I concur with Andy’s statements. This list has traditionally been for discusion of vintage computing, but also computing in general and other loosely related science/technology/engineering topics. If it occasionally sounds like a club it’s because there are people here are passionate about the subjects and have been around and known each other for a long time. This means that they are comfortable debating all sorts of topics that may be not razor-focused on vintage tech. Personally, I learn a lot from the varied discussions. They occasionally veer off-track, but are generally self correcting. Regards, Dean On Wed, Jul 21, 2021 at 11:52 AM Andrew Diller via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Hello-
On Jul 21, 2021, at 10:25 AM, Crawford Griffith via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Alex,
Hey, I’m trying to decide if I should sound off on this…. The VCF-midatlantic mail list seems to achieved a sort-of milestone. I got an entire daily digest of non-vintage content. I thought this list was for announcing VCF events? Or at least Vintage related?
This list is for general VCF / vintage talk and discussion. As current membership is very loosely defined, currently the only definition of a member of VCF is that you are a subscriber to _this_ list. I hope that you feel like you can participate for almost any reason- esp if you feel like something isn't going the way it should.
There is another, announce only list you may be thinking of that the VCF Board runs - as I'm not on the Board (I'm a member of the VCF Mid-Atlantic Steering Committee) I'm not exactly sure what that Board list is used for.
But this list is hopefully a resource for like-minded people to talk about general vintage issues, problems, questions.. and printers.
A little context: I really think communities should stay on topic, or they will start losing the interest of their members. If someone comes in new, and sees a community just blathering on, especially off-topic, it seems like just an exclusive clique. I am a big fan of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). When you get to SNR ‘divide by zero’ error, we lose people silently who just drop away, and the Foghorn Leghorns stay on and make it worse. I’ve seen entire corporate email infrastructures crushed by reply-all storms, so I am a bit sensitive to misuse of emails and un-necessarily broadband communication.
My personal feeling is that this list stays on topic very well, and even if it veers off every once in a while it's for good reasons. Refurbing printer rollers is really closer to our vintage wheelhouse than many many many other topics.
I’ve thought several times to ask Bruce to step in and state some rules / principles of the list. I would gladly help draft this, if it would help.
Do you mean Brace, as in Jeff Brace? If so, he is here.
Please let me know what you think.
Thanks, Crawford
-andy diller VCF Steering Cmte Member