"Jim Charter" <jrc### [at] msncom> schreef in bericht 
news:49359573$1@news.povray.org...
> What you say makes some sense, that a group is composed of individuals so 
> you can't build the momentum of a collaborative group without the 
> contributions of individuals, and so ultimately it comes down to the 
> decision of each individual to contribute or not.
>
> I remember I thought the wiki idea had some exciting potential. For me it 
> stemmed from the sense of flexibility and scalability. The promise, it 
> seemed to me, was there would be a readymade place to build, say, a 
> tutorial, or have a conversation around some technique, that would make it 
> easy to do, similar to how blogging servers make things easy.
>
> I know what discouraged me early on was the unfortunate security issues 
> and apparent vandalisation. It led to the feeling that work put into a 
> tutorial, say, could be vandalised.   I know that techical people around 
> here did a good job of nipping the problem but it sent a chill.
>
> Now of course I would also be fighting time constraints along with the 
> realization that my own work, technically, has fallen even father behind 
> the leading edge of what is going on here.  But I still love the idea of 
> metaphorically speaking, being able to walk into a room with a chalkboard 
> available, and have a converation with a you or a Thomas De Groot, or 
> Steve Piaget, and be able to quickly illustrate what we mean as easily as 
> if drawing on a slate.
>
> Also I think it might prove worthwhile to try and analyze what the 
> newsgroup format offers that has given it such lasting success here.
>

To start with your last comment, I believe that the lasting success is 
certainly due to the unrelenting dedication to the povray matter of each and 
every individual posting on these newsgroups. That is not as obvious as it 
seems apparently, many newsgroups sooner or later degrade into uninteresting 
blah blah. We do not, and surprisingly, all newcomers take over the 
unofficial standards that have been set or have grown over the years. 
Another point of success certainly is also the fast, friendly, and expert 
responses people are getting to their questions. For all those years I am 
visiting these newsgroups, I am still always deeply impressed by all those 
high standard contributions given freely and in good humour. Let me make use 
of the opportunity to suggest a big applause to all of you, and especially 
to those who always know the answer to the whole range of simple to 
difficult matters. I won't cite names here as I am afraid to forget too many 
of you, but you all can fill in a long list of Masters and especially 
Teachers.

On a more technical level (of which I know much less about) these newsgroups 
apparently are not too much troubled by outside enemical influences. That is 
excellent. I don't know why that is, or how (some filtering? good 
monitoring?) I am rather a lay person about that. However, the fact that the 
wiki is more exposed to the outside and has to be protected forcibly is a 
sad development which does not make its use easier. So, I suppose that 
people are going mainly to the newsgroups for their information, even if 
that means that older information is more difficult to find again, which 
results sometimes in re-inventing the wheel several times in a number of 
cases. Still, the wiki idea is excellent and should be propagated further. I 
confess that I often forget to have a look at its pages.

Thomas

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