I think twitter and facebook are to impersonal l don't use or look at any of them. Give me the ezine format.

Thu, 2013-10-24 22:26 — J. S. Bach

I have never been on Twitter and only on FB once or twice when some link took me there; I have little use for those tsunamis of social sewage.

I guess that my opinion of FB has changed (or I decided to ride the tsunami); I recently signed up and found some groups that I like about my other hobbies. None of them deal with model trains, though; at least yet. See, stubborn opinions can (and sometimes do) change.

I am not on any of those other things except YouTube. Only so much time to spend on electronic media and I like to spend mine here. Nicely moderated and nice folks as well. Also the content is first rate in the magazine.

Time online, like anything, needs to be managed. Facebook and other social media sites have their use, but do get off the computer and do some modelining too!

Through Facebook I have been able to keep in contact with family and some long lost friends. I've also connected with modelers through Facebook and had some mutually beneficial interchanges.

Facebook is just a thing but with 2 billion members, it's larger than most countries in population. Like all online places you might visit, make sure you MANAGE your time spent and you will be fine.

I have been finding that a lot of good stuff is being posted there. You needn’t follow or even open posts of someone’s cat or what they had for lunch. Yes, my family does occasionally post stuff like that but, well, I don’t commonly on those either (even family). 

The groups are far and wide. There are Facebook pages of many prototypes, historical societies, scale specific, narrow gauge, Cricut users, and much more. For a guy into dead rail, narrow gauge, O scale, there are areas that address my interests that many never see light on MRH. 

Managing time is always a choice and there is nothing wrong with being an armchair modeler as we all need time to learn and focus our interests. 

"The groups are far and wide. There are Facebook pages of many prototypes, historical societies, scale specific, narrow gauge, Cricut users, and much more. For a guy into dead rail, narrow gauge, O scale, there are areas that address my interests that many never see light on MRH." 

  The only reason subjects don't see the light of day here is because no one takes the time to crete a thread.                                      I kinda view discussing modeling on Facebook like I'd view buying my trains at Walmart. I can't imagine why guys would rather post their model railroading stuff there instead of a dedicated hobby site like MRH forum. I also prefer to support hobby specific websites with content and page counts instead of adding to Zuckerberg's net worth.....DaveB

I cant disagree with that logic but the fact is Facebook has a lot of scale and model scale specific pages and they get a LOT of participation. If you don’t check it out then you are  missing a lot of good content. Even Joe posts a lot of stuff posted here over on the MRH FaceBook site. 

Lots of folks have negative things to say about Facebook. To each his own. However, no one can dispute that there is a great number of topics discussed on there. I belong to a Yahoo group that focuses on Canadian railway modelling. Traffic there has significantly decreased in the past few years. In contrast, the Canadian Railway Modelling Facebook site is extremely active with some incredible modelling being posted. When I have a question about something specific, I usually post to the Facebook group sooner than the Yahoo group. I usually get answers within minutes from a very knowledgeable group of fellows. It's way easier to post a photo on Facebook than it is here or on Yahoo.

Facebook isn't any better than any other social media platform. This forum is a social media platform as well. I find much more to comment on, reply to or involve myself with on Facebook train groups than I do here. There are more people on Facebook, and therefore more people who have interests that I share.

In real life I don't hang out with people who concern themselves with what they had for lunch or that post selfies so I just don't on Facebook and don't see those kind of posts. 80% of my newsfeed on Facebook is train related. Like Joe said, you have to manage your time. If you don't like Facebook, there is no reason to use it, but you make it what you want it to be.

I belong to a Yahoo group that focuses on Canadian railway modelling. Traffic there has significantly decreased in the past few years. In contrast, the Canadian Railway Modelling Facebook site is extremely active with some incredible modelling being posted.

I also have found that there are a lot more subject specific groups on Facebook than on Yahoo or any of the magazine forums.  For example MRH has to cover a very broad horizon so hits something that directly affects my equipment modeling about once every five years or so, and my general modeling about every month or two, the Facebook groups have something interesting about once a week.

Its just a matter of focus on a smaller niche.

"For example MRH has to cover a very broad horizon so hits something that directly affects my equipment modeling about once every five years or so, and my general modeling about every month or two, the Facebook groups have something interesting about once a week."

    Why don't you start a thread about what interests you here and get 1905 era modelers to contribute to the forum instead of Facebook.  ....DaveB