[Rubenandres77]

Originally Posted by gerard1938

It is clear that
a) You did not notice that I only mentioned age, place and country so no privacy problems;
b) I was interested to know something about the way others drew their own kits;
c) You hadn't the slightest idea that the pdf's were a result of a freetime leisure and were published because 'someone might like somew of them'.,
If you had then you would not complaint about a missing manual or so.
d) I mentioned several times, on several occasions to be interested to find out why paper modeling wasn't a hobby-subject for youngsters although it's cheap and challenging -> both aspects were attractive in 'our' (clear to me now) time...

Anyhow, it's funny to get a reaction all of a sudden.
Thanks.

Gerard, actually I've followed you for some years, and I do know that the original motivation you had to design and release your kits was the pleasure of doing it. And also because I've seen your work and your posts
previously that I know that you rarely shared any previews of your designs here, or that you rarely announced the release of a new kit in the forum.

If I remember correctly, it was other members who have on a couple of occasions shared the news of latest releases of your designs, not you. Otherwise we would have never knew. That would have helped a lot to get people attracted to your kits and your page.

And I also know it is been already several times that you complain publicly for the lack of applause and the lack of feedback. It's funny that you don't come often to share your advances on the designs (there is a special section in this forum where designers can show their works in progress), but then you come here to complain about people not giving you any feedback.

And this is not the first time time that you decide to restrict access to your kits because you don't feel like there's enough interest in them. You have made it before. That's why I don't understand if you really made it for leisure, or for the applause. What one can infer is that you are just disappointed for your kits not being built, and that's why you close. Isn't that giving importance to the applause?

And why making it so prominent to mention the reaction and the communication with another modeler who actually did build a kit? It is great to have that kind of feedback. Sure, every designer feels great when that happens. But from your original post one feels that you are using him as an example to show "hey, this one person wrote to me, but all of you who previously downloaded and requested a password have not built yet, so I publicly acknowledge the only one who contacted me and punish the rest of the world and give up the show". And then in the next line you call "rubbish" to your own work. I don't think you actually believe your designs are rubbish. I believe it was a word that came from you because of anger and disappointment, or that you used that word as means of crying for attention, isn't' it? One should not write messages when angry, or sad.

I also said that if you really do it for the joy of doing it, you will keep doing it for yourself... even if you never release any kit again, you will still design new kits for yourself. And you actually are working on another Fokker. Aren't you? So you still design for the pleasure of designing, but decide to "punish" the modelers who don't build your designs by closing the downloads (and at the same time preventing other potential interested modelers to access them), but you say that you are not looking for the feedback. And despite closing the downloads you still keep your page open so that people can see photos of the kits even if they can't get them. That's confusing, Isn't it? But anyways, in the end it's you who decide what to do with your website and how to manage your downloads. And anything you decide is good for us if it is good for you.

Sure, I know (and I acknowledged in my message) that no names of people were given. Still, is a good amount of information that many people like me don't feel comfortable to share, or to see shared without one's consent. And again, if it were for your own statistical interest only, what was the point at all in sharing the table here again when it is already available at your page? But you never mentioned in your original post here what the intention of the statistics chart was, until you answered to my message. It was only stated in a brief note in your page/blog, not here. And not all the people who read this forum go to read your page.

Sure, it is an interesting exercise to learn how the paper model hobby is distributed around the globe and what age groups it attracts the most. But 96-100 people is far from a representative sample, and is not an accurate statistical procedure, given that it only studies a segment of population that is already biased towards free/airplanes/simple/digital/no-instructions/ kits, and does not account for people interested in architectural/naval/transportation/paid/printed/etc/ kits. Now you see? You have not given an answer at all to how the panorama is in terms of paper model fans in general, but only have statistics on a handful of people that happened to download your specific niche of kits. And that can not be extrapolated accurately to the whole complexity of the hobby and its many variables.

The visitors to your page do not represent all the modelers in the world. If the question you wanted to answer (as you write in your previous reply) was: "why paper modeling wasn't a hobby-subject for youngsters..." the methodological procedure and tools may not have been the best to answer that question. With that chart, you can only answer for yourself: "what age, and where in the world, do people who request my passwords are (and which kits of the ones I've designed are the most popular)?".

You have not the slightest idea about an on-line board called "4chan", have you? There is a sub-section there devoted to paper crafts/models and origami. When you go there you can know from what they write that they all are children or teenagers (at least mentally). So there's actually an interest in young people on the hobby. They just happen to be gathered in other places. And because: a) they're young, b) their skills may be below what your kits require, c) airplanes are not what interest them, and d) even if the like planes and have the skills they may not know your page exists... they don't go en masse to get your designs and alter the statistics.

But here you raise an important point: besides the conventions, forums, and random meetings, I don't think an effort has been made before to actually learn what the characteristics of the paper modeler community are. Your idea is good, and it would be useful to designers, printers, and on-line stores to know their target audience so that they can properly satisfy their needs and offer more quality kits according to their age/skill/interest/etc. In that sense, a statistical study designed in a way that it covers several variables would be really useful. Though I highly doubt anyone would like to see their personal information released so explicitly.

Many people never share photos their builds, a lot of modelers never give any kind of feedback at all to the designer, even if he's readily accessible or lives next door. I myself am building four different kits right now, but am not sharing any photos, and only twice or thrice (in more than 10 years) have actually privately contacted a designer expressing my comments. That's perfectly normal. Maybe we are not so open to express our gratitude in the proper way. And, that is another thing I can derive from this discussion that is worth to reflect upon: maybe we as modelers should be closer to the designers when we know they can be contacted. (And maybe designers could be closer to us as well.)