Turkotek was initially created to have more serious conversations about collectible rugs than its "owner-managers" experienced on unmoderated boards.

And that is still our primary preoccupation.

On the other hand, it may be that it could be argued validly that Turkotek, still has some responsibilities to less experienced folks who visit our site.

More, we say that we are looking for ways to increase participation. Meeting at least some needs of less experienced visitors may be one of the most viable strategies for doing so.

At the moment, most less-experienced folks who post, tend to do so, at least initially, on the "show and tell" board. And I think we try to be hospitable and polite and helpful and maybe that's enough. But maybe it's not either.

What are your thoughts in this area?

Regards,

R. John Howe

It is a fact that we think it would be neat if just about every rug collector in the world would add his/her opinion and send us a Salon essay from time to time. But that has nothing to do with whatever responsibilities we might have to newcomers.

We (that is, the Gang of Eight) have specifically rejected a number of policies that would increase the number of novice or not-yet-novice ruggies as participants. For examples, consider the things we don't do:
1. Discuss market value, the most common issue in ad libidem rug discussion boards, and the matter of most concern to those least knowledgable.
2. Insult others or focus on personalities, approaches that draw spectators in great number.
3. Discuss things like types of rug pads, which is neither Show and Tell nor likely to become an issue in a Salon.
4. Discuss ways to display or hang rugs, except within the context of discussions of how museums arrive at their policies.

This isn't to say that newcomers to rugs are unwelcome. They are absolutely welcome, but we set the site's agenda. Not only is the Gang of Eight unwilling to underwrite a forum with such things in it, I would be unwilling to put my time into doing so. I just wouldn't get enough satisfaction from it to warrant the effort.

I hope this doesn't come across as snobbery or a commitment to cliquishness, and I don't think it's either of those things. I think we try to be a sort of perpetually in-session ACOR or ICOC - at least, I get many of the same kinds of strokes from it as I do from those conventions - and I see the place of the novice rug neurotic as being similar to what it is in those venues.

Regards,

Steve Price

My observation is that Turkotek already nicely accommodates visitors of differing experience levels. When you refer to less experienced readers do you in fact mean inexperienced? I have no time to stroke someone who thinks he or she got a great deal when buying an Indo-Bidjar at a GOB and wants confirmation of that.

Best,

Wendel

Still, there are few places on line for the complete novice to get started.

Perhaps we could post a list of books suitable for for this purpose. I know this implies the sort of "endorsement" that Turkotek eschews, but there are surely two or three titles that all could objectively agree are useful. I'm not suggesting a lengthy bibliography of all rug books with detailed discussions of their contents and evaluations of their merit. Just a couple good introductory texts, readily available and affordable.

If this list were hot-linked from the home page it would be immediately accessible for the novice who might get lost in the welter of information on the rest of the site..and wouldn't need any editorial managing once it was set up.

-Jerry-

We did a Salon on books - you hosted it. It isn't linked straight from the home page, but it is linked straight from the Archived Salons page, which means it only takes two mouse clicks to get to it from the home page. Someone does have to read down the Salon titles to find it, of course.

It is possible that the Gang of Eight will want to open a permanent book discussion board; I'm awaiting responses from everyone about what, if anything, they want to do along this line.

Regards,

Steve Price

As Steve has pointed out the Turkotek management group made decisions at the beginning of our tenure here about the scope of things we were willing to do.

Our decisions about any responsibilities we might have to less experienced visitors were partly shaped by our sense that there were then several unmoderated rug discussion boards that seemed adequately to feel that need.

Since then, for one reason or another, most of the unmoderated boards have stopped operating and this led to a fairly recent discussion among the "gang of eight" about whether we wanted to set up an unmoderated board on Turkotek.

We decided that we did not.

Nevertheless, in this salon of self-reflection, I think it is worthwhile to reconsider what our responsibilities to less experienced visitors might be and, if we felt we had some, what we might move to offer them.

Wendel, makes a useful distinction between "less experienced" visitors and "inexperienced" visitors and suggests that we're doing pretty well with the less experienced and should perhaps not worry to much about the entirely inexperienced folks who visit here. And that may be an accurate assessment and good advice.

Thinking about this, though, I've wondered whether it might not be fairly easy to establish a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) link to a sector of the Turkotek board on which such questions might be collected and answered without either much effort or maintenance. I think the questions might be relatively few in number and the answers would not, I think, change much over time.

FAQs, many here will recognize, are a rather frequent device used for just this purpose on lots of internet sites.

Regards,

R. John Howe

Like most men, I'm told, I resist looking at roadmaps. Probably for the same reasons, I don't think I've ever actually read the FAQ section of any website other than those dedicated to technical support.

