The Salon du Tapis d'Orient is a moderated discussion group in the manner of the 19th century salon devoted to oriental rugs and textiles and all aspects of their appreciation. Please include your full name and e-mail address in your posting.
Turkotek, as our masthead says, is a "Non-commercial site, devoted to collectible weavings, where rug
enthusiasts can connect."
As our history link reveals, Turkotek didn't always have its current precise shape. Tom Stacy created it as a "comprehensive
site." You could once buy a rug here.
But in our more recent incarnation, we have moved to a pretty strictly non-commercial stance and into a "moderated"
mode, with two discussion boards: the "Salon" board and the "Show and Tell" board, as our two
current centerpieces.
It is useful to stop every once in awhile, in midst of any activity to ask such things as: What is it that we believe
we are about? How are we doing in that regard? What things have we done or are we doing that we should continue
to do? And what changes should we consider?
This is Turkotek's 74th salon and it might be more numerically symmetrical to ask these questions as salon 75 or
even salon 100, but I've prevailed on Steve to let me ask them now.
Although I've pretty well stated the salon task above let me give you some specific questions I'd like you to respond
to in your posts.
1. What are the things that are working well or that we're doing well? (We
will want, likely, to continue to do those things.)
2. What are the things that we should consider doing differently?
3. Things we're not doing at the moment that we should consider doing?
4. Thoughts about Turkotek that don't fall into the first three categories.
We always are interested in hearing from those who post more frequently on Turkotek, and we want to hear from you
in this salon, too. But we know that there are a number of folks, who for one reason or another read our boards,
but do not post. This is a salon in which we'd especially like to hear from you.
One of the problems in such a community is that its active members tend to be fewer than would likely be ideal.
We would especially be interested in ideas that might help us increase the numbers and expand the diversity of
those who participate seriously in our discussions. The variety and richness of the community participating unavoidably
affects the quality of the resulting conversation.
Regards,
R. John Howe