Dear MSW visitor,
I will be really blunt and direct. Model Shipwrights is on a dangerous path in terms of site usage, content additions and forum traffic. That's not to say it's not still a very popular site. We had over 20,000 unique visitors in the past month and that still rates as the 3rd most trafficked site on the network (behind Armorama and AeroScale). However at this same period last year we had over 35,000 unique visitors. That's a pretty hefty reduction (-36%). For comparison Armorama is up 20% for the same stat and AeroScale is slightly down (-9%). This has been a tough summer and certainly tough economic times are likely changing peoples online usage and model consumption. Those are factors out of our control.

That all said... Model Shipwrights is still one of the most 'capable' ship modeling sites out there. We (read: me) do need to make updates and changes to all our sites to make them more user productive and friendly. I doubt seriously that Facebook is eroding our ship modeling community, but I am looking forward to releasing a new major update to our systems towards the end of this year.

The question is; what do we do about MSW in the meantime? One thing we are mainly suffering from over the past year is a serious lack of volunteer staff. Jim Adams and Kenny Loup are the the only editors MSW has currently, and they can only do so much. A quick look at the reviews area shows we are getting publishing very few reviews and feature content is not much better. What KitMaker is good at is giving modelers a platform to publish and participate on any level they choose. We are in essence an online magazine that is controlled solely by it's users and staff volunteers. Again put bluntly, I have not made a decision on what to publish (or not publish) on MSW since it's founding. I doubt seriously the other site owners of ship modeling sites can say that. What MSW is offering you is a place to make YOUR OWN. I laugh a bit when I see other sites forming that claim "built by modelers, for modelers". If this site can't make that claim, none of them can.

I would hate to see the work of so many great folks continue to decline. There is so much untapped potential here, but without your involvement (again on whatever level you can do) I am very concerned about the future of this community and the site in general.

Best wishes,
Jim

Hi Jim

It's your call, as it always has been...
Traffic is lower not by economical reasons, because of Facebook or any other other situation, but because of lack of updates (and I am not pointing out Jim Adams or Kenny as the culprits!), I understand the work involved in keeping it sailing at full speed...

You have mentioned MSW is on top three, but what about the other branches of Kitmaker? How are they performing?

One solution is to have more crew members, other is to have a schedule on updates, once or twice a week at least to catch the backlog of features/mod's/reviews....

Just my 2 € cents
Cheers
Rui

Hi Rui,
Sorry for the delay in publishing this. I thought I had set this thread to 'subscribe' but perhaps not. Doh...

Lack of new content, posts, etc. is most certainly responsible for much of the erosion in traffic this site is seeing. And yes there is only so much that two editors can do. I would love to see more people stepping up to help out, but this (ship modeling) has always been a tough nut to crack from an online publishing standpoint. Many of you guys (yes the 75+ who have read this perhaps) are older and not really part of the "Internet" generation. My own dad for example is 85 and he has done a great job learning how to use computers and the Internet. But even he would have a tough time of doing the image editing and other duties needed of an editor on here.

We certainly aren't going to give up on getting MSW turned back into the wind. Perhaps some enterprising folks will read this at some point and decide to try to help out. #3 is certainly a lot better than #30. And who knows... someday #3 could over time become #1.

Cheers,
Jim

Jim, it's unfortunate that there are so few volunteers. I have already talked to the other Jim about this and unfortunately my current job / education / family commitments don't allow me to commit to such a post. I will howerver get my a** in gear and start back on my Independence build log in the next few weeks. Personally I think build logs are what keep thse sites going and sadly there have been few of those on all sites lately. Summer maybe?

Cheers!
Stefan

I agree that the key points generating traffic would be build logs (campaigns included), news, and reviews. Not necessarily in any particular order. How are we looking here Jim, have any volunteers stepped up?

Hi folks,

Shipwrights is a great site. I don't contribute much as ships are not my main interest. I do have some kits to review for the site but a forced change in working pattern to a shift pattern has had a big impact on my time so i haven't gotten around to them yet.

Sorry I can't offer any more (both Jim's) but I do what I can, when I can.

Al

I haven't had volunteers as yet. Still hopeful though!

Jim

I have given this some serious consideration Jim but combining a full time job with an editorial role at model shipwrights and finding time to do that which I enjoy most, ( no gentlemen, I'm talking about building models here ), will not work in the long run. I try and keep some pace in my build logs and I will try and write some more features but that is about all I can contribute.
Cheers,
Julian