George,
With reference to the other site. They are my personal feelings, having seen it going from strength to strength and having been involved in it's evolution from the very early beginnings, I can remember what it used to be like.
I also know that there are a few 'good' ones still left on there, but you have to admit, more than enough have slowly drifted away, ever since it became a fairly mediocre model engineering site rather than one dedicated to the building of mainly model engines from bar stock.
Membership size means nothing, it is the quality of posts that counts, no matter whether they were offerings from raw beginners or highly skilled people, about model engines and what goes into making them.
I personally got fed up with the almost every other post about what lathe/mill/rotary table/arse paper should I buy, all being answered by the same people every time, that they should buy this or that or the other. I just hope this site doesn't end up going down that route. If only they would use the search feature before asking the same questions over and over again, maybe then you would get some interesting reading.
If you can go to a site each day and want to read 80% of the new posts, then that should be a site worth following, but when you go onto there and not find one post, or a very low percentage worth reading, then it is time not to bother.
Apart from people like yourself who really do tend to give very good guidance and advice, it is now a case of the blind leading the blind, people who think they have the skills and knowledge, but definitely don't, and are only interested in seeing their name up in lights, and all the Lemmings who follow their every word, blinded by bullsh, destined eventually to be lead over the edge of a cliff.
I don't know if you read the full article of my build up of the Minimag. If you did, then you would notice towards the end, that in fact, it could be used on much smaller engines than I first envisioned, and there is even a video of my one running on a Webster, which I would class as a rather small 'beginners' engine.
http://madmodder.net/index.php?topic=4313.0 John