Bob, I agree with your take on LSC vs. MLS, on all points.
Greg
I am a member of both and each site has its pro’s and con’s. Its free to post wants and for sale items here, you had to be a paying member there, and now with the new owners letting the site run on autopilot, good luck on becoming one. I like the live chat room there much better and the live steam forum is more active. So to me, each site is worth belonging to for one reason or another. Every site has its negatives, just don’t let those impinge on your fun and all will be good! Mike
I am also on both, though I haven’t posted much on MLS, the emphasis there now is overwhelmingly directed at live steam to the point I now call it MyLiveSteam.
To be fair Ihaven’t posted much here either, just haven’t been very active lately.
Yes Vic I have noticed. Your my mentor ( or is it dementor) for the crazy notion that I can run trains on ridiculously small tracks. I need your posts to keep me motivated. You and ty and korm are to quiet these days.
Vic may be your mentor, but you’re still confusing the your/you’re and to/too usage.
I’ve been a member on MLS since its beginning, almost. It used to be a great site, but not so much anymore. As some of you know, I’m not a big poster and usually only post when I have something to offer. Right now I can’t even access my file storage and therefore can’t post any photos even if I wanted to help. I have asked why but have gotten no help.
A few years ago I decided to just stop lurking and join LSC. I have found a new home on LSC and consider many of the LSC members as my friends. Never felt that way over on MLS.
Doc Watson
Yes Joe I am. Keep it up some day it might sink in.
Bob “IA3R#7” Cope said:
I gave up attempting to post pics on MLS…I am a user, not a programmer, and to post there you have to use HTML coding. Bob’s side is far easier to post pics.
Bob, posting photos is the same on both sites. Use the little icon that looks like a mountain with a sun (Insert/Edit photo) Here, its’ black and white (light grey), at MLS, it’s dark grey and yellow. When you click on that on either site, a pop-up window appears asking you to paste the URL of your photo. Click OK on that, and your photo shows up in your post. (Some browsers may just show the coding that’s auto-generated.) That’s all there is to it. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to “code” my photos into my posts–at least two or three years?
Back to the subject at hand; I liken each site to its own club. They’re each different, and each evolve along different paths. Some folks frequent both, some are loyal to one or the other. Members come and go… it’s no different than any other group I’ve belonged to. I do think things have changed at MLS since Shad sold the site. I think the technical issues involved with the changeover, the fact that we were dealing with a tech support “team” working to resolve them as opposed to one person who knew the history of the site, and other factors frustrated many members to the point where they stopped posting regularly. To this day, I’m still not 100% positive the “First Class” membership works as it used to. I haven’t gotten any “I can’t sign up for First Class” e-mails recently, at least, so I’ll take that as a good sign. The “Classified” section there has very little traffic, supplanted partly by Bob’s “For Sale” forum here, but also the various buy/sell groups on Facebook.
I think the one thing that energizes any forum is build logs, but on both sites, they’re becoming less common. I don’t think it’s because no one is building anything, we’re just not posting about it. Case in point, there was a thread about upsizing a Bachmann 4-axle caboose to 1:20.3. I got one to do as a project; it’s finished and ready for the paint shop now, but I’ve yet to take any photos of it. I just haven’t had the time to take them, bring them into Photoshop to process them, and upload them. It takes time–time I’d rather spend on the 800 other projects I’ve been working on over the winter. That, too, is an ebb/flow kind of thing. And even there, the threads on either site don’t seem to generate quite as much discussion as they did “in the good old days.”
The only thing that stays the same is that things change.
Later,
K
Don Watson said:
Right now I can’t even access my file storage and therefore can’t post any photos even if I wanted to help. I have asked why but have gotten no help.
A few years ago I decided to just stop lurking and join LSC. I have found a new home on LSC and consider many of the LSC members as my friends. Never felt that way over on MLS.
Doc Watson
Doc, see **this thread **over at MLS. This is one of those technical things that frustrate people which I mentioned (and you illustrate my point of frustrated people not returning). Unfortunately, sometimes the best we can offer is a “workaround” rather than a “solution.” Frustrating on the moderators’ end as well.
Later,
K
The thing missing is that the “owner” or the people who “control” the site really don’t care about the finer points.
I bought a lifetime membership, actually donated a fair amount of money to “help” Shad, one time buying a new server (which apparently never happened), and the “gold memberships” were to enjoy some extra features.
