To all electronic enthusiasts!

[Mads Barnkob]

This is a post that I wrote on facebook, but I would like to ask that you share this with your friends on facebook or other social media, feel free to rewrite or link to this thread, what I want out is the statement about saving information.

I kindly ask you all, that you carefully consider and think about all the websites you have used to learn about electronics, all the forums you have trawled through for information and the vast amount of videos on youtube that has helped you understand and solve a problem.

This information only exists because there are people wanting to let the information live on, from user to user, open platforms like personal websites and forums are indexed and made searchable by almost any search engine on the internet. Imagine if all you ever found on google was closed facebook profiles and no information.

This is a circle of information sharing that has been broken, the eco system of knowledge sharing is dying with social media.

Only uploading pictures of your experiment with a short sentence or "science!" is destroying the electronics hobby, if you value what you have learned on the internet, then give it back to the internet, make your own website or, less time consuming, write a good long thread on a forum about the technical issues you had and how it was solved.

Do not worry about if you think that your english is not good enough, do not fear that you make yourself look inexperienced, so would I in many fields of science and there is no way that I master every aspect of electronics. Ask, Learn and Help each other!

There is a generation gap right now, 20 years ago everyone shared their knowledge on mailing lists or had a html website, next leap came with the blogs where focus could be moved to creating content and not maintaining code, but with social media, all control, history and indexing is gone. There is no information left for the future generations, because it is all posted on closed social media groups. Content is mixed, unorganized and for the most lost for the user after a couple of weeks, way down the stream.

Fight the loss of knowledge! Make a website or post on a forum! Only use social media to link to your website/forum post. This is the only way for the information to live on.

I hope you will share this call to arms with like minded electronics interested people.

Kind regards
Mads Barnkob
Administrator of www.highvoltageforum.net
Author of www.kaizerpowerelectronics.dk
Moderator of www.4hv.org
User of eevblog.com forum and diyaudio.com forum

[DaiKen]

Sorry to bother you Mads, but I have tried to register at 4hv.org and everything I try fails. I can't find an emailaddress of moderators and mailing to info@4hv.org gives me this answer:  Last reason: 550 5.0.0
   Explanation: host 4hv.org [198.15.109.50] said: No such person at this address"

Could you advice on how to proceed?

Thanks in advance.

Kind regards,

Ton

[Mads Barnkob]

I am a moderator on 4hv.org, I can make a post in the administration section, pm me with your inquiry.

[AndreiRS]

I also tried registering there a lot of time ago, still have two pending approvals at 4hv, I even got an answer from the owner saying he was behind on registration duties, but he never said anything again. That is actually how I found this forum, when searching for "hv forum" on google. First time I searched for that, this forum didn't exist or was not on the highlights of google as it is now.

One account there is AndreiRS, the other Andrei917. One was created some big time ago, the other I think some days ago. I even sent the required email and all that, no luck.

Now back to you topic, very good text. My friend Daniel from were I live, created a forum about electronics, wood work, metal work. It was going good, still small, but got some google attention too. Then after facebook and whatsapp, meh, noone posts there anymore. My TC topic there is only me talking to myself, that is lame actually.

All I can say is that, at least here, people got really lazy about forums after facebook. And other are to busy because of our current financial situation.

I know it is in portuguese, but if you look at the statistics at the bottom, it is something, now it is empty.

http://www.omaquinista.com/index.php

[DaiKen]

During reading your post, AndreiRS, I got an email stating  'Your account has been activated.' So finally I am in!
Probably due to the intervention by Mads, so thanks man!
One small question for Mads: I pm'ed you, and ticked the box 'Copy to own inbox', but nothing appeared in my inbox. Is that some problem with this forum?

[Mads Barnkob]

Daiken, it says "Save a copy in my outbox", so look in your sent messages to find it again

AndreiRS, I can post about your username on 4hv too.

[AndreiRS]

If you can, that would be great. Thank you.

[DaiKen]

Daiken, it says "Save a copy in my outbox", so look in your sent messages to find it again

Yeah, my poor eyes ;-)
I missed the two arrows at the right however, and than a newbie just can't find his 'sent messages' window.

Thanks for all the help!

[Mads Barnkob]

If you hover over the "messages" menu you can select sent messages in the drop down

Also thanks for pointing out how that double arrow changes the view, that is much nicer

[DaiKen]

Saw that, thanks.

And, welcome!

[MRMILSTAR]

In addition to this forum I am a member of "pupman.com" and "4hv.org". I also belong to one of the primary FB high voltage groups. I always post anything of any significance to "pupman.com", "4hv.org", or "highvoltageforum.net". If I need advice or can offer advice I also consult these 3 forums.

I also post to the FB HV forum but I really only use this group to post results and pictures or to see other people's results and pictures. I joined the FB group a little over one month ago to see if I was missing anything. After being on there for a month now I can safely say that no information of any significance is being lost to this FB group. What I have seen so far is mostly trivial and even junk stuff that doesn't even begin to compare with the information content to be found on the 3 forums.

Even though the FB HV group has rules against pseudoscience, it still occasionally creeps in. Unfortunately, the members that seem to be doing the most posting are obsessed with "proving" that world-wide wireless power distribution using Tesla's original ideas is possible even though it has been discredited for at least 100 years. I occasionally engage with these people but no amount of actual engineering knowledge will dissuade them from their belief. This sort of discussion makes that group seem extremely amateurish.

So, I reiterate that from my limited exposure to the primary FB high voltage group I can report that the 3 forums mentioned previously have nothing to worry about as far as lost information is concerned.