OFFICIAL POLL: SEPARATE OFF-TOPIC FORUM?

[blackhawk]

Now if we could just count the votes of all those who have left C&F because of all the OT posting.

[Walden]

Now if we could just count the votes of all those who have left C&F because of all the OT posting.

Good point. Somebody start a poll at G.C.

[Flyingcursor]

I voted separate forum. Maybe we should have a forum for those who want a separate forum and another for those who don't.

I've been to several other boards and the OT forums usually worked quite well, unlike Vomitbunny's experience.

[bozemanhc]

I have visited this forum almost every day for over two years, but seldom post. At first, I was mostly interested in whistle information, but as I have played whistle more and learned more, I seem to have fewer on-topic questions and yet I have enjoyed reading most OT threads and becoming familiar with the personalities of the frequent posters.

I wonder if some of the more seasoned whistlers are visiting the site less because of the large number of OT topics or because they have less to discuss that is on topic. For them, so much of the basic information has been discussed that there isn't that much left to talk about. Of course, there will always be new people who want to know what whistle to buy etc. and there will continue to be topics of interest to the whistle community, but the volume of this information will be small compared to the large number of off topic subjects being discussed here today.

Will a separate OT forum change this dynamic? I think not. At least, I think the ratio of OT to on-topic posts will remain about the same. As long as people label their OT posts as such, it should be easy to go straight to the on topic posts for those who wish to do so.

So much for my opinion.

[Wanderer]

I've noticed something reading this thread and the one Loren started...a lot of people who agree with the new forum in principle think that this forum should stay OT and we should start a new whistle-topical forum.

Kind of make it self-evident where the focus of this one is, doesn't it? Socializing and hanging out with friends, rather than whistle discussion. Please understand that I'm not against those things. But I think the fact that people already view this as "the OT hangout" is in and of itself a mighty powerful argument for having a seperate topical forum for whistles.

[GaryKelly]

So much indeed for your opinion Howard, which I share. Valid points one and all, and well made.

I'd suggest that the vast majority of "on topic" posts fall into the "What whistle should I buy?" category, with the usual opinions offered in response.

Then come the more technical playing-related questions, like "How do I play a cut? What's a roll?" Which are mostly all very well covered in the nowadays abundant and readily available tutor-books and CDs/DVDs on the market.

Then there are requests for tunes, which are normally greeted by 'learn by ear, it's the best way.' Which of course it is.

After that, there are manufacturing questions from those wishing to make their own whistles, technical questions in respect of conical Vs cylindrical bore, wooden whistles, keyed whistles, keys, and musicology.

After that, well, there ain't much more to be said about a bit of pipe with six holes in it. You just have to get on and play the thing.

The nicest thing about this board I think is the fact that it's a place where folks who share perhaps only one common interest can gather and learn about pretty much everything, including the humble whistle. And usually discover to their surprise that they have, after all, more than just one common interest.

[dwinterfield]

I'm comfortable with it the way it is now. I always enter the board through the new items since last visit search. Pipes, flutes, whistles etc all mixed in together. I scroll through and check any topic, probably about 50/50 music or OT. It's the easy access to diverse topics that makes it interesting. Even if there was a seperate OT forum, I'd still enter the board the same way. If anything, and I don;t know how you might fix this, I'd like more precise Subject lines. Also, I'd discourage threads that run on to many pages and shift topic. I'm interested in political/cultural/religious topics but it's often too tedious to read through the last several pages of posts to finds today's topic.

[TomB]

[quote="talasiga
Dale, like everyone else, can start OTs. Thats fine. No probs there.
And indeed an OT topic that Dale started is
the most popular topic on board (albeit I do not participate in it)


However, unlike everyone else, Dale can make a topic STICKY which is what he did with the above topic. That, I think, set a subtle but pretty strong direction for OT topics. Whether or not they were prolific before I do not know, but you betcha, when there is a Moderator initiated OT that the Moderator has made into a STICKY, it will be likely to encourage more OT topics.[/quote]

Tal, are you saying that having the STICKY encourages the topic to live? I would have to disagree with your view, on that.

