Girls/guys/etc.

What I want to see in this forum is more topics and more back and forth between everyone. I want to know what you guys are interested in seeing more of in here. Don’t be shy. Anything is welcome. Except titties. I know know. I want to see titties too but this isn’t the place.

Most importantly I want everyone to feel welcome to post here. Or if you don’t feel like posting something publicly you can IM me any time. I’m here to help or just listen.

I will look into these two people and their info. I appreciate your input. What exactly are you recommending about these two links will help the WS forum?

I understand how annoying it can be to have a lot of men come in asking about gear and guns for their woman. That’s why there was a tacked thread added above a while ago. But let me just add my personal opinion on that. A lot of the recommendations in there are from members who aren’t active anymore and some of the info is probably outdated. In order to make that thread more useful and on point it needs more activity. To get activity we need more men to ask questions. If we have an environment that is less than welcoming we would lose what I think is 85% of our traffic in here. I kind of equate it to if I were to go into the grooming forum looking for advice for my SO and they acted like it was a chore to respond.

I would love to have a forum bursting with female posters but on a site that is 99% male it’s hard to bring them all to one place. If every female clicks on our forum looks around and sees that there hasn’t been a new thread in months, then walks out because of how dead it is we aren’t going to make progress.  There are special “understood “ rules for behavior in here and most of the male posters follow them. I personally want male members to feel comfortable coming in here with real questions. Even with some fun silly stuff. Because it gets more people to come in.

Barb really tried to steer this forum into a tech forum and it was great for a while. But it became redundant. There were only a handful of ladies training, prepping, shooting competition. After those few responded the topics went dead. I would love to see more gear breakdowns. More personal builds being discussed. Tons more training, force on force and target practice threads. I hope we can make that happen. Again all it takes is one woman starting a thread to get the ball rolling. It’s just a small sample of women who are into the tech parts of shooting. So limiting topics to just shooting does exclude a good amount of the ladies. I hope we can all find a balance between being a tech forum and just being a safe place for ladies to post.

Everything you have said is true and would make for a perfect place if we had the female posters to back it up and keep it going. I really hope it will be like that one day.

About the only way to get more people participating is to just post more topics. You mentioned NV. I have my own helmet mounted PVS14. I’m pretty beginner with it and am still tweaking it to work for me. There could be a thread about NV and thermals. You mentioned AR. Start a thread showcasing your AR or any gun that you want. Talk about why you bought/built it. Pros and cons.

If more ladies wanted to start threads about their gear or just their interest we would have a good start. If you don’t find what you’re looking for don’t be afraid to start a new thread.

I personally think having a variety of topics from time to time is fine and welcomed. I think at one point the site staff wanted this forum to be more technical and I understand their reasoning. But it alienated some of the female posters that weren’t training or actively doing much in shooting sports.

I wouldn’t want shooting and firearms to fall completely to the side but if you have genuine topics of interest you wish to discuss here then I welcome it.

Annarchy, you mention not being as technically knowledgeable as your husband. I know how you feel. I have picked up a lot over the years about how to operate my guns and what I like and don’t like. You hand me just about anything I can function it well. On the other hand I sometimes forget what certain parts are or what brand names they are even if I built them myself. I just have a limited amount of storage in the old brain and I forget easily. That’s ok. If you’re interested in expanding your knowledge just ask. There are a tons of ladies on this site smarter and more qualified than me to learn from.

I’m working on a few topics to hopefully get more people involved here. But I am very open to any suggestions.

If you have any ideas you can test them here or message me privately and I will give you my opinion. Or if you want to go ahead and start a new thread you can.

I’m tossing around the idea of a monthly shooting drill. It will have to start in August after my kids are in school and when it gets closer I will start a new thread to see who is interested.

I do want to remind everyone that while I’m a lot more open to diversity in topics but there are a lot of specific sub forums in arfcom. For example: cooking. I absolutely don’t mind some helpful hints, tips and suggestions but there is a cooking forum that might be a more appropriate place for general cooking topics.