This is how forums work for subjects that are hobbies.
Joe Person gets an itch and decides he wants to make Pizza at home. Its a LOT cheaper than buying it.
(The subject is not relevant, fill in wet shaving for Pizza) Joe searches and find lots of people like to make Pizza at home and joins a couple of Pizza making forums. After a while, Joe realizes there is more than just making pizza. You need need hardware. There is cheap hardware and expensive hardware. There is different flours, some cheap, some expensive - consumables. What's the best hardware to buy and what are the best consumables to buy???
So Joes asks a lot of questions and find a core group of knowledgeable pizza makers. This is cool. These people know every thing.
One day he realizes there is more to making pizza than just sticking it in his home oven. You can make pizza, not great pizza but acceptable pizza, in a home oven. But not all home ovens are the same. There are others who make pizza the "old fashioned way"
(think straight edge) outside in brick wood fire ovens. This gets expensive.
Joe Person is excited. There is so much to learn. Joe researches and buys some expensive gear. He finds out more and more, then buys LOTS of consumables, but that is not enough. He need the most expensive inside oven and then joins a speciality "forum" for wood fired outside pizza ovens. Now he starts spending serious money and the better half gets involved. Joe loves putting on his apron, working the pizza dough, getting the wood to just the right temperature, and fiddling with his recipes. He invites people over for pizza all the time. Over time he gets good at it, really good, and before you know it, he's dispensing advice to the newbies, and there are always newbies, on what stove to buy, what accessories, and of course - the FINEST consumables. After all, you can't use ANY old flour
, you need 00 Flour from Italy and San Marino tomatoes flown over today for the freshest sauce and, of course, home grown basil - none of that store bought stuff .
Time goes on and he gets tired of hearing the same old questions over and over again. Although, when Joe Person started, HE was asking about ovens, and temperatures, and accessories, now he is seeing more of the same questions over and over again, and frankly - its getting old. How many times can he answer the same questions about wood temperature and the right consumables to buy??? There needs to be a Wiki on this. All this stuff needs to be written down and NOTHING is more YMMV than the taste of food.
But ... hmm, the same questions are getting old.
Like - OK, enough is enough.
As the months go by, Joe Person stops reading the Pizza forum. There isn't much more than he can add. There isn't much more he can learn. He's made, 1,000 pizzas. He knows the consumables and he knows the cooking techniques and frankly, its time to move on. Besides, 100 newbies aren't newbies anymore and they are teaching the "new" newbies. There are ALWAYs newbies. So Joe Person gets tired of it all and stops posting. Sometimes he reads, sometimes not, and eventually he moves on.
Joe is a Master Pizza Maker Now, his just makes Pizzas. Some people tell him his pizzas are so good he could sell them.
Joe is an Artisan. He makes EVERYTHING from scratch from the dough to the basil he grows in the yard along with his own tomatoes to chopping the wood for his stove.
But Joe wearies of it and needs a new hobby ... Bread Making
, so Joe searches for Bread Making forums and find there are dozens of them!!! So Joe joins some and find there are all kinds of bread making hardware and all kind of consumables and all kinds of recipes to learn and techniques to study and realizes ... he is a newbie again ...
