Editorial

Welcome to the first issue of "Internet Modeler," a webzine my associates and I hope will become an invaluable resource to modelers around the world in all branches of the hobby.

"Making Modeling Fun Again" is both our motto and our mission statement. Those words came to me early last month, when I saw a post on rec.models.scale from a modeler thanking me for the website air museum on my personal site, "The Aeronut." He said that while looking at all the models, he had realized it was supposed to be a hobby that was fun, not something he dreaded because of the criticism his work would receive at the next club meeting, regional show or national convention; that his dread of negative criticism was why his models were sitting in his workroom in various stages of construction, none finished. I am happy to say that this person recently e-mailed me to say he had finished one of those models, that he was really happy with the result, and that he was looking forward to taking it in to the next club meeting and talking about it with other members who also found it interesting. "And I'm not going to worry about the penlight police," he concluded.

Things like that make the year I have been on the Internet with that site worth all the work that has gone into it. It's my plan that INTERNET MODELER is going to promote that kind of experience for others.

So, how did we get to the place where the hobby can be as unfriendly to newcomers and returnees as it often feels? I remember twenty years ago, going to meetings at IPMS Sacramento, and there was a real feeling of camaraderie. Bo Boksanski used to come up from Marin County, and everyone knew he planned to leave with whatever prize was there to be taken, but Bo would talk to you about what magic he'd done to that model and how he'd done it. Before that, at IPMS Golden Gate in Berkeley, a guy like George Lee - who to my mind just might be the best plastic modeler who ever lived - would look over your model and point out the errors and omissions, and then tell you how he would solve the problem. You'd always walk away from a conversation with George carrying new information to improve your work and your enjoyment of the hobby. John Alcorn would bring in that amazing 1/32 scratchbuilt A-20, perhaps this time with the operating landing gear he'd just spent three months working on, and he was happy to tell you how you could do it, too. Modeling in those days was fun.

I don't know how accurate this hypothesis is, but I think things changed in the 80s. I know for certain lots of people stopped coming into my local shop, the late lamented "Model Works," and as people stopped coming in and cash flow went down, models stopped showing up on the shelves, to the point where those of us who did come in joked that it really was "The Model Works," as in there was only one model to be found there. We lost a lot of young guys to all those new computer games, so there wasn't that "new blood" coming in. Those who were left were mostly the "hard core." And that's when it stopped being fun. The "penlight police" showed up and took over, the guys who could tell you everything wrong with your model, who never seemed to have one of their own on the table for you to look at, there was the really nit-picky attention to the finished product. There were fewer people at the meetings and the shows, and a lot less camaraderie. And I think a lot more people started dropping out then. I know the internal politics of IPMS got so bad around 1988 that I looked forward to receiving my Quarterly in the mail as much as someone would a letter from the Unabomber. We see that in "flame wars" here on the Internet, but that seems to be dying off now, thank goodness.

Over the past ten years, we have undergone a renaissance in kit quality. The ease of construction that results in a nice-looking model has brought enough buyers back into the stores that new companies like Eduard and Accurate Miniatures have turned up, after all the companies that went belly-up in the 80s. These new buyers are new modelers, but they aren't showing up in equal numbers at the meetings and shows. The one place I see them showing up is here, on the Internet. Here in virtual reality that camaraderie I used to know in Berkeley and Sacramento twenty-odd years ago seems to have recreated itself.

I hope that what we do here at INTERNET MODELER will help bring those new buyers, those new modelers, into the meetings and shows and organizations of the various aspects of the scale modeling community. We want to give you the kind of information that helps you turn those kits into models you want to show off to others. Hopefully, more and more of you will get to know each other here on the net and want to meet "for real" at the club meetings and shows. I know for myself it was a blast to go to the IPMS-USA National Convention this year and meet people in person who I had met here on the net over the past year; every one of them turned out to be pretty much the kind of person I expected, too.

So far, we have attracted a group of guys to our editorial board who I am convinced will create content here that all of you will want to see every month. Our reputations have attracted other modelers as contributors, to the point where I look forward every day to checking my e-mail to see which one is going to have an offer of help and a photo attachment of a beautiful model. It's those kind of communications that convince me we have made the right choice here. I hope you will find this a place you want to visit every month, and that in the future you will find youself one of those people who offer to contribute. I want you to see this as much your forum as it is our magazine.

Our reviews will be honest, it there is something really awful out there, or a company that is ripping off modelers, we'll say so. But when we review a model and find out there are problems in finishing it, we intend to talk about what you can do about it, how to go about finishing it and having that model you want to show to your friends. A very well-known person in our hobby and business told me when I was setting this up that he had no problem with honesty in reviews, it was fairness he was looking for. I believe he and you will find that here.

We have chosen to make this a free site, and plan to make it self-supporting with our advertising. We're going to be like radio and television: we'll provide top-quality content that attracts you so the advertisers can show their wares to people likely to buy. Right now, we have the support of all the major manufacturers, and most of the mini-majors, and a fair number of aftermarket companies. To turn this support into something we can build on, we have to show them this makes economic sense. We have developed a questionairre, which is absolutely anonymous, to gather certain bits of demographic information which will help us show that advertising here puts the advertiser in touch with the people they know they want. I personally promise that none of this information you provide will be made available to anyone anywhere in any media that will result in your receiving unsolicited commercial offers of any kind. We don't like spam any better than you do. So please take the time to fill out our questionairre and help us create the resources to bring you even more and better information on the hobby we all love in the future. I thank you in advance.

Enough of all this chit chat. On to the good stuff!!!