OK, here's how I see it.
1. This list, like all lists, has a natural lifespan. A bit like a sun
past-its-best-by-date, it's now becoming a red dwarf. It'll probably be a
black hole in 10 years.
2. It's still useful to have a dedicated reference forum in one place, for
as long as there are filmscanners around. Even if traffic is negligible, it
may be tomorrow that any of us needs the conduit to the expertise of
others.
3. It suits me fine that it's quiet, less admin, no bandwidth problems,
little cost:)
4. Lists tend to be most useful when precisely focussed and not polluted
with OT wibble and squabbles about OT wibble. Widening the scope of this
list would only dilute that utility and risk driving away those who don't
share precisely the same interests, thereby diluting the usefulness of this
list for its primary purpose. If lists aren't useful, people leave.
5. Yes, it's absolutely true that dig.imaging is like the Chinese proverb:
you lift one blade of grass and up comes the whole field. And it's huge. So
it's a struggle to keep any list within sensible bounds, as what starts out
as a question about funny colour can instantaneously explode in 15
different directions, ranging from film technology to lab standards, to
scanners, software, technique, monitors and calibration, colour management,
and print technologies, inksets, profiling yada yada.... Any one of those
single topics is a PhD level career for someone, and a busy list.
6. Given that I don't want to dilute this list, I am prepared to start one
or more others as well, so the community can potentially remain intact.
BUT: (a)not everybody who's in filmscanners will want to join a new list
(b)there is no point - and mutually destructive - to set up a new list
that replicates the interest area of another list that already exists. It's
far more useful to have know-how concentrated in one place.
7. So what areas are candidates for a new list(s)? I'm wary of jumping in
with a reinvention of epson_inkjet because that list required industrial
scale servers and bandwidth to sustain its traffic levels. It's not
surprising it died, the economics are ruinous.
Regards
Tony Sleep -
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