Now you can’t even become a first class member, and it really means nothing, anyone can post stuff for sale, etc.
I’m finding more interesting things here, and also I like the moderation here better, there’s less reason for it, and it’s really just one person, more consistent.
Greg
Kevin, how do you find the url to a photo on an iMac?
Kevin Strong said:
Don Watson said:
Right now I can’t even access my file storage and therefore can’t post any photos even if I wanted to help. I have asked why but have gotten no help.
A few years ago I decided to just stop lurking and join LSC. I have found a new home on LSC and consider many of the LSC members as my friends. Never felt that way over on MLS.
Doc Watson
Doc, see **this thread **over at MLS. This is one of those technical things that frustrate people which I mentioned (and you illustrate my point of frustrated people not returning). Unfortunately, sometimes the best we can offer is a “workaround” rather than a “solution.” Frustrating on the moderators’ end as well.
Later,
K
Thanks, Kevin, I found a bunch of photos that I thought were long gone. I’ll be moving them over here, soon.
Kevin Strong said:
Bob “IA3R#7” Cope said:
I gave up attempting to post pics on MLS…I am a user, not a programmer, and to post there you have to use HTML coding. Bob’s side is far easier to post pics.
Bob, posting photos is the same on both sites. Use the little icon that looks like a mountain with a sun (Insert/Edit photo) Here, its’ black and white (light grey), at MLS, it’s dark grey and yellow. When you click on that on either site, a pop-up window appears asking you to paste the URL of your photo. Click OK on that, and your photo shows up in your post. (Some browsers may just show the coding that’s auto-generated.) That’s all there is to it. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to “code” my photos into my posts–at least two or three years?
Kevin,
The last time I posted pictures there was long before Shad sold it. I found it much easier to generate the thread here and just post a link to the thread there. Why bother with all the double and triple work for multiple fora? I do the same on the Bachmann forum…assuming the content is of interest there.
Just how I roll, others are different.
Bob C.
I belong to both sites but LSC is by far the best only because we have a Rooster (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)I only use MLS for the live steam because the live steam over their is more active vs here. Lately I have not been posting over here as much. I found I enjoy Facebook. Its much easier to post videos, photos and with a smart phone it does not get any easier. The disadvantage with Facebook is topics get pushed down fast if you get no comments. That’s where this site works best when doing a build thread.
Jim Agnew said:
Kevin, how do you find the url to a photo on an iMac?
First step is to upload your pic to a location on the net, (freight shed or in an Album here) then you open that pic and save it’s location. What you save is what you enter in the box that opens when you click on the mountain/sun icon.
The imac speak is in your knowledge bank, I hope.
John
I’ve been out of the hobby for about 15 years and am just now getting my feet wet again. While checking for Large Scale forums on the internet recently, I came across MLS. After reading old threads for a few weeks and coming up to speed, I decided to start a thread of my own. I was very surprised that I was limited to 140 characters in my first post. Wha? I don’t care much for long-winded posts either, but I wanted to ask a lengthy, detailed, two-part question. So after I whittled my post down to the maximum letter requirement, I was finally able to post. I then tried to post a small list of train cars in the “Wanted” section of the board and was turned away. Say wha? I guess you have to be “in the club” to do that.
So then I found this board and observed that there are no character limitations, only that you have to be nice and leave the politics and religion out of it (apologies to Bob M.). I’ve seen those subjects literally KILL another board I was on prior, so it’s refreshing so see that the policy is enforced here. Seems like this site has a lot more bandwidth with some very knowledgeable, humorous people with years of experience in Large Scale. I hop over to the MLS site sometimes, but always gravitate back to this one. I know there are quite a bit of Large Scalers living in the S.F. Bay Area, but so far have only seen a couple of them post here. Looking forward to the convention out here in July!
Sorry for my ignorance but what does MLS stand for?
MLS=My Large Scale
I like My Live Steam better. Most sites on the internet have a “personality”. If the feel of the site suits you, then you might like it. If not, then you look elsewhere until you find the right mix of topic emphasis and the other members personalities, then you can to settle into it.
I like this one. I find the “other” one to be a bit impersonal and “clubby”, or clique-ish, if you will, but that’s just me, I guess.
William Seabrooke said:
Sorry for my ignorance but what does MLS stand for?
Thank you Mr Seabrooke …I asked this earlier in the thread but got no real answers as I would like to know myself.