I was just on the admin site for this forum checking on a few things when a few other things occurred to me. This site remains pretty small as far as membership goes but viewer traffic seems to be increasing at a slow but consistent pace. Of the registered users only 60% have ever posted anything but none of them have ever posted a flame or trolling type post. We wrote some pretty clear rules and then promoted the site to a fairly select group that those of us doing the promotion knew to be good guys. I would love to see more folks actually posting pictures and videos of their airgun activities but I would not trade a civil and mature site for volume.

Some of our registered users have not been active in quite some time. I wonder if they stopped visiting because the volume of posts or topics failed to capture their interest or if they don't bother to log on and thus their viewing is not captured as "activity." Most of the inactive (as far as posting goes) members are known to me and I wish they would post more. These folks have experience that can answer questions and sometime conduct shoots and such that I would enjoy reading about here. If you share your experiences here, you will have a grateful audience and you might get some valuable feedback. That said, I would not want anyone who enjoys the site to feel compelled to post as the price of admission.

Speaking of gratitude (and common courtesy), I'm pretty certain nobody who has posted here has ever been ignored or had a question or suggestion disregarded. The other day I posted on another forum some information that might lead a certain guy to the gun he wants. The response did not so much as include a "thank you." Remarkable, apparently the sharing of time and effort was owed to him! On another forum, I posted an answer to a question and gave data and examples supporting my conclusions etc. and recieved no reply whatsoever. It is sad really, how people have either forgotten courtesy or failed to learn it or have not been exposed to it! I think the nice thing about a smaller forum is that we will tend to "know" each other and treat each other with respect and kindness like our parents hoped to teach us when we were begging for a red ryder!

Anyhow, I hope to hear more from you guys that are counting on Spring (in the Northern hemishere) to get out to shoot. I would also ask that you promote this site to those folks that you know to be mature, responsible and courteous. I would like to see this site grow with that kind of membership so we can continue to enjoy a friendly and vibrant airgunning site.

Good solid post Jerry, I enjoy this site, and look forward to reading and contributing when I have something to offer. I enjoy the no pressure atmosphere of this site, just post what you have to say, no one cares if it's about a 4 ft/lb BB gun or a 750+ ft/lb hugebore airgun. Hopefully this forum will continue to grow at a moderate rate, sometimes to fast is not a good thing.

I'm with you Jerry. It's nice to visit a friendly place where some feedback or good advice is guaranteed. Like you I have posted on other fora what I thought was helpful advice, but had no response. I have also shared my triumphs on occasions (on a local forum) and had no response whatsoever, leading me to be a little provocative by suggesting I would in future post elsewhere. That led to a major attack by the forum administrators (and as I argue for a living I responded in kind) which nearly got me banned! So, it's good to be here

Another benefit to this forum (so far) is that it's relatively free of ultra-specific jargon, mysterious abbreviations, and impenetrable acronyms.

I've visited some other sites where the acronym plague has progressed so far that most of the latter posts are completely incomprehendible to an average reader, even one that's familiar with airguns in general. Ironically, many (if not all) of those type of threads seem to deal with the technical minutia of "modding" cheap, mostly plastic airguns of the type that you can buy at a Wallmart or wherever. The amount of time and effort expended to "upgrade" some of those junkers seems to be the primary focus, for some reason.

I, for one, enjoy being able to communicate in plain-vanilla English, without the unwanted complexity of the acronym-soup type threads.

Hey . . . you can say what you want here, because in fact it is hosted by the King of Cheap Scopes.

Sorry . . . I couldn't resist . . . that softball was too slow . . .

-- Jim

OH!!! THAT's a cheap shot!!!!

I'm gonna tell the moderator.

Remember ... I can always replace those tarnished Alpine parts with plastic "upgrades". hehehe.

Gary

Gary--what's this invoice for 1 1/4 " delrin rod? Do you have a special project in mind??? hehehe

Good post Jerry!

It's been enjoyable to find some good discussions and pics. There's been alot of work put into formatting good materials to post. I know you've spent quite a bunch of hours shooting, recording, and posting great entertainment.

The program seems to work well. It's very easy to load pics. All folks have to do is shoot the pics on VGA setting in their digital camera, or reduce the file size before posting. Just so you know: The forum wants pics below 125K (that's a file size). In your cameras, there's a place in the menu for file size. You adjust that before you take the pics. If you want really detailed pics that you can edit out a small section from and still have detail, then you shoot the pic with the higher file sizes ... like 5 Meg, etc. That makes a monster file size, that you can't use on the net. So, you have to reduce that down. You do that by using a photo processing program like Photoshop, or some of the ones that come with your camera. You reduce the resolution first. Use 72 dpi for the net. Then, when in 72 dpi, stripe over the existing numerical size of the pics in inches, and replace it with a number like 7" wide by 5" high. That will reduce your total file size down to around 90K or so. At that point, the forum program should accept it, If it says it's still too big, then just go back and write in a smaller number. OR ... when you save the downsized print with a "save as" function, you might be given quality numbers to choose. Where higher numbers (like 9-12) will save more detail (and thus more or a file size) or you can choose lower number quality (like 3-5), and get a much smaller file size. On the net - you can hardly tell the difference. One last thing ... use "save as" to save your reduced size picture. If you just use "save" ... it will replace your origonal high detail pic with the downgraded one. You want to keep both ... named differently by just adding an "a" or something to the name ... when you use the "save as" function.

