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Re: Unhappy unsubscriber

Subject: Re: Unhappy unsubscriber
From: "Martyn Stewart" mijdog2000
Date: Wed May 28, 2008 3:16 pm ((PDT))
For me personally, this is where it gets boring, what will be will be, those
who are happy with the present situation don't have to migrate from where
they feel comfortable. I am happy to be among both groups without having to
write a 1000 word e-mail. Some people are happy with their e-mail systems
and don't want to go to G-Mail, I for one am happy with the way it is. Let's
just move on, please.....

 

Martyn

****************************************

Martyn Stewart

Bird and Animal Sounds Digitally Recorded at:

http://www.naturesound.org

Redmond. Washington. USA

N47.65543 W121.98428

e-mail: 

Tel: 425-898-0462

Make every Garden a wildlife Habitat!

*****************************************

  _____  

From: 
 On Behalf Of Greg Simmons
Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2008 3:02 PM
To: 
Subject: Re: [Nature Recordists] Unhappy unsubscriber

 

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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