Top Soil Screener

[digger doug]

Originally Posted by homemadetools

We find homemade tools everywhere on the net, and feature them on our site, fully crediting the original builders, as well as the sites on which they were posted, and linking back to all of them. We're trying to solve the problem of high quality homemade tool builds being buried and lost in forum threads. We send out a lot of traffic to forums, so hopefully we've been able to refer people to these builds who may not have otherwise been able to find them.

Most forums are happy about this, but we respect different forums' rules. Some forums encourage us to join in conversations, while others just want us to quietly link out to their forum threads and not post about it. If it's not OK to post here, let me know ASAP please. If it is OK, and there are some builds we've missed, please let me know that too so we can get them added.

You now (as a so called "member") have the ability to access the "members only" section and "extract" all you want.

This is a give and take place. We help each other out.

I don't see you adding anything just stealing.

I'm outta here.

[homemadetools]

Originally Posted by digger doug

You now (as a so called "member") have the ability to access the "members only" section and "extract" all you want.

I'm outta here.

To clarify, we only link out to publicly-available content. We also don't use any automated data mining techniques. We personally review homemade tool builds, link out to them, and credit the builders and the sites on which the builds were posted. The site grew out of a bookmarks file I had of homemade tool builds from various forums.

Nevertheless, I appreciate the input; it's important to be a bit skeptical of any new guy on a forum!

[digger doug]

Go fuck yourself...frequently

[homemadetools]

Originally Posted by digger doug

This is a give and take place. We help each other out.

I don't see you adding anything just stealing.

We've sent tens of thousands of visitors to this forum by linking to threads here. We're a significant free traffic source for many forums, and that's why we're usually well-received. There are some great tool builds here, that are probably featured all over the net; I can't say how many other sites fully credit the builders and the originating sites for their builds.

I'm not sure what you mean by "stealing". A link? A builder name? A reduced-size thumbnail image? You can type your username and this site name into Google Images and find many of your images listed, none of them properly credited to you.

If we have homemade tools of yours listed, and you would like them removed, I can do so immediately.

[jim hasslinger]

Doug; I personaly think
you are out of line!

JIM

[milomilo]

I've been to your website and it does have a lot of interesting stuff there. Your welcome to use this one if you think it has any value to your site.

http://www.shopfloortalk.com/forums/...ad.php?t=39482

[DeepSeaDynamo]

Originally Posted by homemadetools

I'm not sure what you mean by "stealing".

I think what he means is that you're using other peoples hard work and ingenuity to make yourself money. Maybe some of these people would fee differently if you gave a kickback to each "engineer" whose projects you utilize for "content."

Its one thing for someone to post a project or whatever up in hopes of helping others with similar problems. It's great that the owner of this site has set it up for us to do so, and of course there has to be advertising to keep it all free. Its a whole other thing when someone else cherry picks the most interesting of those ideas from sites all over the internet and links to all of them with an amount of ads all over their site that is pretty obviously a for profit venture.

Here we are all about helping each other, but just sitting back and making a profit off of other peoples hard work without even being connected to it, well that might as well be welfare.....

[Cavalry]

Originally Posted by DeepSeaDynamo

Its a whole other thing when someone else cherry picks the most interesting of those ideas from sites all over the internet and links to all of them with an amount of ads all over their site that is pretty obviously a for profit venture.

I agree, 3 large ads per page? I am curious to know if that covers the bills or makes money.....

Credit may be given to the originator but from previous experience they don't even know their work is published elsewhere until they stumble across it. I think its tacky to use without permission or even a heads up regardless if credit is given or not.

I do find it interesting that the terms of service http://www.homemadetools.net/acceptable_use_policy appear to prohibit what you are doing on other sites

Attempt to access or search the Services, User Content or Our Content or scrape or download User Content or Our Content from the Services, or otherwise use, upload content to, or create new links, reposts, or referrals.....

[homemadetools]

milomilo - Added to our Heavy Equipment and Jacks and Lifts categories, thanks! milomilo's Loader Boom


DeepSeaDynamo - because we write our own descriptions of the tools, and we use a reduced-size image (like Google Images), it's not legally considered to be publishing others' content; it's viewed as a reference to the original content, much like a search engine (although we find builds manually, not by automatically or programatically mining or spidering like a search engine).

Anyone who has any interest in a tool build must click through to the originating forum thread for more info. Each listing contains 3 links to the original build: the title is linked, the image is linked, and there's a bare link accompanying each build. So the originating forum gets credit, and if the original builder has any links in his profile or forum signature (business links, personal website links, etc.), the person viewing the build will be exposed to those. Also, in addition to crediting the builders on each build page, we also maintain a separate "Builder" page for each builder, listing each of their builds and the forum on which they're posted.


Cavalry - we've thought a lot about the permission issue. Legally we don't need permission, but, I agree, it's still often polite to ask. The problem we've run up against is that, about 80% of the time, when we post in a build thread on a forum, nobody replies! When people do reply, it's usually positive. No, the ads do not currently cover the bills, but I think the concept is strong, and we recently launched a similar site for motorcycle builds, the url of which is visible in the top navigation tabs of our site, and we have more on the way.


I've been a forum admin for over a decade; I know that if you don't actively protect your community, it will be overrun by spammers and scammers. So while digger doug and I may not be baking muffins together any time soon, his stance is understandable.

There are a few other threads mentioning our site here on ShopFloorTalk.com: here, here, here, here. The general consensus here and on other forums seems to be cautious, but positive, because we do credit the builders, we increase findability, and we give more traffic to forums than we get (and the users we refer tend to be of decent quality, since they arrived at a forum based on their interest in a homemade tool build).

I saw there were a few folks in other threads who noticed that their builds weren't listed. It's almost certainly not because they were passed up, but because we didn't find them in our initial pass. Some of these builds are buried deep in forums, and difficult to find, which, though frustrating, is why our site exists. If we missed your build, just let me know, and I'll be happy to add it.

[DeepSeaDynamo]

I was talking ethics, not legality. I also was just offering up my interpretation of what I think some of the others are feeling. Anyhow, great job hijacking this thread