In our early discussions amongst the Turkotek "owner/managment" group, we searched for ways to have conversations about rugs that would be a little more serious than that we had experienced on unmoderated boards.

I cannot remember precisely who first suggested the "salon" device. Perhaps Jerry Silverman, demonstrating that creative thinking does occur, even in the rather remote village of Chicago. Or it may have been Steve Price. Or it may have been the product of an especially rich instance of Hegelian-like dialectic struck up between them.

The salon device, to rehearse for some readers, is a device used in Europe and perhaps in some more elevated levels of cultural society in the U.S. during the 19th century, in which a host, would invite some guests into his or home for a discussion of some topic, a reading, perhaps of some work in progress or for a musical performance of some sort. The host would introduce the night's salon, the salon discussion or performance would take place, and at its end, the host would sum up, perhaps even providing a critique of some sort.

We decided to adopt a version of this salon device. Every two weeks a new host would offer a topic in an introductory essay and invite an Internet discussion. At the end of the two weeks, the host would summarize the discussion and the entire salon would be archived for possible future reference.

I remember, personally reacting a bit to the fancy French name we gave it. As I said in my introduction, this is the 74th salon to date.

In this thread I want to invite an examination of the salon device and to ask how folks think it has worked to produce the more serious conversations to which we aspired.

I would like to hear about aspects of it that might sometimes work against useful discussion, as well as thoughts about favorable effects that it has produced.

I have my own view, which I will share at some point but I am asking others to give their views first, so that I do not "contaminate," so to speak, the information I would like to collect on this question.

Regards,

R. John Howe

When I first saw the word "salon" it seemed like an affectation--a chat room gussied up in black tie--but I thought that might be because it was devoted to what, for most of the rest of the world, is a highly esoteric topic. But it has actually turned out to be a virtual equivalent of what I imagine a good 18th or 19th Century Salon to have been.

Turkotek is a unique phenomenon: a good-natured, but ultimately serious symposium that leaves a record we can all refer to. (And that includes the experts who sneak a clandestine look at the site.) It is the sort of forum/clearing house for substantive exchanges for which the internet seems to have been created.

To me, two aspects set Turkotek apart from other sites: its strictly non-commercial nature (the true source of its integrity) and Steve's adamant enforcement of the ad hominem prohibition. These make it an extraordinary site where expert and neophyte can participate without fear of getting onto a telemarketer's e-mail list or of suffering sarcastic remarks from an educated peanut gallery. The only requirement seems to be a high pain threshold for excruciating puns.

As for encouraging participation, I think that is happening naturally. I note new names all the time, especially in the Show and Tell portion. The hard part is choosing topics that interest everyone, especially new collectors who have fewer and fewer opportunities to acquire the currently fashionable pieces (e.g., Turkmen, Caucasian, Shahsavan,and 19th century tribal weavings). It might be worthwhile trying to have some Salons devoted to more recent--1950's to 1970's--tribal and semi-nomadic pieces that a collector of modest means could acquire. For example,there seem to be quite a few flatwoven chuvals and torbas from Eastern Turkey, as well as various Uzbek and Afghan weavings from that period appearing on internet auction sites at affordable prices. They may not all suit the ultra refined tastes that specialized collectors of a certain age develop over time, but they may well be the rage of equivalent collectors in the mid 21st century.

In short, Turkotek's Salon format has worked beautifully. Please keep the Salons coming.

Best regards to all,
Ken

You're right about "Salon" being an affectation. Our hope was that it would sound stuffy enough to suggest that good manners were appropriate, but not so stuffy that it would run people off. One of our major concerns when we set this up was that so many internet discussion boards degenerate into adolescent food fights. That makes them kind of fun to read, but it keeps many of the more serious (mature?) people out of it - some simply refuse to participate in that kind of atmosphere.

We've had a few Salons on modern production, and would be happy to run more. The topics are chosen by the authors; we don't try to dictate them (it wouldn't work if we did try).

We ought to do one on rug puns some time. The last public display of a textile pun in a generally serious venue that I can recall was a Textile Museum Convention about Central Asia some years back, in which the official title was something like, "Central Asia - Wild and Rugged".

Regards,

Steve Price

Not to get hopelessly lost in an aside here about puns but the worst TM pun I've heard so far was fashioned by Michael Seidman and Ed Zimmerman (for awhile they tried to make up the worst one they could think of for their yearly rug morning). It was...

Are you ready?

"Ersari? You Needn't Be."

