Re: Noteworthy newsgroup?
Reply #3 –
G'day MusicJohn,
can't answer that mate... Actually, I've never even really noticed it. Perhaps you've been around longer than me.
I don't even know how I came to learn of the News Group anymore but I was active there before I started using the forum...
I do know that the Forum seems to be more general in it's orientation. I mean that the issues dealt with here seem to be more varied and cater to newer users more so than does the News Group.
On the other hand, the News Group seems to deal with more esoteric aspects of the product and provides a place where works can be submitted for peer review. This is especially important for a number of reasons:
- The work may be incomplete - who wants an unfinished project making the rounds - might make you look bad
- The work may be for personal development and its source still under copyright thus making it unpublishable. Peer review is still important.
- The notator may be having particular difficulty with a passage and seeking assistance.
- As the limited nature of the NG membership virtually guarantees that "ratbags" do not attend, any critiques are polite, to the point and never rude.
Further to that last point, I've never found that the kind of childish carry-on you see in many forums has occurred here. Though you may recall that one of the motivating forces for the introduction of this new forum software was the almost totally (to management) anonymous nature of submissions which allowed a very few people to start to become a bit obnoxious. This was effectively nipped in the bud for which I am very grateful.
Both this forum and the News Group are pleasant places to visit and I usually keep a window open on both whenever I'm on either my office PC or my home office PC (helps when you own the company, no one to go crook!)
One other point about the NG, it seems to attract the more dedicated users. Not absolutely mind you, there are many dedicated and helpful users subscribed to this forum who never visit the NG and vice versa. I am also aware of a few people who cannot seem to access one or the other due to technical difficulties with their chosen ISP.
One other point, if you are an NWC2 user then you will almost certainly be aware of the user tool feature. Almost all the user tools you see were submitted for beta testing on the NG long before they were made available to the more general user base.
Similarly the font suites that I did so much work on were around in the NG for MANY beta versions LOOONNGG before they were ever announced in this forum. My reasons for that was that I wanted a more numerically limited group with a higher general level of NWC competence and a proven ability to critique having access to them during the development phase. This meant that I wasn't swamped with elementary questions like "How do I install this thing?" or "How do I update this thing?" or "How do I use it?", all the time as the users all got told that together and I didn't have swathes of new comers going through the same process over and over.
This is not a criticism of members of this forum, it simply recognises that the NG is a more limited access location. I might add that search engines do NOT have access to the NG so what goes on there is not published to the world.
Hmm, I think that's enough waffle...
Topic: Noteworthy newsgroup? (Read 8300 times)
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