I like it, that its all together. Otherwise I would need to register for an electronics board and for a programming board and for a design and arts board.
I guess you just dont follow the stuff you dont care about.
Granted I have not been on here in a while and I can imagine with the marketing push I am experiencing here in Europe (all of a sudden you can actually buy Arduinos in stores...) that the forum has recently grown.
Or if one would rather see it as a near real time interaction of people asking questions and people trying to provide answers. I would lean towards the latter. I'm more interested in the people side of the forum rather then it's possible academic value as some kind of repository.
I agree with what retrolefty said here. I find it interesting and sometimes very rewarding when I can help some kid from the US complete a project for science fair or if I can help someone in Australia mod his car. Thats why I like helping here. And thats much more fun than some knowledge base.
Impossible to "follow along" with members, get to know them, and their interests. It's not so much a small community as a giant airport terminal with strangers every day I've never seen before.
I disagree. If you hang out here for longer, you will meet many characters and you do get to "know" them. Graynomad here is from australia and has more interests than I thought is possible (check out his website). Retrolefty has been programming machines since the seventies and has a ton of interesting stories to share. PaulS is a trove of knowledge and completely unfriendly and grumpy (but always helpful). GrumpyMike is not as grumpy as he pretends he is and used to publish a computing magazine back in the day when the stuff we where doing was new. (haha hope this does not make me appear as a stalker. I read the forum a lot more than I post I think... )
So anyway. My point is, this is a place I like to come to when I have nothing else to do. I learn a lot her and I try to help out when and where I can. I think some of the problems you guys describe either are new, or are problems because you have not been around for that long.
my 2c