Not to be negative or to rant, but FWW is increasingly getting up my nose.
It's unchallenged in terms of production values (nice pictures, together look and feel etc) but it starting to read like a lot of those writing are not at the top of the hobby/profession, the production values seem to be swamping the content, care seems to be taken to not challenge advertisers, and the high pressure marketing is increasingly an irritation.
I'm posting here because while (surprise) the e-mail addresses of the sales, account management and advertising people selling to prospective advertisers are up front in the magazine, there's no obvious means offered for contacting the editor or staff writers. (names, but no e-mail addresses)
Is it just that I'm bored, past it and spoiled, or is this a more general feeling?
Some personal irritations based on recent and fairly recent developments:
1. On contact information. It'd be nice to feel that key staff were an accessible part of the broader woodworking community.
2. On projects. Taking the dado jig in the recent issue as an example. It's a nice design, but the piece is swamped in pictures and information and as a result is such hard work to read, and more to the point to extract key information from.
There's for example little or nothing that separates what are often largely optional construction details from the principles that matter - like the use of a fixed rt angle fence, use of the guide bush, the width adjustment and so on.
It's like it's dumbed down - written for 'never did it before' readers of an excessively intense mindset (that's something coming from me) slavishly following the instructions step by step, but with little overview of what they are at. A much more basic drawing and more concise piece which set these out and not much more would be so much more effective.
3. On technical pieces. There's a similar tendency to provide mountains of isolated facts, but again typically not much by way of an up front addressing of the underlying especially technical principles and broader practice. Especially not if these risk drawing attention to uncomfortable facts.
Product comparisons typically lack the broader and more insightful input you might expect from a user of the equipment on test, and often read more like the five minute impression of a first time user.
This can be misleading, significantly so on occasion judging by the rapid reversing away from some implications following the piece on cyclone based dust systems some time ago. It never really got to the core of these systems - that in the end it's about achieving the required (pretty high) intake CFM for good dust and chip collection, and separation and filtration capability after that. The other details are all just enablers.
4. On the hard sell. I'm sick of the incessant bombardment with e-mails relating to both the website (which I was foolish enough to take out a sub to), and to magazine sales. Not to mention the high handed automatic debiting of my credit card when I didn't specifically ask them to stop.
5. On operation of the website. The video series on the coffee table for example seems to have been stuck on the second or third episode for weeks now. Problems are perfectly acceptable (stuff happens), but it'd be nice if it was handled up front.
6. On language and hype. How's about turning the volume down a bit?
Etc.
Is it just me?
ian
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