[TheForge] History of The Forge/OT

[Dave Mudge]

Speaking for ABANA, I appreciate the effort that you are putting in to this.
I can also tell you that "ABANA" as an entity is not going to archive the
old records from TheForge. I had to fight just to get funding for TheForge.

I personally wonder if the effort would be more productive if someone went
through those "archives" (considering that they can actually be found and
downloaded into a readable form)and put together articles for chapter
newsletters, or AR or Hammers Blow or MetalsmithingHow-To dot com, and then
many people would have access to the valuable information contained within.

TheForge serves about 350 people at any given time. Not more than 20 people
are going to go to the trouble to download the archives once they are
updated. ABANA has 5000 +/- members and 3 to 5 people read each copy of the
magazines. There are another 6000 - 10000 chapter members that are neither
ABANA members nor TheForge members. The ABANA web site gets millions of
visitors a year. If articles were put together, there are several good
websites that would carry them including mine. That way the information
could be easily accesses by millions of people around the world, and isn't
that what we are really all about? The dissemination of information.

dave mudge
dave at magichammer.net
http://www.magichammer.net
http://www.metalsmithinghowto.com
 
-----Original Message-----
From: On Behalf Of terry l. ridder
(SNIP)
it would have been nice if abana had had the foresight to archive
theforge over the years. that unfortunately did not happen. perhaps now
abana will begin to archive the qth.net epochs.
(SNIP)