The political topic is one that a fair number of folks were interested in, and since so many posts were being made, it was at the top of the post list anyway. Dale simply made it a STICKY in response to its "popularity"-or lack thereof with other folks.

If you take a look, you'll notice that a great majority of the folks who frequent the board, do not post there- I assume it's because they have no interest in doing so. Those so inclined, get to discuss topics relating to religion and politics without bugging those not interested.

All the Best, Tom

Edited because my original post may have been harsh, based upon my probable mis-understanding of Tal's post.

Apologies to Tal, and to anyone who felt I was out of line.

[TomB]

Now if we could just count the votes of all those who have left C&F because of all the OT posting.

Good point. Somebody start a poll at G.C.

Well, GC is the place for them, and this is the place for us.

I say leave it alone, I love how it works now. I don't post whistle stuff, because I don't have anything to say, because I get to play infrequently, and basically, I suck at it, so who the heck would want my opinion.

Still, I learn a lot of whistle related info, find out about different folks to listen to, cd's, etc.

I also learn a lot on the OT topics that interest me. If they don't interest me, I just ignore them.

Please leave it the way it is.

All the Best, Tom

[Martin Milner]

Dale, like everyone else, can start OTs. Thats fine. No probs there.
And indeed an OT topic that Dale started is
the most popular topic on board (albeit I do not participate in it)


However, unlike everyone else, Dale can make a topic STICKY which is what he did with the above topic. That, I think, set a subtle but pretty strong direction for OT topics. Whether or not they were prolific before I do not know, but you betcha, when there is a Moderator initiated OT that the Moderator has made into a STICKY, it will be likely to encourage more OT topics.

Tal, that is just ridiculous. I participate in the STICKY topic that you are speaking of, but I do it when I'm feel I have something to say. Dale has not ever come to my house, stuck a gun, (or big whistle), to my head and forced me into the conversation. If you take a look, you'll notice that the great majority of the folks who frequent the board, do NOT post on that thread.

If you want to complain about Dale, do it elsewhere, not in a thread that he began as a way to change the board. If you have something salient to say on the topic, say it.

All the Best, Tom

Tom, I think that's a bit harsh. I don't read Talasiga was complaining about Dale, just saying that having a gigantic OT thread stuck at the top of the board may encourage other OT posts to be generated.

The idea of the sticky, btw, Talasiga, was to keep all the political and religious badinage limited to one thread, because at times you could find half the front page comsisting of OT political and religious threads. In that regard, it has worked well.

[TomB]

Dale, like everyone else, can start OTs. Thats fine. No probs there.
And indeed an OT topic that Dale started is
the most popular topic on board (albeit I do not participate in it)


However, unlike everyone else, Dale can make a topic STICKY which is what he did with the above topic. That, I think, set a subtle but pretty strong direction for OT topics. Whether or not they were prolific before I do not know, but you betcha, when there is a Moderator initiated OT that the Moderator has made into a STICKY, it will be likely to encourage more OT topics.

Tal, that is just ridiculous. I participate in the STICKY topic that you are speaking of, but I do it when I'm feel I have something to say. Dale has not ever come to my house, stuck a gun, (or big whistle), to my head and forced me into the conversation. If you take a look, you'll notice that the great majority of the folks who frequent the board, do NOT post on that thread.

If you want to complain about Dale, do it elsewhere, not in a thread that he began as a way to change the board. If you have something salient to say on the topic, say it.

All the Best, Tom

Tom, I think that's a bit harsh. I don't read Talasiga was complaining about Dale, just saying that having a gigantic OT thread stuck at the top of the board may encourage other OT posts to be generated.

The idea of the sticky, btw, Talasiga, was to keep all the political and religious badinage limited to one thread, because at times you could find half the front page comsisting of OT political and religious threads. In that regard, it has worked well.