Having said that, you are hereby invited to create the FAQ page, which I will put into our server and create a link to it on our home page. Its maintenance will require periodically downloading it by FTP, editing it, and uploading the edited version by FTP. I'll provide the software, instructions, and passwords.

Regards,

Steve Price

Please understand. I am not trying to expand your already too heavy workload in the administration area.

I would, in fact, prefer in this salon mostly to collect ideas and then to make decisions about them later.

I am interested in your notion that perhaps FAQs don't get looked at much. I suppose it's the kind of thing that would ultimately require a counter to determine and that, as I recall, is more difficult for us to establish at the link level than often seems worthwhile.

If, when we finish with this salon, a FAQ seems to us to be a thing that might be worth doing, I'll be glad to take charge of it in the way you suggest.

But I would like to hear from others. We're often, it seems to me, moving to decision (e.g., Richard Farber's book review link idea)
without allowing a sufficient chance for alternative comment. Sometimes something like a "gestation period" of consideration is needed before the merits or disadvantages of a given suggestion emerge.

Regards,

R. John Howe

I hope you didn't misunderstand my message. Except for adding a link to that section if you are interested in creating and maintaining it, I was most emphatically not volunteering to put any of my time into a FAQ for people who know virtually nothing about rugs. Putting a counter into that page is no trouble at all if you want one. We have one on the home page; I almost never look at it because the information it offers is of little interest to me. For that reason, I haven't bothered putting hit counters on any of our other pages.

I think a Yahoo e-group is a more appropriate place for a board to tell people who don't know it already that a Pak-Bokhara's value is independent of whether the field is red or gray, that it's a good idea to put pads under rugs, and that buying rugs at hotel auctions is not a very prudent thing to do with their money. There are at least two such Yahoo e-group boards already, though.

Regards,

Steve Price

No, I'm not assuming that we're making any decisions or committing anyone to anything in particular in this salon.

A statement that something seems like a good idea, or that it could be done, or even that someone has said that if done they would volunteer to do it, should not be taken by any reader as a decision by the Turkotek management group to do anything.

In this salon we are asking questions, identifying problems, expressing opinions, sharing experiences, making requests, etc. We are collecting data. But we are not making decisions.

Such decisions will be made by the Gang of Eight after this salon has ended.

Regards,

R. John Howe

A few months ago, in a desperate attempt to cut down the number of nonsensical e-mails I was receiving, asking for “information,” I put together a FAQs page on my website. At the time, Steve, you said you suspected that not many people bothered to look at those things. Well, I’ve just checked my site statistics and found you were right. Since adding that page in early May, my site has had 90,331 visitors, and only 489 of them clicked on that FAQs page—in other words, 1 person out of every 184 visiting the site.

As it turns out, each person sees his own question as unique, and so writes anyway—to find out what her grandmother’s dreary embroidery is worth, for advice on where to go in Morocco, or for an identification of a garage sale rug bargain. I suspect that by adding a few informational web pages and by expanding my Links page I’ve deflected quite a few inquiries, but it’s an ongoing problem, as we need to encourage enthusiastic people new to the field, without exhausting ourselves in the process.

I think your format is fine, and since Turkotek is a volunteer project, you should do precisely as you wish with it! My only suggestion is that it might help if you could make a little clearer on the Show and Tell forum exactly how to post photos.

Congratulations to you all and many thanks!

Marla

You suggest, ... it might help if you could make a little clearer on the Show and Tell forum exactly how to post photos

I wish I could do this, but the best approach seems to be to instruct people individually. First, posting photos is only possible if the photo is on the web to begin with. While our software would permit attaching files, I have this disabled because of the potential mischief it could cause. Soooo, most people have to send me the images, and I put them into the server. I then send them the code line to insert in the message, unless they sent the message to me for posting.

For folks like you, who have web space and can put images into it, here's the way to make the image appear on our boards. Let's say that the URL for the image is

http://www.marlamallett.com/imagefile.jpg

In the text of your message, insert a line like this -

Begin with [img=

then the URL (no spaces)

end with ] right after the last letter of the URL.

Be sure not to change the case of any of the letters, be sure to include the square brackets at the beginning and end, and the image should show up when you post the message.

Unfortunately, the "Help" file in our software is not as helpful as I'd like it to be, and there isn't much I can do to change it. On the other hand, some of the alternatives we're considering as replacements for it would do all the coding automatically - you click a button that says "Insert Image", and a dialog box opens asking you to type in the URL, then takes it from there.

Regards,

Steve Price