I'm curious!

[OCtoolguy]

I'm curious as to just how much everybody appreciates this site. For me, it was the beginning of a long and truly fascinating hobby. It allowed me to learn the ins and outs of how to make things using a scroll saw. But, more importantly, it gave me the opportunity to meet many great folks who share the same interests as me. So, with that said, just how important is SSV to everybody? What if it went away? Would you all miss it or would you just move along to the next site? I guess what I'm saying is, if you feel as I do, become a patron of the site and cough up $10/yr for the basic membership. Or $20 for the next level. If you can spare it go all the way and opt for the monthly plan of $5/mo. It takes money to keep these websites going and that's why many don't make it. I'd be VERY unhappy to see this one fade away as so many others have. Give it some thought. It's the only one, besides Steve Good's site, that I donate to and I don't miss the few bucks it costs. For the cost of maybe one board a year, you can help keep it alive. 

P.S. This idea is on me. Not anybody else. 

 

[kmmcrafts]

I'm right there with you Ray.. I've been on the scroll saw sites a bit longer than you and I've met and lost contact with a lot of people over the years due to sites disappearing and the folks on them split off to other sites with different user names and or just stayed off scroll sawing sites. To me it's totally worth helping support the village to help prevent something like that from happening again. 20 years ago it was Yahoo & MSN groups and then they ( MSN and Yahoo ) closed down the groups etc.. Many of the folks went to the Magazine site however they had to upgrade their site and had many issues doing that so the site was down for a good 6 weeks or more.. and they lost all the username stuff so people had to re-join.. that site hasn't been the same since. Used to be hoppin with topics etc. 

The $5 a month to me is better than paying a subscription to the magazine that I also dropped because they can't seem to lay out the patterns in them in a easy user friendly way.. yeah the stories are nice to read but you can't actually interact with the people in a magazine either.. I easily could get my $5 a month value in the patterns we have here too. 

[BadBob]

Things change, and all of the groups disappear sooner or later. I have been online since before there was an internet. I was on BBS using 300baud modems. (Anyone remember fidonet) A few of those made it to the internet but most vanished. In many cases over the years the owner dies and no one takes over and noone pays the bills. Corporate sites are the worst. I was a member of many Yahoo groups and an admin on several. All are all gone when Yahoo decided to not continue groups. Facebook groups could go the same way easy. One thing I have learned from all of this is that if you want it download it for tomorrow it may be gone. Eventuall this forum will disappear.

Forums grew out of the old BBS systems and are still the best way for those with special interests to gather on line. This is one of the best I have seen so I just paid for my first month. I'm going to have to do it manually.

 

[kmmcrafts]

8 minutes ago, BadBob said:

Things change, and all of the groups disappear sooner or later. I have been online since before there was an internet. I was on BBS using 300baud modems. (Anyone remember fidonet) A few of those made it to the internet but most vanished. In many cases over the years the owner dies and no one takes over and noone pays the bills. Corporate sites are the worst. I was a member of many Yahoo groups and an admin on several. All are all gone when Yahoo decided to not continue groups. Facebook groups could go the same way easy. One thing I have learned from all of this is that if you want it download it for tomorrow it may be gone. Eventuall this forum will disappear.

Forums grew out of the old BBS systems and are still the best way for those with special interests to gather on line. This is one of the best I have seen so I just paid for my first month. I'm going to have to do it manually.

 

Can deduct the subscription on your business taxes. No different than a magazine subscription..  

[BadBob]

27 minutes ago, kmmcrafts said:

Can deduct the subscription on your business taxes. No different than a magazine subscription..  

Thanks, I never thought of that. (INTOT)

[Roberta Moreton]

Thank you for telling us how to do it.  I need step by step instruction for some things. 

[meflick]

Love the Village.

you can go to “Support SSV” from the area that shows your user name- on my IPad, it’s in the top right corner.

Then select option to become a supporting Patron from 3 different levels, Supporter, Silver, or Gold. This shows “benefits” of each level

 

or, if you wish to make a small donation once, or from time to time you can go to the “Donation” and make a donation over and above or instead of the Supporter levels. It is processed through PayPal.

[Jim McDonald]

@BadBob not only do I remember the old bbs systems, I had an employee who ran a couple.

(When my wife was finishing her dissertation, Ohio State libraries had eight dial up lines to access a very limited database of their collections. You could read along as the screen scrolled into the buffer to save your data.)

Also, I used to sell radio control tanks to the folks at CompuServe. They used the tanks to pull in "fish" cables. With the tracks, they could climb over existing cabling in the chases.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Jim McDonald
Adding information

[wombatie]

I joined on 3rd January 2009 and I have 21,483 posts, I guess that tells you how much I like SSV.   

Marg

[Travis]

Thanks all!  I really appreciate the support.  It used to be that I could put some Google ads on the website and make enough money to cover server costs and software licenses.  But over the years, that ad revenue has dropped about 80%.  So the SSV Patron/membership makes a huge difference in covering the costs of running SSV.  This year, my operating costs went up by 30%, which was a bit of sticker shock.  I guess as the popularity of a website grows, it gets more expensive to maintain.  Luckily, I'm still in the black, but not by much..LOL.  I'm just happy to be able to provide a nice resource, a place to learn, and place to hang out for the scrolling community. 

[jerry walters]

hang tough Travis. If you have to charge a little more for the SSV membership, I'm willing to pay. I gain a lot from this website. I think others do to.

Jerry

[BadBob]

41 minutes ago, Travis said:

I'm just happy to be able to provide a nice resource, a place to learn, and place to hang out for the scrolling community.

You're doing a fine job.

[Norm Fengstad]

This is a good place for all types of scroll saw info. I found this sight about  5 or six years ago and do contribute annually, Treasure chest for patterns and ideas