Wiardgroup

My 2 cents:

You need to have a really good notch filter AND a
thick skin to get useful info or participate in
Internet discussions, epecially if you are a
manufacturer. There are still many people that vendors
should be booted off all discussions as a matter of
course. Random musings follow...

a) When trying to get "honest opinions", it can be a
whipping. Case in point: www.carpoint.com that has 10s
of thousands of car opinions. If you are in market for
a car, and start reading, you quickly realize all
posts are either-

1) "This is the best car I've ever owned!"
2) "This is the most awful car I've ever owned!"

and the split is about 65% good to 35% bad for EVERY
CAR. So overall the site is pointless. YOu cannot
derive a judgement based on what is posted. All you
can hope for is some overall "feeling". But it's NO
DIFFERENT that movie opinions or record reviews.

This is true for EVERYTHING: cars, digital cameras,
DVD player, synths, etc. What an interest group IS
good for is to answers to a specific question that is
NOT BASED on opinion (such as, 'How many waveforms
does the LFO have?')

Note, in the music groups, there are different
'rules'. The first thing to remember is that many
musicians are not 'analytical critical' as say a group
of EEs discussing microwave transmitters. There is a
definite overall understanding that just about any
piece of gear is musically useful. And, since there is
no formal definition of exactly what constitutes a
'musician', it's difficult if not impossible to
discuss much of anything without ruffling a few
feathers.

b) Internet groups have replaced recreational reading
(so long, Steven King). In a way, it's like the
overhyped "interactive TV" that we were all supposed
to have now (along with flying cars). And just like
TV, you have to have a little comedy, a little pathos
and some drama to keep it interesting. So people feel
that it is their duty to inject such emotions in all
discussions (the 'fights' on the synth discussions are
a cake walk compared to the ones on my wife's
needlepoint group and any religious-based group).

c) Every group has it's traffic cop and it's
over-corrector. They are useful roles but most
over-correctors don't know when to apply moderation
("Tsk Tsk! I'm pretty sure you *meant* to say the
Ferrari 365GT has a 0.021 plug gap, not 0.42 as you
said. <moron!!>)

d) Then there are the trolls. I feel blesssed as I
seem to have my own personal trolls. However, I have
now decided to pretty much ignore trolls (well, unless
it's late at night and I'm REALLY bored).

e) Are good synth suggestions gleamed from public
forums? Yes, but it's like mining diamonds (10 tons of
earth moved per carat). 

Paul S.


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