Off-Topicers Delight!

[Kim Flint <kflint@loopers-delight.com>]

Hi List-

Other things in my life leave me without much time to participate here 
lately, but I do still read the list most days. Over the last few months 
I've noticed with increasing dismay that almost no discussion about 
looping 
takes place here anymore. An off topic post once in a while doesn't hurt 
anybody, but Looper's Delight now appears to be 95% off-topic!

The last couple of days have been an extreme example, but in fact this has 
been going on for some time. Look back over the last month and see for 
yourself. Some examples of what we've discussed:

midi controllers, music reviewers, guitar sustainers for parker fly's, 
cd-r 
brands, bbe, audio archiving, recording equipment, a/d convertors, mac vs 
pc, robert fripp's guitar tone, guitar rack wiring, math music, elliot 
sharp's guitar, numerous gear sales, mixers, peter gabriel's concert 
sound, 
self-promotions with nothing to do with looping, mp3.com and alternatives, 
blown speakers, how to sneak into NAMM, how to run cables, music in 
siberia, more mixers, fretless guitars, fretless guitarists, fretless midi 
guitars, glissantars, ouds, cd distributors, using acoustic guitars as a 
drum, hex fuzz, ebay self-promotion techniques, microtonal midi control, 
brian eno's foreign policy, foreign countries to move to, and last but not 
least, didgeridoo.

So what is the problem? Have you lost interest in looping? You've run out 
of looping topics? Nobody has any new (or even old) looping techniques to 
share? You haven't listened to any music with interesting new uses of 
looping to discuss? No looping gear tips? This is the only place in the 
world devoted to  to discussing looping, and you barely use it!

So as the above subject line suggests, should we just forget that this is 
about looping at all and give up on the whole idea?

I can already hear the predictable responses that always come when 
somebody 
brings up off-topic-ness. "But people here were interested, so it's ok." 
"This group of people seemed like the best place to discuss it." "But it's 
related to looping."

Sure, we can play six degrees of Looper's Delight and manage to justify 
anything. But before you post again try to consider, if it isn't really 
about looping, is this the best place for it? If you are starting a 
message 
off with "OT", maybe that's a sign that you shouldn't be posting it here 
at 
all? Do you really want to continue to dilute this forum with more 
unrelated messages, and lessen it's value for everybody?

Like I said, going off topic once in a while isn't a big deal, but we're 
off topic constantly. How many of you can look back over your last ten 
posts here and say that nine of them were directly about looping? If 
you're 
finding that most of your recent posts have been off-topic, how about 
making certain the next one is ON topic? Take the responsibility to turn 
the ratio around, starting with yourself!

thanks,
kim



______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                     | Looper's Delight
kflint@loopers-delight.com    | http://www.loopers-delight.com