READERS BEWARE. RANT. Architects and other Building related Pen Pushers.

[Oz07]

4 hours ago, JSHarris said:

 

That's true.  I started seriously researching self build around 2008, about the time I joined this forum's predecessor, although we'd talked about it for a few years before that.  My first post there was more than a bit naive, and answered patiently by @Temp, who pointed out the importance of finding a plot before thinking about house design.  Interesting that we're both still around on here.  Off the top of my head I think there can't more than a small handful from that long ago still here.

 

All told I spent two years or so doing part time research, before I retired, then another two years of full time research and plot hunting, then another year sorting out the design of the house after that, before submitting the planning application.

How do we find out when we joined? Think I was similar to @Nickfromwales

[joe90]

4 hours ago, JSHarris said:

 

I can think of four of us from that era, you, me, @Temp and @caliwag

 

Please sir,  and me ?(not sure when I joined?)

[dpmiller]

Our guy was great. In UK parlance only an AT, but fully trained in NZ where they focus a lot more on the buildability and structural side of things apparently. Absolutely no pushing of his ideas onto us and a easy exchange of requirements and facts.

[Jeremy Harris]

11 hours ago, Oz07 said:

How do we find out when we joined? Think I was similar to @Nickfromwales

 

 

Ebuild has completely shut down now, so I don't think there is any way of finding out who was around at that time.  It was a very busy forum in 2008, even had mentions in the national press (how I found out about it), but had a software update that took it offline for ages and then it took years to recover from that.  This forum came into existence when Ebuild closed down in 2016, with 16 of us from Ebuild who decided we needed a self-build forum.

[Gone West]

20 hours ago, JSHarris said:

The sort of cars people drive can often be an indicator as to their income.

Not around here. The farm workers from the EU who live in 'caravans' on the farms nearly all have flashy cars. A couple of years old Lexus, Mercs, BMW etc, it's what they spend their money on.

[Gone West]

35 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

It was a very busy forum in 2008, even had mentions in the national press (how I found out about it), but had a software update that took it offline for ages and then it took years to recover from that.

I was a member of the AECB and GBF and looked at Ebuild, I guess, around that time and didn't like it. I didn't join Ebuild until it had improved. Then a while later it shut down.

[Jeremy Harris]

17 minutes ago, PeterStarck said:

Not around here. The farm workers from the EU who live in 'caravans' on the farms nearly all have flashy cars. A couple of years old Lexus, Mercs, BMW etc, it's what they spend their money on.

 

Accepted, but we were discussing architects, who I'd guess probably have a different take on life than an average seasonal farm labourer.

 

 

10 minutes ago, PeterStarck said:

I was a member of the AECB and GBF and looked at Ebuild, I guess, around that time and didn't like it. I didn't join Ebuild until it had improved. Then a while later it shut down.

 

I was also on the AECB forum and GBF.  The AECB forum had the potential to be pretty useful, but seemed to die for some reason.  It's a shame, as I met a couple of local AECB members who were really helpful through it.  The GBF was fine until posts started getting heavily edited to change their meaning.  I received a torrent of pretty offensive emails from an extreme animal rights supporter, who I very strongly believe was very closely connected to the site owner.  It seems that private messages there were being read, and in one or two of them I'd foolishly revealed the place where I had worked.  I then had posts edited to make out that I had views that were the opposite to those I'd expressed, started getting really offensive emails to the email address I'd used to join that forum (which, like the one I use here, isn't my everyday email address), and then finally got banned for highlighting that posts were being heavily edited to change their meaning.

[Patrick]

1 hour ago, JSHarris said:

 

 

Ebuild has completely shut down now, so I don't think there is any way of finding out who was around at that time.  It was a very busy forum in 2008, even had mentions in the national press (how I found out about it), but had a software update that took it offline for ages and then it took years to recover from that.  This forum came into existence when Ebuild closed down in 2016, with 16 of us from Ebuild who decided we needed a self-build forum.

this sounds like there has been a hype around self build In 2008 already. It always seems to me, for the past few years, that self building is "the up and coming topic" in the building industry, without anything really substantially changing. Is that only my impression or how do the old Ebuilders feel about this? @JSHarris

 

Or is there a shift towards more awareness /better support?

[Jeremy Harris]

9 minutes ago, Patrick said:

this sounds like there has been a hype around self build In 2008 already. It always seems to me, for the past few years, that self building is "the up and coming topic" in the building industry, without anything really substantially changing. Is that only my impression or how do the old Ebuilders feel about this? @JSHarris

 

Or is there a shift towards more awareness /better support?

 

 

The old Ebuild forum was a very busy place when I joined in 2008, probably around double the number of members we have here at that time.  It was well-established as pretty much the dominant self-build and renovation forum back then.  I'd guess that there were a lot more members involved in renovation work than complete self-builds, though, and a fair number involved in work on older buildings, some of which needed specialist techniques to repair/restore.

