cover our costs, or maybe a subscription plan of some sort, but that requires someone's time to manage that as well. Advertising worked quite well at H-M, I know that they brought in quite a bit of cash with it not to mention all of the subscription fees they got.
I don't know what will happen going forward, for right now I am just tossing out some random thoughts. Maybe one of you has some ideas to share.