In the body of my introductory essay, but not in my specific list of questions, I have said that one of the questions it is useful to ask about any activity, is "What is it that we think we're about?"

Just so that that question doesn't get lost, let me tell a brief story and then speak to it, a little.

Once while visiting the rug scholar and expert, Robert Pinner, I ask him if he ever looked in on Turkotek. He admitted that he did sometimes. "What," I rather bravely asked, "do you think?"

"Well," Pinner said, "I have a question. Why would a group of people, who know relatively little about oriental rugs, want to spend so much time talking about them in public?"

Whew!

This is the kind of acerbic question that demonstrates that the English do believe that the language is their own.

I responded. "Robert, if your question resided entirely within the world of rugs, I would have to bow to your experience and expertise. But I think it verges onto an arena about which I may be able to speak with more assurance. It seems to me that your error is that you believe that the only legitimate conversation about rugs is "authoritative" conversation. I would argue that a group of people who are interested in rugs and textiles, and who have access to reasonable rug libraries and the ability to exchange color images and close-up direct scans of actual pieces, may be able to leverage each other's learning usefully in conversation."

When I shared this exchange with my Turkotek management colleagues, they pointed out that even the response I made may not be needed, since, at bottom, what we are doing is enjoying conversations about the rugs we collect.

While I do not want to elude Robert's point entirely: quality is also a value to be sought in our conversations, I do think that I and my colleagues are right. What we are about, primarily, is enjoyable coversations about the rugs we collect. We make no real pretensions of expertise, the information here can be very uneven in quality and we can be dead wrong.

But we do not aspire, in our posts, to the standards that, for example, might be applied to an article to be published, say, in Hali or Ghereh. We are primarily enjoying our conversations. I would also argue, though, that sometimes, even if by artifact, rather than by intent, useful learning does occur.

I would be interested to hear other views of what we're about and of whether justification of it, beyond what, I and my Turkotek management colleagues, have provided above, is needed.

Regards,

R. John Howe

I agree with your reaction to Pinner's question, although I would add some things to it.

While it's true that the group who post on our boards include few experts on rugs, it includes many people with a wide range of expertises that their participation brings to bear on rug-related issues. This allows us to consider, and sometimes answer, questions that are beyond a "rug expert" (even Pinner himself!).

Regards,

Steve Price

Before this goes too much farther along the line it seems headed, let me jump to Robert Pinner's defense. He is not the only one who has expressed surprise (probably half-jokingly, knowing Robert) at the amount of time and effort many of us non-experts devote to discussing rugs. He is among the gentler of our critics, if his surprise constitutes criticism, and is certainly among the better informed of them.

I hope this will not degenerate into a discussion of personalities, favorable or unfavorable.

Regards,

Steve Price

I agree. My initial story and point here contained no personal criticism of our critic and in fact acknowledged that there is something to be said for his point about quality.

We could ask this question a bit differently. We could say "Has the general level of quality in the posts on Turkotek been at a high enough level to justify a reader's wading through them?"

Or does the "chaff" overwhelm the "pearls" to the point that a person reading the posts here has mostly an experience of sorting through "chaff?"

The point about the fact that some of us might find our conversations enjoyable, regardless of their quality, is separate and independent of this question.

Regards,

R. John Howe

I don't post on rug analysis because I know little. I sometimes get lost in the discussions - sometimes because I can't follow it, sometimes because I don't care abut the topic. Yet I stil read through the posts because the openess and genuine spirit of inquiry and sharing is rare today. Nobody here is trying to get over on another.