One of the first rug discussion boards on the web, and (I think) the only surviving unmoderated board, is Peter Shihadeh's NewsGroup of Oriental Rugs. http://www.orientalrugs.com/disc11_frm.htm
This venue was long the battleground for the most strenous foodfights in Rugdom, with too many pseudonyms to count. It suffered from buggy software, changed to a different software package which turned out to be buggier still, and now gets little activity. I think that's a shame, in a way, although I believe that unmoderated boards generally don't work because they allow the morons to drive out the majority of constructive contributors. Grownups just don't want to play with adolescents.

Regards,

Steve Price

Your thoughts about unmoderated boards are interesting. I think I share your basic views. There should be a place where new people can go to ask questions.

And can be times when unmoderated boards work fairly well. Rug Notes had days when it was, in fact, doing useful things.

Two things seem to me likely to overwhelm unmoderated boards.

First, folks with more experience do get weary with the "I just bought an 8'X10' Indo-Bijar for $2300. Did I pay too much?" or "I'm going next week to Istanbul. Will someone give me the names and addresses of reputable dealers there who are selling world class pieces at bargain prices?" questions.

But worse are those who are insistent on sabatoge of various sorts.

One of the interesting things to me about Turkotek's experience is how well the "salon" format has worked both to screen out repetitive "newby" questions (I don't think, Steve, you have to delete many off-topic posts, do you?) but also how it works sometimes provide the somewhat more serious exchanges about rugs to which we aspire.

Regards,

R. John Howe

A discussion board for folks who want to get answers to questions that do not interest collectors doesn't have to be unmoderated. Rug Fanatics at http://www.egroups.com/list/rug-fanatics
is nicely moderated but accomodates such questions. Iain Stewart does a service to the community by running it. I don't know a single unmoderated board (in any area of interest) that operates at what we might think of as an adult level.

Most moderated boards have messages go to the moderator, who decides whether to post them. We don't do that. If a message gets posted and violates our requirements, I delete it. That probably doesn't happen more than once every few months. Now and then a newcomer will post something using a nickname like "bubbajim" instead of an actual name. When these people provide an e-mail address - and most of them do - I send a note explaining our rules or asking for a name, which I then enter by editing the message. It's very little bother for me.

Yes, Rugnotes did do some useful things. Is that supposed to justify the rest? Since it is now off the web, the issue is, fortunately, moot.

Regards,

Steve Price

I once posted a message about decent behaviour on Rugnotes. It got deleted within 24 hours.
One month later they turned the plug out.
Justice is still around. I didn't save the email I received from the operator. "He wished me a good live"..........That's something he got right..all the way.

Best regards,
Vincent

Re: my comment on the now deceased RugNotes. I said nothing about "justifying the rest." I merely mentioned it as a site that was mostly not moderated and on which some useful discussions were from time to time mounted.

Lots of folks, some, even in this discussion, clearly don't know the rest of what went on. I mentioned it only in the context of my comment about the problems of unmoderated boards which are as you say nearly always fatal.

I have never looked at the "Rug Fanatics" site and in fact have only been aware of it for perhaps a week.

Regards,

R. John Howe

Wasn't it the first site you went for? The war going on with private emails published in the open? It was a great adventure. How crazy people can get, if they think they are in the center of attention.
I'm glad with Daniel's topic., maybe some more decent sites will show up...but for the moment it's very poor on a worldwide net.
Japan, Europe, Asia, South-America....what do they all do on the internet?

Best regards,
Vincent

Best regards,
Vincent

You are right that we need more variety of perspective and better access to more knowledgeable opinion in our interent rug discussions.

And we do try here. We actively draw in as guest hosts those who post and who look to have interesting new perspectives. And we make efforts to recruit known authorities. But we need more.

One difficulty is that some of the knowledgeable people that we have approached still prefer that their work come out in print media. There seems something less respectable somehow yet about publishing electronically.

And, of course, there's also a spectrum of opinion about the quality of what goes on here. One world authority on oriental rugs, whom I know, once said to me, when I asked if he ever looked in on Turkotek, that he did sometimes, but that he wondered "why a group of people who knew relatively little about oriental rugs would want to spend so much time talking about them in public."