Please try it. You'll find it's a real hoot to take your own materials and see them posted. It's hard to learn all the steps required to use the cameras and edit programs. Hope the above info. might help. Ask that sort of stuff if you need to in order for us to help you get your materials posted. In 2009 it's easy to get the feeling that we're just supposed to all know how to do everything ... even though it all keeps changing. Just ask. I do every week. This stuff can really give you a headache ... or really be enjoyable.

Thanks Jerry. Great job of posting materials, and or caring that the forum remains something we can count on. Thank you.

Gary

Hi guys, thanks for all the replies. It looks like we all seem to agree that we're on the right track here. You make a good point Paul; it is sometimes hard to disagree on the net without being misunderstood as attacking or belittling. I guess another advantage this site has is that knowing each other better allows us to give the benefit of the doubt as opposed to becoming defensive at a misunderstanding.

Thanks for the tutorial Gary. And if anyone has a picture they would like posted and they just can't get it done via the above procedures or via offsite hosting, then email it to me and I can probably get it done. I've got the procedures down!

Well posted Jerry
I think this site is definately quality over quantity. Which is perhaps why there are not so many post as other sites.
Anything posted on here is of genuine interest and merit, by mature people( me being the exception of course!!)
I've had plenty of experience of posting on subjects, trying to be of some help, just to be totally ignored.
LOL best at the moment is posting the answer to someones question, being totally ignored, then someone else posts the same answer and gets a big 'thankyou', though I suspect thats more to do with being shunned for my honest opinions on some subjects...!!
Problem with posting is that, like texting, it can be difficult to disagree with someone without them taking it as a personal attack.
Open and opposing disscussions are a. mentally stimulating, b. fun!, c. often leads to fresh ideas and a different take on a situation.

I for one would be happy to see this site continue to grow slowly with quality members, with an adult attitude.
Not some clicky little club for established members.

Great job guys. The site is picking up speed now with ever more posts

A little perspective, too . . . for all intents and purposes, the site has been up and available to the public since early December of last year. That's a little over three months. I think a tremendous amount of information has been posted in that time.

I'm confident that there are many more "guests" than registered users, as is almost always the case with Internet forums.

You're right -- it's winter too, so people aren't shooting as much as they usually do. It seems like even us MD Rich Snobs have scaled back a little. But spring is a few weeks away.

That reminds me . . . gotta order more roundball!

-- Jim

Is it me or do these posts keep getting a bit jumbled up!!!???

Nah, the software is just sensitive to which "Reply" link you click. You response will always appear under the post containing the "Reply" link you clicked on.

-- Jim

Actually, I have a heck of a time with that very thing. If I browse a post, and click a link under what I want to comment on, it will almost always give me the large lower screen to post a general reply to the whole thread. I nearly always have to go BACK to the individual comment I want, and click THAT reply button AGAIN. Then, I usually get the screen which will reply to that comment.

Always been that way. I don't know why. Not my imagination. First time I hit reply ... it would nearly always be misplaced.

Gary

No, that was me. I must have hit "reply" under Gary's post instead of just posting at the bottom of the list as I intended. Operator error on my part I'm sure.

Spot on Jerry!

Gee, I never even noticed the reply attached to each...reply. I've just been adding to the end of all the posts. Sorry if that was/is a faux pas. Hate to be banned!!

Jerry, I'm with you. I NEVER post to the other sites. I've seen how much headache they've become for others and don't wish to partake of the misery. Besides so little of the other sites deal with anything approaching these guns. I'm very content to wait for a few excellent posts rather than sift through the mountains of chaff for a kernel.

Thanks for the work ya'll have done and continue to due to maintain this site for the rest of us Barnes fans.

Kent

I really, really, like the fact that this BBS hosts it's own pics. I'll gladly trade the smaller file size for the convienence of NOT having to go through the hassle of storing a JPEG elsewhere so that I can link back to it to post here. The images are plenty large enough to get the point across, and for those of us with a slow connection it's a mercy not having a bunch of ginormous files to load for every thread. If someone wants a hi-rez photo for a wallpaper or whatever, they can just ask the poster in a private message to E-mail it to them.

I've been using the Irfanview shareware program to browse, edit and manipulate my digital photos for quite a while. It's simple enough to learn pretty easily and small enough to load quickly. It's lightning fast on the file-to-file jumps, and best of all the resample and resize functions aren't buried ten menu pages deep. It's still available for download, though in a later version.

Hi Sean,

Good tip - thanks. I hope others can use the info. too.

Gary