Moderated??

[John Rawson <john@rawson.demon.co.uk>]

Concerning Larry Owens suggestion that this list should not be moderated:
 
It seems to me that at one extreme you may have a small clique of
museum curators who want to exclude everything that is not "correct"
according to their own beliefs, and at the other extreme you have
amateur instrument makers out in the sticks who write in to ask where
they can find a do-it-yourself book on guitar making.
 
MICAT was apparently started for the benefit of the former, and not
for the latter, who have their own list anyway (the Instrument-L
list).
 
In fact there is really a continuous spectrum, from the greatest
experts, through the professionals, and the experienced part-time
makers, to the amateurs, and it is not easy to set a cut-off point.
I would suggest that the museum experts might benefit from disussions
with makers of new instruments, and vica-versa.
 
As the list is very little used it could be argued that the present
conditions may be too restrictive.  (Or are the moderators deleting
90% of the mail?). However, as it has been started for the benefit of
professionals, maybe we should keep the accent on their needs. How
about being flexible about what people are allowed to ask about, but
make it clear that people who ask questions are expected to be able
to : - use tools with a reasonable degree of skill, - know why
different woods are used for different things. - know about the
instruments they are working on. In other words, they should be
serious makers of some sort. But what do other people think?
 
John Rawson

John Rawson        e-mail: john@rawson.demon.co.uk    Fax:+44-71-341-3017