Regards,

R. John Howe

Heriz my contribution:
You pays your money, you Tekke your chances.

Patrick Weiler

An American Turkmen collector
Got stopped by an airport inspector.
"What's that in your juval?"
"Don't worry at all, pal.
My motifs are purer than Hector"

Steve Price

I knew it was dangerous to lunch off Ken's pun comment in his very on-target post above, but back to the question of how the salon device has worked.

Let me begin to reveal my own views.

I think one of its main virtues is that it provides very useful focus.

I think it is hard to over-estimate how well this feature works to make our conversations here (usually) closer to the more serious sort to which we aspire, than is likely on an unmoderated board that hasn't this structural tack.

In my field, we spend a lot of time trying to "milk" out of expert practitioners of some job, how they do particular aspects of it and what "rules" they follow to guide and to evaluate this "doing." One of the problem such practitioners have in this effort is that they know a great deal, and need a kind of "clotheline," if you will, to use to determine what aspects of their expertise to share with us.

We'll say to a claims examiner, "What's are the "modal" cases you encounter in this area?" What's difficult about them? What mistakes is a person working with them for the first time likely to make?

Each of these questions gives the practitioner a way of sorting through what they know and of providing us what we need to build simulated practice experiences for learners. If you let an expert practitioner without such a structure they will tend to philosophize, usually about marginal but interesting cases.

The salon topic is such a ''clothesline." It functions to let each of us know what part of what we know and/or are interested in, with regard to rugs and textiles, is likely relevant to a given discussion.

It lets us (often challenges us) to sort through our experience for something useful that's related and maybe even to re-think something that we thought we had previously sorted out for sure.

I think the focus provided by the salon topic has an influence on our conversations here that is very sanguine indeed.

Regards,

R. John Howe

I don't like the final line, either. My excuse is that I did it the thing in 5 minutes, before 7:00 in the morning (as if you couldn't tell that from reading it!).

Steve PRice

The Salon concept has the merit of establishing a focus, keeping the comments on track, providing a baseline for exploring these specific concepts and, in the long run, maintaining interest due to the changing nature of the various topics (although with a particular subject - rugs and weavings).

Some slower computers take longer to load lots of pictures. This makes things seem a bit ponderous when there are a lot of photos on one page. Some steps were taken in the Topic page to lighten this burden a bit, which helps. More pictures are generally better when talking about rugs, in my estimation.

Many potential Turko-posters do not have the time or motivation to find some way to scan or download photos to contribute. Even with two weeks it can be too short to research, organize, photograph, transmit and download a photo to a Salon. (Although the two week time-frame seems adequate for most topics)

The length of some message threads, once they get beyond a dozen or more long posts, can be tedious to open and work through to the end just to read the most recent comments. Some help was afforded by the Next Page feature, but if a way could be found to open only Page Two of a long thread instead of opening Page One and scrolling down and clicking on Page Two, it would speed things up a bit.
Plus, we could skip Steves limerick when this message thread gets long enough for two pages.

Patrick Weiler

Another way in which, I think, the salon device works effectively is that it seems successful in preventing discussion from getting side-tracked continually with the most frequent questions that are asked on unmoderated boards.

I'm talking about such questions as: "I just bought an 8 X 10 Indo-Bijar for $XXX. Did I pay too much? Or, "I'm going to Turkey next week. Can someone tell me the dealers in Istanbul who will sell me world-class rugs at bargain prices?" Or "I bought a rug at a wonderful price from a rug dealer who was going out of business but I have since noticed some problems with it. What can I do?" Etc.

Now these are questions that people new to rugs or people who run into our site while searching for information frequently have. And inexperienced reader of Turkotek cannot help it that he/she has the question(s) they have. All of us were once inexperienced too and many of us may still be closer to that position than we think, but we don't want such questions to continually interfere with the sort of discussions of collectible rugs that we want to have.

The salon device seems to discourage (without punishing) the asking of such questions within its bounds.

Now it is a separate question of whether we might not have some responsibility to less experienced folks who come to Turkotek, or even to those who just stumble on to it.

I think that question may deserve a separate thread and I will shortly start one on it.

Regards,

R. John Howe

I can bypass the need for the "Next Page" button by setting the software to display more than 20 messages on a page. The downside to doing so is that it means more images will appear on the page if many of the messages contain images. There are some bad effects that this can cause, particularly to people with limited memory in their computers.

Another approach that people can use is simply to open a new thread instead of continuing and existing one. From time to time I've done this, giving the new thread a title like ,"Whatever the original title was (continued)".

