Anyone working on a real project will get an FP bump for questions. Mostly so they can get an answer quickly.

There is really no policy as such for what goes FP. Sometimes there is not much to choose from."

If you check the reply to Robin (above ?) it mostly covers this I think, however......

 1. Bumping questions to FP is probably a waste of advertising space. The users that will answer them will not know it is there anyway.... they will do like you and me and use recent activity page (bugs and all... it sort of works ok)

 2. Your right, looking through I was shocked to find only 3 wind stories for the month thus far... frightening really, although Bent1 has come to the rescue with a small fourth. (great to see it on the FP). I don't see the need to keep the front page fresh, but I do see the need to have interesting stuff on it, as it is first stop for re-directs from otherpower.com... they will not have seen it before anyway, and you want to attract the doer to want to do as well.
What you want their first impression to be of will come from here....and what they see first is pretty sad really,..... the doers will turn off here.
You want it easy to see interesting stuff right away, at the moment they have to sift through a months postings to find a few stories at all, and impossible to find an inspiring one straight off the bat.... just seems a waste of resource.

 3. The broadest audience for answering things will be found on recent activity pages. pushing Q&A to the FP is a waste..

 4. Perhaps there should be a policy on the FP, and this should include... no questions, no classifieds, no links to newsworthy stories RE or otherwise, but practical interesting/inspiring projects only. Skewed to wind, but including other RE stuff. Remember, we won't see it anyway, but newcomers from otherpower will.

 5. I didn't start this rant to get front page billing (that none of us see), I just got alerted to the fact, that it was a resource that was not being used in the best interest of a practical site. It showed newcomers that we didn't do anything worthwhile.... maybe thats why we attract the current crop of non-doers. All they see are newbie questions,and classified and links to "stuff" and so do the same... The practical folk go "this is dribble" and move on

It is sad that with 11000 or more users, we seem to have attracted a good deal of hot air, and too few project people. And your right, you can bring them to water but you can't make em drink....... but they can be encouraged....

One of the other things that may entice users to take the time to produce an interesting post, is, if it is any good, it won't be lost forever in 2 days (like my last project). I think it was a good post, but I know it will last a day and be gone..... so why bother anymore.

If people knew that their effort would be accorded some time to be viewed, you may give incentive to post good postings. At the moment that is so far from the truth it is a serious problem.

At the moment, a quick rant attracts attention, (Ronb plays this card well) a good inspiring post will be gone tomorrow, with very few benefiting from it. Thats why I have had enough.... it just isn't worth the effort to spend 3-4 hours doing a post, in the hope you may inspire or help someone, to be lost in a day amongst the chatter. A chat post will hang around for days and days and is a three minute post, so this is why we are attracting hot air posts. There is no incentive for people to go to the trouble to inspire, or entertain us with good practical postings.

A simple fact.... Good informative, entertaining, well pictured posts take a lot of effort. Short dribble posts take no effort.... guess what posts we attract now.

We need a way to help decent posts to be worth posting, or there will be less and less, as others see it is not worth the effort.

I am encouraged that Hugh has seen the worth of the blade story, and I think Backshed is doing something to allow blade builders at that site at least, a chance to see blades being made differently than has been the case. Neither have been at my behest if you are wondering.... they have obviously built blades the hard way before.

I will give the edit option some thought, but not sure if I am up to it..... I may be a bit too brutal. (I have obviously given you so much grief, that you have finally decided to get even)

I wonder what they do ... for the most part, it seems, that most stories get 120 to 180 readers in the short term. Nice reference works maybe grow to three or four hundred over time. It seems to me that people are reading stories, regardless of where and when they were posted but not too many...

I'm not bothered to read someone's comment that the stories and diaries I posted this month are "piffle" _ I'll defend anyone's right to their own opinion _ mine is that they weren't piffle to me.