New Members, please read this before posting.

[Wizcrafts]

As we welcome new members from around the World to Leatherworker.net, we moderators often have to act as controllers of some discussions. There are long standing customs that our existing members know and adhere to, but new members are not always automatically aware of. Some of the main things that need to be explained are as follows.

Include your location in your profile

When you setup an account, or after you've set one up, please include your location. Often times members will request information about getting parts and service. Without seeing where they are located, some answers may be completely irrelevant to those people. At least list your state/province/territory and country in your profile. Add your city if you wish. You will receive much more meaningful replies to your requests for assistance when responding members see where you live.

Start a new topic for a new question

This is becoming a thorn in the side for a lot of our members and is regarded as "bad Netiquette" on many user forums and online communities. If you have a question to ask that is not directly related to an existing topic, start a new topic rather than interjecting it into somebody else's topic! New topics usually get a lot of targeted responses from people who are well acquainted with the subject.

Posting questions that are unrelated to existing threads, especially in older topics that have dropped off the radar, will lead to aggravation for long time supporters, screw with the indexing of our content by our search engine and in some cases end up with the same questions being asked in several threads at the same time.

Don't ask/post the same question in more than one topic at a time

Asking or posting the same question or statements into multiple topics during a short time period is known as "cross posting" and is bad Netiquette. This causes confusion when the members who reply do so in more than one topic. It can lead to moderators splitting off the unrelated questions into other or new topics. Sometimes the answers to cross posted questions can get lost during these splits. If there is no ongoing topic that specifically deals with a matter you want to inquire about, start your own New Topic. Do so by pressing the Start New Topic button on the top right of each forum page.

Edit your mistakes during the window of opportunity in which edits are allowed for members.. If you find that you want to change something after that time has expired, contact a moderator via the Private Message system about the matter. Copy and paste a link to the post. If you need help learning how to do this, read by blog article titled: Tutorial on how to Copy and Paste text

Email addresses should not be listed in plain text in your posts!

In the beginning the Internet was a nice place where people freely exchanged theories, ideas, fables and knowledge. Folks used to list a contact email address in plain text so people could either read it and type it into a new mail message, or copy and paste it. Then came the robots...

The robots I refer to are called "Harvester Bots" or "Spam Bots" and their job is to scour web pages and forums in search of plain text email addresses. When they find these addresses they save them and upload them to databases on servers under the control of professional spammers, who are also the owners of the Bots. The Spam Bot Masters who compile these email databases then sell bundles of millions of fresh email addresses to other spammers. We all know what happens next as spam fills our inboxes.

Instead of typing a plain text email address (e.g. person@emailservice.com), break up the words into space separated groups. Instead of the @ symbol, type out AT, or at, or something else that will make sense to a common human user, but confusing to a robot with limited programming.

Note, some advanced harvester bots can identify some common methods of email "obfuscation." Still, some obfuscation is better than none.

Use our private message (PM) system for contacting other members privately

All registered members have access to our forum's PM system, which sends and receives private messages that are not published on publicly viewable pages. You can use it to exchange email addresses, phone numbers, directions to you location, or to make deals for sales and purchases off the grid. Learn to use the PM feature.

Note, only registered members can use PMs. Guests cannot. If you post something for sale, or that you want to purchase, or you want somebody to contact you about repairs who may not be a member, you must either convince them to join the forum, or type your contact info into a publicly viewable reply. If you do this, remember to obfuscate your contact details.

Please respect existing members' replies to your questions.

Every now and then I will be reading through the latest replies to various topics, some of which are older, maybe last updated 2 to 5 years ago, and some newer member will reply and find fault with the last posters in those threads. All I can say is that this is disrespectful. If you publicly disagree with somebody's statements that are technical details about certain sewing machines, adjustments, tweaks, or sewing techniques, unless you have professional credentials as a trained or highly experienced sewing machine mechanic, you possibly dissing somebody who does have those credentials. This will not gain you many friends in this community. Know that there is often more than one way to get the same results when it comes to industrial sewing machines. If a dealer replies to a topic, he probably has more experience than somebody who just acquired their first or second sewing machine.

Not all questions get answered

There are some members who ask for information about machines that we don't know anything about. It may take some time before somebody with knowledge of those machines replies to the question, if at all. Don't take this personally. We are a community of people who sew leather, often on similar brands of machines. If nobody on this forum knows about the machine you asked about, you probably won't get any replies.

Use our search engine before posting a new question

A lot of new members, or members new to industrial sewing machines will ask the same types of questions over and over. You can use the forum search engine to try to see if your question has already been dealt with and answered. You can tell it to search one particular forum, or all of Leatherworker.net.

This topic is locked for comments, except for moderators who may add to it.

[Wizcrafts]

This is not a requirement by any means, but is still a valid suggestion and my opinions. Leatherworker.net is supported by a select few advertisers who pay our operating expenses for the server and software licenses. Big forums like ours cost more to host than most individuals can usually afford to pay out of their own pocket. It would be doing us a solid if you would click/press on the ad banners on the top of every page for advertisers that are dealers of things you may want or need and inquire about these items.

If you need needles, bobbins, motors, belts, machines, repairs, accessories or parts, please ask our member dealers first before you buy on eBay or somewhere else. Our machine dealers are very knowledgeable and are experts in setting up leather sewing machines. Some know part numbers by heart. Even a small sale is of value as it tells the company paying for the ads that their money is well spent.

Many of our advertising dealers are also members here and some are frequent posters on this forum. I see dealers helping members with machine problems all the time on the forum. All of our member dealers offer free phone or email  or sometimes PM support for machines they sell. These are good people and deserve our support. Plus, when they sell you a machine, know that they have gone over it, adjusted and oiled it and sewn it off. You won't be getting a drop shipped box from the Orient, but a functional sewing machine.