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Interesting observation about the inverse relationship between crude web design and technical hobby content. I've been scratch-building vacuum tube musical ins

Interesting observation about the inverse relationship between crude web design and technical hobby content. I've been scratch-building vacuum tube musical instrument gear for about 10 years. 90% of what I initially needed to know was picked up from 1990's style hobbyist websites. I document all my projects for others to build on my html-only website, maintained with SeaMonkey Composer. It takes hundreds of hours to produce the artifacts themselves and many more hours to produce checked and finished documentation that others can build from. I occasionally think about rebuilding my site with 21st century web technology, but I haven't convinced myself that it adds more value to my work than producing more and better documentation. I have an infinite list of things to understand, design, build, and document. Chasing web tech trends competes for the available time. I design and implement embedded software for optical metrology and fabrication equipment all day, so I have no technical barrier to web tech, just a lack of interest. I can't think of a single hobbyist site that I get information from that has improved after a tech refresh. It's like a signal that the maintainer's interest in the hobby is waning, and no further content should be expected.

blairanderson 12y ago
I think you could benefit from something like github-pages. free web hosting, and it would cut down the time it takes to produce documentation.
- vibrolax 12y ago
  I agree that github-pages would provide all that's needed for maintaining the docs online, and make the publishing nearly effortless. The change history is of definite value. I'll give it a go.
VLM 12y ago
Something neither of us has mentioned, that I thought of last night, is early adopter syndrome. Here are some examples of great projects from masters of their crafts that do not have trendy web design and have been "on the web" for a long time: http://www.w1ghz.org/ http://www.w1ghz.org/ http://www.lisaboyer.com/Claytonsite/Claytonsite1.htm http://www.lisaboyer.com/Claytonsite/Claytonsite1.htm You might like the first link other than operating about six orders of magnitude higher frequencies and solid state instead of hollow state. The first example doesn't have any CSS or javascript at all! But there is a lot of excellent content on those examples. The early adopter syndrome is if someone has been doing this stuff since the turn of the century, they're quite likely to continue doing stuff that works. This creates a self selection effect.

blairanderson 12y ago

I think you could benefit from something like github-pages. free web hosting, and it would cut down the time it takes to produce documentation.

vibrolax 12y ago
I agree that github-pages would provide all that's needed for maintaining the docs online, and make the publishing nearly effortless. The change history is of definite value. I'll give it a go.

VLM 12y ago

Something neither of us has mentioned, that I thought of last night, is early adopter syndrome. Here are some examples of great projects from masters of their crafts that do not have trendy web design and have been "on the web" for a long time: http://www.w1ghz.org/ http://www.w1ghz.org/ http://www.lisaboyer.com/Claytonsite/Claytonsite1.htm http://www.lisaboyer.com/Claytonsite/Claytonsite1.htm You might like the first link other than operating about six orders of magnitude higher frequencies and solid state instead of hollow state. The first example doesn't have any CSS or javascript at all! But there is a lot of excellent content on those examples. The early adopter syndrome is if someone has been doing this stuff since the turn of the century, they're quite likely to continue doing stuff that works. This creates a self selection effect.