 

Things changed pretty dramatically over the years, though.  After the hiatus caused by the software update that took the forum offline for a time, the emphasis gradually shifted more towards self-build, and more towards building low energy houses, I think.  It certainly seemed like that from my perspective.  This forum started off as a close replica of the final iteration of Ebuild, with many of the old Ebuild members, so sort of carried on in much the same way.  The main difference is that BuildHub is non-commercial, and doesn't allow advertising, because the views of the founders is that advice is likely to be less biased if there are no commercial interests at stake.

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, JSHarris said:

Accepted, but we were discussing architects, who I'd guess probably have a different take on life than an average seasonal farm labourer

They drive Saabs, if only they knew it is a Vauxhall in a special frock.

They get their poloneck jumpers from Steve Jobs' bins, and glasses from SpecSavers.

Pencils from Poundland and sketch books from The Works.

Then add a few hundred percent markup.

[Ferdinand]

1 hour ago, Patrick said:

this sounds like there has been a hype around self build In 2008 already. It always seems to me, for the past few years, that self building is "the up and coming topic" in the building industry, without anything really substantially changing. Is that only my impression or how do the old Ebuilders feel about this? @JSHarris

 

Or is there a shift towards more awareness /better support?

 

I did an analysis piece on this recently on another thread. If you want to dig out membership etc around 2005-2008, all you need is to look up the home page at archive.org.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

On 18/08/2019 at 16:12, Oz07 said:

How many did the old place have?

 

That's a very good question to ask.

 

Let me try to add a little data that I can see from the outside (I am not a Moderator or Admin).

 

I need to emphasise that quality of engagement and direction of travel of numbers is perhaps more important than actual "total"; the total number of members includes a lot who have "passed through", which represents people who have reached a stage in their dream / project where they consider they need to enroll to ask questions, rather than passively read or lurk. Or perhaps it means people who can answer questions, or want to promote their businesses or fish for links.

 

Like a medieval castle, I understand there are murder holes just inside the portcullis, from where @Nickfromwales dispenses boiling oil on spammers.

So for the current community we need something more like "who has posted in the last 12 or 24 months?" (people ask a bit about plots then go away, then come back and ask about Planning, then come back a year later when they have Planning etc).

 

So the 3000 member number is "who has been interested enough to join now or in the past", 

 

Within which we have "who has stuck around", or "who has posted and been thanked". The "Leaderboard -> Reputation" options tell you that 45 people have been "reacted to" more than 200 times, and that 48 people have more than 670 posts.

 

The "Users Online" menu option will tell you that the number of "guests" ie non-members "online" (which usually means requested a page from the site in the last 30 minutes) is about 4-8 times the number of logged in members (usually), though some of those may be members too lazy to log in or on the wrong device, or being incognito.

 

The "new join rate" is perhaps more indicative of the rate of impact, when compared eg to the number of self-builds per annum in the UK - though probably a significant majority of dreamers never get to build. Self-builds in the UK are of the order of 10,000-25,000 I think, and have grown perhaps 20-30% in the last couple of years. Somebody else can probably take a guestimate at "how many people are considering self-build more than idly in passing"; my guesstimate would be 100k-250k.

 

So I estimate that you can say we are reaching maybe 10,000-20,000 individuals per year relatively seriously, and an unknown larger number casually.

 

On the "new joiner" metric we are now roughly where EBuild.co.uk were towards the end, though that had its heydey in 2005-2008 roughly.

 

Ebuild members.

 

June 2014: 12996

(https://web.archive.org/web/20140625091853/http://www.ebuild.co.uk/)

 

December 2014: 13504

https://web.archive.org/web/20141222205444/http://www.ebuild.co.uk/

 

August 2015: 14356

https://web.archive.org/web/20150809080853/http://www.ebuild.co.uk/

 

Ebuild existed from about the year 2000 so the long run average once established was about 1000 per year, perhaps declining as a rate at the end. Someone needs to look up 2005-2008 to check what I expect to be the peak rate of new joiners.

 

A snapshot of how many "crawls" the Internet Archive-bot did of the site is perhaps a good proxy for "how prominent it was" and "how interested the internet was in Ebuild".

 

(Buildhub has hardly been crawled at all by the Internet Archive, so I wonder if we keep them out for performance reasons. Or perhaps we are all boring in our old age.)

 

Just musings. I haven't gone to the trouble of running the site through any serious monitoring services - imo not necessary as it is clearly a very healthy, thriving community, and that is what matters most.

 

Ferdinand

 

 

Edited September 12, 2019 by Ferdinand

[Patrick]

1 hour ago, Ferdinand said:

On the "new joiner" metric we are now roughly where EBuild.co.uk were towards the end, though that had its heydey in 2005-2008 roughly.

 

Ebuild members.

 

June 2014: 12996

(https://web.archive.org/web/20140625091853/http://www.ebuild.co.uk/)

 

December 2014: 13504

https://web.archive.org/web/20141222205444/http://www.ebuild.co.uk/

 

August 2015: 14356

https://web.archive.org/web/20150809080853/http://www.ebuild.co.uk/

 

This is some amazing review. Thanks a lot for that. The membership stats above meaning that it was still growing until 2015? When was it shut down again. Others mentioned buildhub starting in 2016,so I assume just before that.

