Tony,
I think we are on the same page; and I concur with many of your points. The
list has for the most part had balance and been self correcting without
heavy handed intervention on your part. The "arrow of time" typically goes
in a linear fashion; but time may not have that characteristic any longer.
The arrow may follow a curvilinear path or go through a time warp. The need
that is being filled may become altered and modified whithout actually being
changed. Just as many of the technigues, processes, hardware component
operations, and workflows between digital cameras and scanners may merge
together at points and go on different paths at other points, the
commonalities related to the process of capturing an image and digitalizing
it tend to remain. It tends to be only after the image has been digitalized
that workflows, processes, techniques, methods, and hardware tend to
diverge.
I think that if one focuses and defines the scope as interest in the digital
workflow to the capturing and digitalizing of analog images, a group will be
able to self -regulate itself to stay primarily within that subject arena
with some OT into related components of the digital processing of imagery.
If the conversation drifts to far afield into the other aspects of the
digital workflow, members could always direct the participants to the groups
relevant to those topics as is the current case with this and other groups.
If the OT is not related to the digital process but more social in
character, I would not worry about that since I believe it is important to
the sustenance of any group and this group in particular has tended to cope
with such OT well for the most part. The problem of unregulated OT and
bitching about OT in my experience comes when a list gets too large and too
popular a well known resource so that subscribers fishing for technical
assistance, buying advice, and How-To recipes tend to regard the list as if
it were a commercuial paid for techniocal assitance resource and expect it
to give quick and on the point business like handholding answers to the
questioners questions, solutions to their problems, and resolution to issues
that they encounter.
At any rate, I respect your decisions any way you decide to go; I am just
engaging you is discussion as a way of furnishing food for thought. :-)
filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk wrote:
> LAURIE SOLOMON wrote:
>
>> But if your analysis is correct and traffic is negligable because
>> most of the knowledgable users have adequate knowledge and are using
>> their older models of scanner and not keeping up with the newer
>> models, then eventually there will not be a group of informed
>> contributing subscribers around to sustain the list as a dedicated
>> reference forum or to provide that expertise tommorrow.
>
> All true. You can't escape entropy...
>
>
>> There are two schools of thought about this; I take the other school
>> and bind precisely focussed lists without OT to be both boring and
>> lacking in any feeling of community among the subscribers who remain
>> impersonal anonymous entities or institutional memory since members
>> tend to treat the list as a technical support line only and lurk
>> until they need something but rarely contribute information or feel
>> obligated to do so.
>
> Also entirely true, successful lists are communities and social
> places too.
> Which is why I've always tried to use a light touch with OT stuff,
> only intervening when I start getting complaints about excessive
> rudeness or
> pedantry.
>
>
>> People who make up the the sustaining contributors to any list tend
>> to leave even if the list is useful when the list becomes one where
>> the same issues and questions repeatedly come up, the same
>> discussion recirculate over and over repetitively, and nothing new
>> and interesting is introduced. Ironically, it is OT discussions that
>> add the spice and novelty to the list conversation that keeps the
>> list alive and interesting to those who tend to be the sustaining
>> contributors since they frequently are the ones who are giving out
>> most of the information and rarely need much from the list by way of
>> useful information having been there frequently in the past and
>> acquired an adequate library of useful information already.
>
> Yup. Balance is essential. But successful lists start from a point of
> fulfilling a need moving eventually to a fulfilled need. The arrow of
> time.
>
>> With respect to diluting the list and digital imaging being a large
>> topic that grows like topsy, you do not have to cover the total
>> workflow. The list could be a dedicated conduit to the topic of
>> digital capturing of imaging and restricted in its focus and scope
>> to that portion of the workflow so as to cover digital capturing
>> processes utilizing scanners and/or cameras. The processes used by
>> scanners and cameras are very similar with digital cameras being
>> more like digital scanners that any other hardware in the imaging
>> workflow. Thus, there is probably some commonality in issues and
>> questions that come up with respect to the two.
>
> I agree there is. Familiarity with scanning (and film photography) is
> a big
> help with digicam workflow. But I dunno how you limit (self-limit)
> discussion to capture and workflow, without digressing into specifics
> that
> are already well handled elsewhere (dpreview, robgalbraith etc).
>
> If someone can come up with a formula for a wider-ranging list than
> filmscanners that somehow uniquely addresses crossover topics that are
> likely to be of interest to the same community, I'll gladly provide
> one and simply autojoin everyone. It won't fly though, unless there
> is a USP that
> grabs enough people. If that USP is 'talk digicam with the same group
> of
> people', or 'anything vaguely photographic with the same group of
> people'
> fine, or even 'anything including Art's Toyota with the same group of
> people' ;-) we can try it, see if it flies, and anyone who can't
> stand it
> can run away. But I don't want to take the muddling step of widening
> filmscanners itself, it's too widely known (and entirely the wrong
> title:).
>
>>> 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.
>>
>> Besides there already is an Epson Printers list on Yahoo Groups
>> which has a subscriber list larger than the old Leben Epson Inkjet
>> list as well as several specialty lists dedicated to black and white
>> inkjet printing anD Epson Wide Format Inkjets.
>
> Quite, though I'm not in them because I have inkjet sorted to my
> satisfaction, for now. I'm in lists that deal with specific areas
> that are
> live areas of interest for me for now, and dip into some web
> forums from time to time, pick-and-mix, ad hoc. With such tremendous
> volumes of information whizzing around the net, and far too few hours
> in
> the day, the problem has shifted from 'nowhere to talk' to 'far too
> many
> places to keep up with'. Really, if there's going to be yet another
> one, it
> has to spot a niche nobody else has else it'll just turn yellow and
> the
> leaves will drop off.
>
>
> Regards
>
> Tony Sleep -
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