Where do folks prefer to host their 3d models and designs? Do you use one site, or multiple?
I originally started on Thingiverse, but switched to Printables after it launched and that has been my main location for uploading to. I recently decided to copy all my models to Thingiverse and Thangs, in additional to Printables, but I’m not sure its worth the effort to maintain the listings on multiple sites.
I love the Printables site, I think it has the best user experience, but Thingiverse seems to reach a bigger audience. Thangs I find useful for the search, but I’m not sure its worth hosting models there as well.
Well, also just that the site had kind of deteriorated from lack of maintenance–the search didn’t work (you had to use Google with site:thingiverse.com), model pages were incredibly slow to load, etc. They’ve fixed a lot of that recently, but for a year or so it seemed borderline unusable.
The issue I’m referring to happened like…10 years ago. Had nothing to do with slow loading or anything. That’s why elsewhere I said I was cut from the old cloth – none of you new guys have any idea what went on in the RepRap communities, which is ultimately the core group of 3D printer enthusiasts.
At the time printables didn’t exist, and nowadays all of the people who are 3D printing have no clue what open source is, why they should care, why they need to defend it, etc. I attempted for years to educate the Reddit 3D printing communities, but it’s too mainstream now. People just see 3D printing as a machine rather than an entire hobby/community.
Fair enough, I only got in to the hobby around 2015. But site issues were another reason that a lot of folks migrated to printables recently, so I do think it’s possible that’s part of what Fogle was referring to.
FWIW though, I suspect that a lot of the folks here in the Fediverse do actually care about open source, open standards, and the value in defending truly public resources.