Martin: I didn't mean to be harsh- well, ok, I guess I did, but only in response to what I thought was a harsh comment. I'll go back and edit my post, though, as your interpretation may be more correct.

Apologies to anyone offended.

All the Best, Tom

[jbarter]

The idea of the sticky, btw, Talasiga, was to keep all the political and religious badinage limited to one thread, because at times you could find half the front page comsisting of OT political and religious threads. In that regard, it has worked well.

How about a sticky 'All Things Whistley' thread? That way those who are only interested in whistle stuff would never have to look further than the top of page one.

[Redwolf]

I was thinking last night that having a "socialization" board (or "pub," or whatever you choose to call it) might have the advantage of bringing in people who normally post only on, say, the flute or pipes forums...people who might not normally come to this board because they think of it as "the whistle board." I don't know how many people there are who post only on the specialty boards, but I do know that on the few occasions when I visit those other boards, I see unfamiliar names. Might be a way of fostering relations among a more diverse population.

Redwolf

[Wombat]

I voted to keep it as is but, for the first time, I seriously considered voting for change. I agree with Loren that something should be done, but favour self-censorship. By that I mean that, outside of the dedicated Political and Religious thread and perhaps a dedicated Giggle thread like the Cutie Pie number, perhaps we could resolve to keep at least half our posts on topic and resolve not to post much if we can't. I don't mean we should get really self-conscious about this; I'm just suggesting that this might work better than separation.

I've noticed a few changes from when I first joined that might be pertinent.

We now don't seem to have the cyclically recurring threads redoing pet topics. No longer do we get threads that should have been called 'Chiff, take 245' or 'Return of the Great Grandson of My Favourite Whistle.' Is this really a bad thing? A couple of times I've tried to do quirky variations on these things but they always just turned back immediately into the straightforward original.

On topic threads don't even seem to get read a lot of the time. I'm talking about musical threads not the highly technical makers threads. I don't just mean that people don't follow them. I mean that, judging from the number of hits they are getting, most people here aren't even having one quick look out of curiosity. Then look at the number of hits the flame war nearby is generating.

Recently I did quite a bit of internet research and came up with a list of inprint kwela recordings about twice as long as the one we usually get, including news of the first CD 'various artists' compilation of vintage tracks. Whistle news? Well, you would think so wouldn't you? I think I got one reply. The thread was hijacked and killed off by some personal stuff that soon moved to other threads. It's no big deal; when kwela gets mentioned again I'll repost the information. But it did make me wonder about priorities, mine as well as other people's.

My reason for not voting for change was that this forum is special and the mix of topics is part of what makes it special. Here are two considerations. First, what happens to theoretical questions about music and talk about Celtic lite music that isn't appropriate for the ITM board but is of great interest to many people on the whistle board? This stuff isn't specifically about whistles but would not be regarded as requiring to be tagged OT at present. Where does it go?

Second, merely having everything on topic is no guarantee that a board will be worth reading. Recently, while seeking some technical information about guitar picking, I landed on a guitar notice board. The first thing I noticed is that many contributers had well over 10,000 posts to their names. I really landed on the thread I read because of a google accident, but I found myself watching a discussion of whether Jimmy Page plays a certain Led Zep song with pick and fingers or just fingers. The discussion went a bit like this:

Thrashmeister: Page plays it with pick and fingers but I play it fingerstyle. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay Led Zep.

Guitarnerd: Page plays it with pick and fingers but I play it fingerstyle. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay Hendrix.

Fretdork: Page plays it with pick and fingers but I play it fingerstyle. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay Vai.

ditto ditto ditto ..............

Deadheadshredder: Thanks everyone. Very helpful. I guess Page plays it with pick and fingers but I should try it fingerstyle.
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay Clapton.

Now, everything on that thread was on topic. I came rushing back here.

[jsluder]

So if the pub is created we'll have to have a naming contest.

"The Chiff & Fipple" already sounds like a pub name. Why not create a "Whistle Forum", and rename this one to "The Chiff & Fipple: A Poststructural Pub"?