Regards,

Steve Price

What I am suggesting is that on the page before you get to this one, where all of the topics of the Salon are listed by name, you could put:

How Has The Salon Device Worked?...................Page 1
....................................................................Page 2

This would eliminate one from needing to visit page one in order to get to page two. No need to scroll down to the bottom of page one and select the "Next Page >" link.

This would allow Marvin to get to the heart of the conversation more quickly, thereby increasing the length of his postings......well, maybe on second thought

Patrick Weiler

The page you refer to isn't generated by me, but by the software. Maybe if I knew something programming in Perl I could hack the script and make it do this, but it's waaaaay beyond my capability.

Regards,

Steve Price

In order to speed up things, maybe the text could be smaller fontsize, less wide. The images could be created as 5k size, 1/10 of what it is now. If people wish to see the image they can click it. The image shows as a pop-up image. In this way we can reed and look at the image the same time, without scrolling up and down. (My machine stops when I download an image and try to open it with my image software, while still on the net.)
I remember having problems with the archived salon, and the related discussion board. You suggested to open both at the same time and jumping from one to the other. Same could be done with the images/discussion board, if only the fontsize could be diminished.
Left 40% image, right 60% text.
If the server is correct, the image are uploaded already as small files, that allows fast uploading as a pop-up image. (The work has already been done)

While writing this, the fontsize here seems to be much smaller, and I can still read what I'm writing.....I hope.......

Best regards,
Vincent

I'm not sure, but I think the software may already operate in a way that allows you to go directly to a page 2 when there is one.

My experience is that if I go (initially) to page 2 and leave the thread from page 2, that the next time I come into Turkotek, or to the thread, it takes me directly to page 2.

Doesn't this happen for you?

I noticed it happening first when I opened a two-page thread to look at a post on page 1 and found that I was on page 2. I assumed that it was a rebooting problem and did so. When I came back in, I was still on page 2. That's when I decided that the default rule in the software must be that you are brought back to the page you leave on a thread with more than one page.

Regards,

R. John Howe

First, John: The software does exactly what you describe - it brings you to whichever page you were last on when you go to a multi-page thread. At least, it doe this on my computers. I don't know whether this happens with all operating systems and browsers, though. My machines use Windows ME and Internet Explorer 5.

I do have the option of making threds come up with the oldest messages first or with the newest ones first, and I use "oldest first" because that makes most sense to anyone looking at a thread for the first time, and is the most convenient way to view things in an Archived discussion. Unfortunately, the software we are using doesn't let the user select which way he/she wants it to happen. Some software packages do offer that feature, and since UltraBoard (our software ) is now defunct and without technical support, we will probably switch to something else within the next year.

Next, Vincent: What you are suggesting is that images in discussions be put in as thumbnails, along with links to full size images. That is certainly something that can be done, but requires a significant increase in the amount of time I put into posting stuff for people. The most common scenario now goes something like this: I get images by e-mail, usually with the text of the message. I begin by downloading the images, then I edit them for size (many are two or three screens wide) and for file size (many are hundreds of KB, some are in the MB range; 50 KB makes a very sharp image on a monitor, downloads faster, and takes less server space). Then I rename them - many come with names that won't work in a web browser. Then I upload them to the appropriate folder in our server. Next, I copy the text of the message to my clipboard, go to our site, open a "Post" or "Reply" box, type in the author's name and e-mail address, paste in the text, and edit it to make sure the images will appear. The I post it, and if I've done everything right (no typographical errors), I'm finished with that one. In Salons like this one, with few (if any) images, my life is leisurely. Salons like the previous one, with 70 or 80 images, take up so much of my time that the simple truth is that I have not been able to read much of it.

In order to create two-level images I'd have to save each image in two sizes, give each size a different file name, then upload them and insert into each message the line of code that makes the small image appear, a line of code that links to the larger version, and a brief explanation to the reader of what to do. I just don't have time for that, particularly in the Salons that need it most.

Sorry.

Regards,

Steve Price

I just realized that I forgot to address your suggestion about font size in messages. I do have the option of varying it, and have it set for size "3" of a possible "4". The font size has little effect on download speed, and the number of posts on a page of each thread is independent of it. The width of the text box on each page depends on the width of the widest image on that page, not on the font sizes.

To make a long story less windy, I'm not sure that making the font smaller would accomplish anything helpful, although I am prepared to have someone educate me on that matter.

Regards,

Steve Price