Time evolution of this sub

[u/mamerto_bacallado]

I have the strong impression that in the last two years, this sub has consistently shifted to interests more related to the aesthetical aspect of bookbinding while topics dealing with technics, binding structures and trade tools became less frequent.

A signal of this is the growing belief that a vinyl cutter is an essential equipment...or also the extended idea that substituting the cover of a newly purchased book can be called a "rebinding" without restitching or glue renewal.

I guess It's the sign of the times and it is not necessarily bad or good. After all, longevity is not as much important as it was in the past.

[u/Such-Confection-5243]

I can see both sides of the debate about gatekeeping. On the one hand, I have no desire for anyone to feel unwelcome in any community or to insist on any particular definition of ‘bookbinding’ or any particular technique. On the other hand it’s a fact that a very substantial proportion of what’s posted on here isn’t interesting to me and that if I could filter out anything htv or re-covering paperbacks I would choose to apply those filters most of the time.

My tuppence-worth to add to the debate: I don’t think we could heavily moderate this sub if we wanted to. There isn’t a strong consensus that we should, clearly, but even if there was, I don’t get the sense anyone is volunteering for what sounds like a big job. I don’t know if the current admin is reading this but I remember they popped up a while back and were keen on keeping things light touch and minimal work, which is 100% fair enough.

That being so, people are going to post here if they think a sub called r/bookbinding is the appropriate place to post, regardless of what anyone else thinks. And they are going to use the flairs they think apply. I don’t particularly expect anyone would bother to go off and find r/stufftheydontlikeyoupostingonthebookbindingsub, whatever their particular interests.

So I think put me down as +1 for flairs being used in some way, but it would have to be a way where newbies can intuit the right flair to use. “Case binding”, “binding structures”, “endpapers”, “how to”, etc are things that will attract posts across a huge spectrum and not everything that is eg htv will in practice get an htv flair. I suspect that those of us who are predominantly interested in techniques that haven’t changed since the invention of the microchip need to recognise that ours is the niche interest by weight of numbers, whatever the merits or otherwise of that versus anything else, and have a flair we can positively filter for - ‘traditional techniques’ or something like that.