Posted by: "Mike Feldman"
>
> On 21 Aug, 2007, at 8:23 PM, Rory wrote:
>> > As a matter of curiosity, is there a reason why this forum is run
>> > as a Yahoo Group ...
>> >
>
> The common ancestor of Nature Recordists and MicBuilders was the
> eGroup list
> MicDIYers -- it was established before Yahoo! aquired eGroups, and
> that was
> in 2000 around when the dot-com bubble burst. So Yahoo! kinda neglected
> groups for a while, and then recently Groups has suffered some Yahoo!
> fication
> to deliver more focused eyes to Yahoo!'s advertisers.
I'd agree on the MicDIYers and MicBuilders, since I've participated in
both and know some of their history.
I was also one of the original people invited when Naturerecordists was
first formed, in the first dozen or so to join and be approved. You had
to apply to be in the group at first. It had nothing to do with
MicDIYers or MicBuilders. It was established by a naturerecordist as a
place for naturerecordists to share in their craft. It was much more
clearly naturerecordists when it was first established. The focus is not
so closely naturerecordists now. We have many people now who's more
important recording efforts are not nature recording. The original
founding group were pretty much all naturerecordists, most recorded
nothing else.
I don't find anything wrong with Yahoo groups as a place for it to be
established. As noted it was established before blogs or all the other
newly created discussion forums. It was hard to establish a usenet group
and get it running, the next best choice was Yahoo. It was established
about the time eGroups ended.
I do not share in the idea that other discussion forums are better, I'm
in a wide variety of groups, many outside of Yahoo. I would say the
mechanics of most of those groups is far worse than Yahoo. Most are very
tough to follow discussions, or find them later. And many have little
track record, may not be there long, we don't know. Whatever Yahoo is,
it will be around a good while yet.
I do have some gripes with Yahoo, like their digest system which could
be better. But it's easier to keep up with a Yahoo group than most others.
Note in the Yahoo system only the group owner can change the group to
another within Yahoo or close it out. This was the problem that
converted MicDIYers to MicBuilders, the owner was gone so the group
could not be maintained under its original name when it was attacked by
a bunch of spammers. Naturerecordist's owner is Doug Gausig, who has not
vanished.
Incidentally the group Phonography was a offshoot of Naturerecordists.
Some joined Naturerecordists and then realized that they were really
interested in a range of things that included man made sounds and
non-natural mixes (though they may use natural sounds in the mix) as
well as recording natural sounds. Rather than insisting the group adapt
they formed a new group, Phonography. There are a number of us who
belong to both groups and understand the distinction between the groups.
The entire thing was done very peacefully. Naturerecordists is now
seeing a influx of folks who would fit better within phonography lately.
Changing naturerecordists to include the area covered by phonography
seems to me to be inappropriate. If your interests cover nature
recording and manmade plus nature then the best bet is to join both
groups. If neither group fits you, form your own group and post invitations=
.
Walt
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