My intention is not to offend or ridicule, although the following
might be interpreted that way...
A) I find it highly disappointing to see information that ought to be
pooled together as a huge and wonderful resource being split into
two, purely because some subscribers can't filter it. I get it in
digest form (as some others do) and find it very easy to scroll or
otherwise navigate through. There's a list of topics at the top, and
clicking on any one of those will automatically scroll down to that
message in the digest. If I want to reply to a message, I simply
click on the message's title and it takes me to Yahoo Groups. And at
the end of each message is a 'return to top' line to get me back to
the contents list at the top. This is far preferable to me than
receiving invidual messages, many of which I'm not interested in *at
this point in time* (perhaps later though), and/or logging into Yahoo
Groups to monitor things - both of which require way too much
clickety click and navigating around.
I also use Gmail, which has Google's excellent searching
capabilities, so I have no need to archive or otherwise organise the
digests at all - they're all stored in my InBox on Gmail's servers
(of which I'm currently using 3513MB (51%) of my ever-growing 6770MB
storage capacity). If I want to find a message about recording birds
on the Tibetan plateau, I simply put in the keywords and tell it to
search my InBox. Up they come, one after another, in a single list. I
can't imagine anything easier than digest form messages received in
Gmail, and I can get that information from any computer on-line,
anywhere in the world.
B) It's a pity that those who have complained about excessive gear
talk are motivated enough to complain about it, but not motivated
enough to redress the situation in a pro-active manner. Rather than
sitting waiting for someone to ask how to record the unicorn, a
recognised expert in unicorn recording (c'mon, you know who you are!)
who felt there was too excessive gear talk could've done a great
service by initiating a thread titled "How I record unicorns" -
focusing on their fieldcraft, what worked and what didn't, and
providing mp3 excerpts of their successes and failures.
Any list ultimately reflects the interests of its subscribers, and it
is up to the subscribers to steer it where they want by asking
questions and/or initiating topics to volunteer information. The
excessive gear talk 'problem' we have here is due to a lot of
questions being asked about equipment, but not much initiating of
topics about fieldcraft.
C) Some figures mentioned here lately suggest that there are nearly
1500 subscribers to the list, and, to quote: "We have had over 80 new
subscribers to the new group and 9/10's of them added that it was
good to get away from excessive gear talk!"
Firstly, 9/10 of "over 80 new subscribers" is somewhere over 72
people, out of almost 1500 subscribers. That represents about 5% or
so of the total people here. A significant majority? For about the
same effort required to sign up to the new group, they could've got
filters happening, or chosen to get the list sent in digest form, or
asked someone else to show them how to do it. Instead, we now have
two groups with the aim of isolating fieldcraft from gear talk, when
the two ultimately go hand in hand because you can't have one without
the other.
Secondly, surely the new group is way too young to be making such
statements about how good it is to get away from excessive gear talk.
I'll wager that many conversations about fieldcraft will ultimately
lead to someone asking "wow, what a great recording, what microphone
(s) did you use and why?", or "wow, that recording is so quiet, what
preamps did you use and why?" - both of which always lead to
discussions of technology. What happens then? Does someone break in
mid-thread and say, "Oi, blasphemers, that's not allowed here, take
it to the old list"? In 12 months time are we going to see a new
message saying that the old and new lists are being merged together
because they're both populated by the same people discussing the same
things, and some people are finding it hard to keep track of
conversations that started on the new list but had to move to the old
list due to excessive gear talk (or vice versa).
D)Technology has changed, recording gear is becoming more affordable
and amazingly portable, and we have a greater global appreciation of
the natural environment. As a result of these factors, there are more
and more people wanting to make nature recordings. Surely this is a
good thing. Unlike a decade ago, where there wasn't as much
affordable portable technology to choose from, there is now a
bewildering range of products. People want to make the right choices
before they spend their money. Many of them are driven by passion,
but don't have a technical background so they come here asking for
help. Discussions of fieldcraft are absolutely fantastic and
priceless, but without recording equipment they are meaningless -
there's no point knowing where to put the microphone if you don't
have one! So it is only natural for people to ask about the gear they
need (tech talk), before they start discussing how to use it
(fieldcraft). One leads to another, and it begins with having the
right gear. As many of the newcomers take advice from here and buy
their own gear and start making recordings, they'll start asking
about fieldcraft... And then where do they go?
Apologies in advance if I've put any noses out of joint. I'll be
joining up to the new group anyway, because I don't want to miss a
single thing here. Also, with Gmail and digest messages, it will
probably make no difference except double the amount of incoming
messages.
Bother...
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