So there is a vein of opinion that feels that our conversations here are usually not quite "worthy" and display publicly (and perhaps with an unmerited prentension) a too modest level of knowledge to justify such publication. A group of Michael Franses wannabees who are not quite up to the mark and who don't really know it. (These folks appear mostly to exchange smiles of quiet condecension about us.)

My colleagues have suggested to me that this view does not require a response, since we mount these discussions here primarily for our own enjoyment and that, while we would like the information and opinion we exchange to also be mostly accurate and sometimes modestly useful, we make no claims to be authoritative. So I've reluctantly put away all the purple passages (excepting a few of those above) I'd rather too enjoyably crafted for such a response.

And of course some of the names you mentioned are beyond reach. Mr. Schurmann, has I believe been dead for a number of years. And while we should be rather fully open to alternative views, I would not look forward to a Gantzhorn salon. Greg Koos has suggested on the side that I may misread Gantzhorn's central claim and so perhaps I am in error in that regard.

But there are knowledeable and interested folks, who have not yet or recently hosted salons, whom we should actively recruit to do so. A side conversation on precisely this subject goes on at the moment among the Turkotek management group.

Any thoughts from anyone about how to expand our host resources?

Regards,

R. John Howe

Your mention of the absence of many of the recognized experts from web venues is accurate, and one that I believe will eventually change. The criticism of our discussions that you heard, ... people who knew relatively little about oriental rugs ... spend so much time talking about them in public misses an important element, though. It is that much of what is of interest to rug collectors has to do with fields like linguistics, anthropology, ethnography, physics, chemistry, psychology, museum administration, other arts, crafts, economics, history, etc., etc., etc. We do, in fact, get contributions from people with genuine expertise in all those areas, and they sometimes lead to what any reasonable person might call progress in understanding of rugs.

One enormous advantage of the web compared to print media is that people of many fields can interact and can do so almost instantaneously. More rug experts would be welcome additions, of course, but I think it is a mistake to underestimate the value of people with varied expertise engaging in mutual education through public debate.

Regards,

Steve Price

You needn't convince me.

The center of the response I had planned to write, was to be that while I would acknowledge that you cannot get "rich" by pooling complete "poverty," I thought that was not quite our situation or our strategy.

That a group of even modestly knowlegeable but very interested rug and textile enthusiasts, with access to reasonable personal rug libraries and a few scanners, could rather effectively leverage their knowledge of rugs in electronic interchange.

And I think that happens here from time to time. Reasonably exprienced people have actually learned things.

And you're certainly right about the potential for drawing in an even wider circle of relevant, and not ungrounded perspectives, than is achieved in, say, most rug conferences, as a result of our operation in this medium.

Our critics may have to think again, if in a few years, we are not only still around, but decide to invade their turf a bit by bringing out a blockbuster book entitled, "Fifty Great Salons from Turkotek."

Jerry Silverman will write a humble, self-effacing introduction. Maybe, Vincent will do a visually arresting cover.

Regards,

R. John Howe

I think instead of a book, we should produce a multimedia CD. Vincent would do graphics for the introductions to each section, of course, Jerry the copy on the jacket, Sophia the cover design, and Richard might be willing to provide musical backgrounds with an oratorio here and there.

Steve Price

If we go that way, CD's are already a bit passe.

For our computer-based deliveries, we're already moving away from CDs towards the web.

There are firms that offer "portal" services. One can avoid entirely having to "burn" the CDs and a second edition is simply put up on the web for downloading (after payment, mind you).

By the time we get there it's likely to be different yet.

Small problem: Why would someone purchase in an edited version what they can currently get
comprehensively for free?

Maybe Vincent's right. Commerce is best avoided. I moved too quickly thinking of a snappy rejoinder for our detractors.

Regards,

R. John Howe

You mean we'll make money on it? Let's get started!

Steve Price

Barry O'Connell, the former operator of RugNotes, is again operating a rug board:
http://forums.topresult.com/Barry/wwwboard.sht
It seems to be "under the radar", as it does not show up on a couple of search engines I tried and has not got a lot of posts yet.

Patrick Weiler