***y
thats what you put if you dont want the venders. right?
***N
Thomas is right - Solarbotics added a 1 cell AAA holder today… Really?
Wherever people gather, someone will jump in hawking their wares. Some of it will be relevant and interesting (Dagu is a great example), and some will be 1 cell AAA holders. If you charge, you’re going to exclude all the smaller vendors from sharing the cool things they have, you’ll ONLY get the Solarbotics & Pololu type vendors. I think the current strategy of seperate areas is probably the best: Manage the flow.
I work on Gadget Gangster because I want to share my excitement about electronics with others - it’s far from being profitable. XMOS isn’t profitable, and I’m sure OddBot doesn’t roll in a Mr. Basic-style Bentley. My goal isn’t to spam anyone - just to get new people excited about the hobby and hopefully break even financially.
Just my 2c - but so far I’ve been really impressed with how lmr handles vendors and I think most of them do add to the community. As a hobbyist, I like having Dagu, xmos, fingertech and others on this site and I’d miss their contributions.
I’ve been a member here for
I’ve been a member here for some months now and I dont feel that vendors have done much that has improved my experience at letsmakerobots.com. I love the community and all the helpful people. Since we all need parts to build our awesome machines its natural to speak about places to buy/find stuff. And so, having a place for vendors is not a bad idea on a site like this. Nevertheless, I dont care much for having vendors post on the front page where all the cool stuff are. If i need a vendor I want to look him up, not have the vendor push stuff at me. So YES I do agree with your question.
Looking at how vendors like XMOS have created a awesome competition i for the community i feel I need to change my vote to **N. But there are both good and bad.
Y & N
I think there could be a separate area for vendors… some vendors put nice things on this site.
***N
***N
Man, this is an interesting vote! Both sides of the question have had some very good arguments.
For me, as a “hobbyist” - seeing posts about the parts is interesting (and sometimes even useful) but at the same time also bothersome. I come here mostly to look at how others are building their cool bots. I don’t want to wade through a bunch of crap posts about various colors of jumper wires just to find one interesting tidbit about Chris the Carpenters next robot. So it would be easy for me to want to flip my vote.
BUT…
as I am hoping to eventually become a “vendor” as well (more on that when the time is right) - it is disturbing to think I could have a “vendor” tag attached to my signature and people would totally not even look at my posts thinking I am planning to spam them (certainly would NOT be what is on my mind!). Even as a vendor, I would hope that sometimes I could contribute something useful to the LMR community.
Also, as far as charging vendors to post here - sounds like a good idea at first. It could certainly help Rudolph get the resources he needs to make LMR even more user friendly and cool website. However, if I were to someday become a vendor/hobbyist, where does it leave me? I probably wouldn’t ever have the resources Pololu or Solarbotics have, and any fee charged could potentially put me off. I like the idea of an even better LMR, but on the other hand, fees could potentially screen out some very cool people (for example like Oddbot/DAGU) that simply can’t afford a huge fee.
I really have to agree with Revenant.Revival, the vendors are here to make enough $ to make even more cool stuff for us.
Anyway, I said my 2c. Dunno if it contributed anything - but I feel better. 