The Goals of this website are to provide viewers with a faster and more complete set of information relating to
model design and techniques. The approach and implementation of how these goals are presented can be diverse.
FieldGuideToModeling hopes to present the viewer with connections to the many technical aspects of modeling.
The site attempts to simplify searching and finding information that already exists on the internet yet
requires to user to spend considerable time trying to find it.
How does one approach these goals?
There is a lot of information on the internet available mainly from manufacturers, clubs, as well as personal and
blogging websites. Much of the information is already collected and linked. However,
the User has to open all the links in order to find what they want to know.
What is lacking is a comprehensive means of accessing this information without
spending a lifetime trying to search for the information. The source data can
reside anywhere and does reside everywhere. There are search routines on a specific websites,
but these do not provide viewers with direct assistance with source material located elsewhere.
Information references within a blog or related postings often are not referenced with the appropriate
keywords that permit their identification. The goals of the FieldGuideToModeling website are to attempt
to centralize and organize this information, point to the information and provide the viewer with a means of
quickly getting answers to their questions at many levels of understanding. It does not desire to
be a "Me too" of advertisers showing model that a viewer can obtain from looking at a simple catalog.
Data can exist transiently, unless of course, it is archived manually somewhere permanently. Websites can go away for
many reasons. Their owners can leave modeling and move on to other hobbies. Manufacturer sites can
be updated to reflect new offerings and older models can be phased out. Model clubs can change web masters
or their sites can be redesigned. These are just a few ways data can be changed or lost. Old information
is valuable, especially when methods are re-invented. Many builders and modelers often believe that they
have come up with new methods, approaches, inventions, and designs but in reality their work has been done
before, many years or decades before their current work. The FieldGuideToModeling website attempts to present
old and current data to users, and users can take this data and extend that information further.
How can this information be presented? One approach is to pattern the website after several other websites
of similar function that are popular. Those websites that permit free-form entry and
user editing often suffer from misdirected efforts, expressions of opinions as well as summaries that
lean toward product marketing. Our goals are to reduce the myriad of influences and provide the viewer
with facts and specifications of an entry or response. These goals may be quite lofty and altruistic but
like many encyclopedias our initial attempts for the representations and articles are toward providing the
Viewer with the best information and presentations possible.
The FieldGuideToModeling website is continually undergoing revision, updates and additions. The Staff hopes
that you will find the entries useful and rewarding.
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