My answer is no.
I've been looking at this blog for a few weeks now. Dave's video's are entertaining but as soon as it gets complicated he either fudges the details or gets in wrong. My opinion is that he is not a real engineer. He never answers questions regarding his formal training, though he often claims in interviews that he has formal training. In my opinion, often dispenses fake information.
The "advice" dispensed by the members of this blog is useless. Rather read credible books on engineering or study at an accredited university than reading the junk "advice" on this blog.
Will you allow a "doctor" without the proper credentials to operate on your brain? If you would, then happily continue reading this blog and watch Dave's videos.
I think you are right that Dave’s videos are entertaining but your comment that ‘
The "advice" dispensed by the members of this blog is useless’ is more than a tad harsh; it’s a dramatic overstatement that is just plain incorrect. As to the level of complexity addressed in Dave’s videos and on this site overall Dave’s own replies to your post state that EEVblog is geared toward providing introductory and intermediate and occasionally advanced information - but he isn’t trying to be a substitute for a text book or a university class. So if you expect extensively deep, complicated, advanced material maybe your expectations are disappointing you.
Beyond his teaching / explaining Dave also presents model reviews and comparisons for popular commercial equipment - which you probably won’t find in most academic settings.
More/most importantly, both Dave’s educational and equipment info - as entertaining and useful as they truly are, are only components of a larger system. This larger system is not limited by or even substantially dependent on just Dave. Dave has built something much larger than himself - he has built and developed a platform for a worldwide community of people who share interests and knowledge across many aspects of analog and digital electronics.
Electroboom et al are also entertaining and educational sites but they are largely one way outbound star network broadcasts. In contrast, the EEVblog forum structure - which Dave has organized, evolved, and grown in a thoughtfully managed manner over the years provides excellent opportunities for people at beginning, intermediate, and sometimes advanced levels to exchange information across various categories as learners and teachers. The exchange of information occurs in a way that generally brings understandings and some joy to the learners, and also some joy to the teachers. And occasionally the learners advance to become teachers just as occasionally the teachers use the forums as learners to gain further knowledge. In contrast look at the Electoboom model - as fun and interesting as it is, it’s hard to see the community of learners and teachers sharing much more than comments on an episode. Questions posted by viewers generally get few or sometimes no replies, much less in depth replies as the Q&A is quickly truncated. It is a star network with a central transmit node and many remote receive nodes vs the EEVblog model which is is much more of a mesh network with full transmit receive interactivity. It’s kind of like saying a TV program has millions of viewers so there must be a lot useful education occurring vs a college class with hundreds of students. The number of nodes and the interactive functionality are substantially different between the two models, and so is the opportunity for teaching and learning. Apples and oranges.
IMO the key to getting value from EEVblog, beside setting reasonable expectations, is a user’s/member’s ability to exchange value. If you are looking for a site where you and all the other users strictly or substantially extract value it’s unlikely that such a model can scale, especially for free. On the other hand if you contribute value at somewhere near or beyond the level you extract value it’s possible the model can sustain and grow. As to the quality of the Q&A, that is dependent on the participants’ experience, knowledge, skill, and intentions. So you might ask how much of each of those attributes you have contributed vs what you extracted. Clearly, there are people here who are in receive-only mode but there are also many people who contribute much more than what they extract in terms of pure content value.
As Dave pointed out for himself, he gets a lot of satisfaction in teaching and I think that is true of many of the most admired contributors in the forums. As you probably know from your own experience a teacher’s knowledge of the content is a key to successful teaching, as is the ability to stimulate a passion for learning and an ability to learn on the part of the students. And in a great class the students become colleagues helping each other learn and advance in their pursuits.
Personally, I have found EEVblog to be a very educational, enjoyable, and valuable site but YMMV.
In any event, if you aren’t enjoying either being a learner or a teacher here then the value you are deriving isn’t likely to be meaningful and your time and energy can perhaps be better spent elsewhere. If you find some other sites that provide better opportunities for receiving and/or providing electronics related information and education please make a post in this thread or in a new thread about your findings. In the meantime, stick around, maybe adjust a few expectations a tad, and focus on teaching in parallel with learning and enjoy the community building as well as the content exchange. Filter or ignore noise that is distracting and focus on transmitting and receiving good signals. If you see some signals with packet errors and you feel strongly about them apply some constructive error correction after your detection. Or maybe just apply some extra selectivity as you scan the bands/forums to engage in the subjects you are most passionate about. Not everything here is worth reading much less engaging just like not everything on TV is worth watching. But unlike TV and many web sites you can have a TDMA slot to burst into whenever you want.
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