Gosh it's nice to open up the forum on a Sunday evening to find one's hard work ravaged. Fortunately there are positive souls out there who are somewhat more encouraging and have used rather more tactful ways to inform us of what we do right and wrong. We will learn, we will develop, but we will not give up.
Tim, perhaps if you ask other people to Dare to Fail and Dare to Succeed you might be a little bit more sensitive when editors do exactly that but don't reach your expectations.
Regarding the issue, I had some uncertainties about there being too much turning, and thought that guttering might be drifting too far from our remit. Everyone knows, though, that you only learn what you can and can't do by pressing the boundaries. I apologise to anyone who feels cheated. It was my fault entirely.
As to the feature about Africa: well words fail me. There can be few causes more worthy of support after the hype has died down, though of course I recognise there are plenty of readers who do their own thing through action and donations and don't need any further suggestions. Sorry if you are one of those and would have preferred another project over those pages.
This may well be my last contribution and visit to this thread as I find it too exhausting and time-consuming to constantly justify my actions and decisions, not to mention the extremely hard work put in by Pete, Andy, Steve, Phil, Christian, Jan, John and our loyal contributors.
If you have some comments that will help us develop and improve Good Woodworking, please email me privately at the email address below. I promise that we do listen to what is said, and try our very best to meet the expectations of all our many readers.
Though I have previously encouraged feedback, I never envisaged this sort of mutual public bashing. I am now very tempted to advise the team not to follow this sort of thread as the harm to our morale far outweighs any lessons we learn. I now know why sportsfolk say that they don't read the papers.
I hope your Sunday evening has been as happy as a few of you have just made mine!
Nick
[email protected]