On her blog, Laura writes about "Who Needs Teachers... when we have each other." . As usual, she has many valid thoughts, most of which I am in agreement with.
Myself, I am (among other things) the webmother of my local guild. After nearly every meeting, I have to decide what to share, and what not. For these situations, there are two considerations: a) our members actually pay to be menbers, so why should the rest of the world get everything "for free"? and b) if we really mean anything with the mission statement about "getting more people interested in weaving" - how can we do so, if we only write about how good it was to have coffee?
I try to have at least something "weaverly" on every page I add - sometimes it is a small draft, sometimes it is a tip, sometimes it is book recommendations. I do think that the people attending the meeting(s) got more out of it than what I write on the page(s).
Just as Laura does, I also share a lot (in my own opinion, of course ;-) on my personal website and blog.
Quite often, I get e-mail questions - most often nice. But there are an increasing number of questions with a tone of "you owe mw an answer" (or so I think, anyway). I also get an increasing number of hits, both to my site and the guild site, from searches about "free ..." (patterns, instructions...). When (if) I answer that kind of question with "the cheapest way to find patterns/instructions is from a library - all libraries (in Sweden, anyway) are free to use" it happens that I get a dissatisfied answer, along the lines of "it is too hard work to read a whole book".
Sometimes I get questions of how to read the draft on (page name) - when the whole draft is there (threading, tie-up, treadling and structure). Every time that happens, I wonder: what is the question really about?
As I also am responsible for the Swe nat'l guild's links page I "have" to surf sometimes, searching for sites to add. I (think I) see more and more guild pages who "give away" nothing, showing very small pictures of little old ladies drinking coffee and looking at minuscule (in the picture) weave samples.
Could we have a general discussion about sharing, the what and the how of it?
There has to be a (good) balance between sharing and getting paid; about (for the lack of a better word) "respect" and "I deserve it free". Question is: where is that balance?