DIY Projects, Communities and Cultures 53
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University share the results of a year-long survey studying DIY projects, communities, and cultures. The first ever large-scale survey of six DIY communities (Instructables, Etsy, Dorkbot, Ravelry, Adafruit and Craftster) explores the motivations and practices of 2600+ respondents. In addition to an academic paper, results are appropriately posted on Instructables — one of the studied DIY sites. Findings highlight creativity, learning and open sharing as key values embedded in modern DIY culture."
Heh 2600 (Score:1, Interesting)
2600
Instructables comments (Score:4, Interesting)
I found the results odd w/ respect to instructables and comments. I like instructables articles, but I actively avoid reading the comments because they are stuffed with morons.
Generally a couple kids asking for homework help, a bunch of negative trollers whining about safety or how the author is ignorant (worship me for I am fire marshal bill and someone with a room temperature IQ could be hurt, and also you are completely wrong in all your conclusions because I say so! Look at me! Look at me!), or utterly illiterate "mee 2 I agre w u" text talk that is still meaningless when converted to English.
Another thing I've noticed about instructables is I've gotten all kinds of ideas from making what amounts to homemade water park sprayers for the kids out of PVC pipe to a tasty sandwich made out of apples, cheddar, bacon, and sourdough bread. But real hard core stuff, things that takes more than a day and real work and skill, is never discussed. The guys whom make their own legal limit ham radio linear amps. Theres like two articles on electric car/bike conversions, but there should be more. It tends to be a site of talkers rather than doers.
Surprisingly community interaction did better than I'd have expected and no one mentioned the comment trolling team at instructables being a good reason not to upload and share.
Re:Meh (Score:1, Interesting)
How does ravelry (a fibre community (i.e. knitters and crochet-ers)), etsy (sells homemade/vintage objects) and craftster (a general crafting communinity) got anything to do with robots and computer hackery?
I think you are forgetting the female half of the population - we (yes a girl is on \.) tend to frequent sites such as ravelry, etsy and crafster in HUGE numbers, not rather specific interest sites such as "old wood working machines" or "bicycle frame builders". Sure, ravelry might just be fibre on the surface, but have a closer look at the groups - nearly every interest is catered for (in all seriousness, the forum/database system on ravelry is brilliant, definitely worth it to register just to have a look). And etsy and crafster have something about nearly every conceivable craft.
And industry giants contributing - now that just goes against their definition of DIY: "creation, modification or repair of objects without the aid of paid professionals.".