I’m not going to lie. I never thought I’d see the day that Fine Woodworking brought forums back, and featured them on the homepage no less! For the past few years, woodworking forums have become little more than a punchline. I have been as guilty as anybody. But there is a new reality in the online woodworking community—people are getting burned out by social media and are starting to curb their enthusiasm for Instagram and Facebook. For many, myself included, keeping up with social media has started to feel like a chore. I have found myself mindlessly scrolling when I should be paying attention to my family. So about a month ago I deleted the apps from my phone and have found that I spend my time more wisely. I still check both frequently on my computer at work (it is my JOB!) and I keep Instagram installed on my iPad for times when I do want to scroll mindlessly, but now I use social media more deliberately and I enjoy it more.

OK, fine … so what?
Well, all of this social media hate aside, there is something fundamentally wrong about relying on social media as our only form of online woodworking community—it’s temporary by its very nature. When you post a question on Instagram, it may be answered thoroughly and quickly, but that does nothing for someone in the future with the same question or problem. There is no good way of searching for what you want on social media; you’re just fed what has happened. The strength of a forum is that it becomes a searchable record of conversations, one that anybody can benefit from, whether they have 5 followers on Instagram or 5,000.

Yeah … but what about the spam
Forums inevitably become a depository of spam, and Fine Woodworking’s old forums were as bad at filtering out spam as any other. We’re excited about the new back end that not only makes tagging spam easier for us, but also should filter out a lot of the spam automatically.

I’m excited about the rebuild of our forums here and I’m hopeful about the rebuilding of the community here on FineWoodworking.com.  With some luck and hard work we’ll have a strong community in no time, one that helps beginners and experts alike, and one that is welcoming to all. That’s my goal, and I hope it’s yours as well. So head over the forums*, and post a question or a comment. All we ask for is one thing … don’t be a jerk.

*The forum should also be in the menu at the top of the website. If you don’t see it, check the “more” button.

edit!- We created a form for users to submit feedback regarding the forum without posting it directly to the forum. Let us know what you think.