Digital BW, The Print

Now, please, let this virtual room come to order! <s> 

When a thousand-some people come together under one "roof" there's bound 
to be thread drifts and personality conflicts.When we started this list we chose 
not to intervene in truly "moderating" these discussions, partly because it's just 
not practical and partly because we trust that common sense will prevail.

While I appreciate the "legal" defense of our group definition (thanks Austin!), I 
also appreciate that some thread drift is unavoidable: Yes, black and white 
prints come from lenses who come from  Japan or Germany, etc etc.  What I 
am hoping to see is the development of a self-sustaining community that 
sticks to the topic of making bw prints by digital methods, but also feels at 
home exchanging a few off-topic messages just because everybody knows 
everybody else and it's easier to ask your "cyber-friends". 

Here is a problem, however, that we can't really do anything about and should 
keep in mind: As topics drift sometimes, someone who comes to visit the 
group, especially for the first time, sees a bunch of messages unrelated to the 
list topic and feels discouraged, or confounded. That's a legitimate issue and 
comes mostly because of the pathetic (non)threading software that Yahoo 
uses. If you ever join Compuserve, you can instantly see the thread topics as 
one line and choose if you want to participate or not. Not here. So, maybe the 
thing to do is be sensitive to that and take some discussions on emails off-list.

The other common issue for all lists is that a majority of members join only to 
have their questions answered.  Sometimes you get an answer, sometimes 
not, other times you learn something new that you wouldn't know to ask. 
That's the nature of this beast, it seems. The best remedy to thread drift: start 
an on-topic thread; ask a question, post some new and helpful info... see what 
happens. It's impossible to have expectations of the kind you would of paid 
tech support, for example. It's just a large town square and  you have to bring 
your own soap box! 

Please understand that even though we, as moderators, check to make sure 
things are working OK and there are no spams and the like, we can't be here 
day-to-day to resolve flame wars, major thread drifts and such.  I hope you, the 
list "community" will take care of that as it seems you just did.

Antonis