I think all the older members experience with Ebuild was very vital in keeping this Forum running healthy and trouble free.

Hope it will continue the same paths even with growing numbers as it has been not only very helpful but also a glimpse into the past of 90ies Internet when Forums where everywhere and you could get endless knowledge and informationin thriving communities without being molested by corporate interests.

[Ferdinand]

38 minutes ago, Patrick said:

This is some amazing review. Thanks a lot for that. The membership stats above meaning that it was still growing until 2015? When was it shut down again. Others mentioned buildhub starting in 2016,so I assume just before that.

I think all the older members experience with Ebuild was very vital in keeping this Forum running healthy and trouble free.

Hope it will continue the same paths even with growing numbers as it has been not only very helpful but also a glimpse into the past of 90ies Internet when Forums where everywhere and you could get endless knowledge and informationin thriving communities without being molested by corporate interests.

 

Buildhub was created expressly up to pick up the Ebuild job, but in a more robust format as an organisation so that a couple of people being busy elsewhere or going under a bus would not kill it.

 

The Ebuild close was a classic internet setup, then success, then stress, then implosion, story for one individual. Exasperated by a legal threat.

 

Thanks for the compliment.

 

F

Edited September 12, 2019 by Ferdinand

[the_r_sole]

.

Edited September 26, 2019 by the_r_sole

[SteamyTea]

 

[Oz07]

Just searched my email for ebuild 

26.5.10 registered 

[Jeremy Harris]

11 minutes ago, Oz07 said:

Just searched my email for ebuild 

26.5.10 registered 

 

 

Ye Gods!  I don't think I've got any emails going back that far .  I only remember joining around Spring 2008 because we'd been on holiday and seen an earth sheltered house (which is what my first post on Ebuild was about, IIRC).

[Ferdinand]

13 minutes ago, Oz07 said:

Just searched my email for ebuild 

26.5.10 registered 

 

Interesting. Mine was 

 

Mon, Jan 31, 2011, 12:59 AM

Ferdinand

[Bitpipe]

I'm just a whippersnapper - May 22, 2013

 

[Ferdinand]

8 hours ago, JSHarris said:

 

 

Ebuild has completely shut down now, so I don't think there is any way of finding out who was around at that time.  It was a very busy forum in 2008, even had mentions in the national press (how I found out about it), but had a software update that took it offline for ages and then it took years to recover from that.  This forum came into existence when Ebuild closed down in 2016, with 16 of us from Ebuild who decided we needed a self-build forum.

 

Actually there should be a lot of stuff at archive.org, but you would need to jigsaw and triangulate. Difficult to automate, as archive.org will not welcome spiders.

 

eg - Temp, DIYNOT and JennyHicks. on July 11 2008.

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20080619140818/http://www.ebuild.co.uk/cgi-bin/forums/discus.pl

 

Bit more "Last 7 days"

http://www.ebuild.co.uk/cgi-bin/forums/search.pl?method=last&number=7&units=1440&tree=ON&where=all

 

 

Edited September 12, 2019 by Ferdinand

[Jeremy Harris]

31 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

 

Actually there should be a lot of stuff at archive.org, but you would need to jigsaw and triangulate. Difficult to automate, as archive.org will not welcome spiders.

 

eg - Temp, DIYNOT and JennyHicks. on July 11 2008.

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20080619140818/http://www.ebuild.co.uk/cgi-bin/forums/discus.pl

 

Bit more "Last 7 days"

http://www.ebuild.co.uk/cgi-bin/forums/search.pl?method=last&number=7&units=1440&tree=ON&where=all

 

 

 

 

@Temp will be shown on Ebuild under two user names, so you'll find posts by him on Ebuild prior to 2008 with his original username.  The @Temp one was because something glitched in the forum software, IIRC, and the admin gave him a "temporary" username.  That ended up being permanent, and he then chose to keep the same username when we created Buildhub.

 

I think one or two others had different usernames on Ebuild.  @jack, for example, was NotNickClegg, I think.  I was boring and just used my initials and surname there, much as I'd did on other forums at that time.  Sounds a bit too formal now, so forums that I've joined in the past couple of years or so I've switched to using my first name.

[Ferdinand]

Forum names are fun.

 

Who knew that one was on MSE so early he might even have conversed with Martyn Lewis before his ascension to the rich list.

 

And that our resident semi-housetrained architect has a strange taste in small cars. ?

 

F

[the_r_sole]

.

Edited September 26, 2019 by the_r_sole

[Jeremy Harris]

19 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

And that our resident semi-housetrained architect has a strange taste in small cars. ?

 

 

Which one? 

 

We have at least three architects here that I know of, including one who's been around since the early days of Ebuild (before I joined in 2008 for sure).

[the_r_sole]

Fiidifmttnfnf

Edited September 12, 2019 by the_r_sole
Pocket dial!!!!