Leaving aside the question of whether any individual poster was rude (which is a different issue), I want to submit a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of people who post infrequently.
One of the complaints that was stated was that this is not just a place where a few experts sit around and answer everybody else's questions, and do so in return for no pay. Actually, that's exactly what Finale List is, and one would hope that, with sufficient gratitude and appreciation from the people who ask those questions, it will stay that way. Really, it's one of the best things about Finale.
In my own case, I virtually *never* answer anybody's question, not because I don't wish to be helpful, but because I'm never in a position to give as good an answer as a David Bailey or a Johannes Gebauer. Trust me, this reality grieves me more deeply than it does any of you. It's not a result of indolence, but rather of having a day job and needing to pay the mortgage.
Allow me to make a few suggestions to the others of you who are less-than-expert. First of all, don't ask questions that you can simply look up in your docs.
Second, you may wish to archive entire threads, as I have done, to supplement your documentation and other resources. I now have harvested about 110 topics in my files, from "backup media" to "win-to-mac conversion." Some of those files contain many threads, since topics seem to have a periodicity to them: you can count on things like "grace notes" and "repeats" coming up again and again. Keep everything; the answers in 2005 will not be exactly the same as the answers given in 2001.
This archiving process involves some effort, but a lot of the posts can be excluded. I don't keep threads on instruments and ensembles I don't write for, notational issues that don't come up in my music, or interfaces with software and hardware I don't own.
If you want to whittle down the task even further, just keep files on the problems you encounter repeatedly.
Up until this week, I would have offered to share my Finale List files with others. But Dennis (and others) have made it crystal clear that they regard that as a violation of copyright. It doesn't matter whether their interpretation of copyright law is correct or not--those are their explicit wishes, and they need to be respected.
So, to make a long story, umm, medium, the point here is that I actually make a conscious effort to keep my posts as infrequent as possible, so as not to be a bother--let's not make that into a negative.
Among the incidents within as serious an epidemic of flaming as I've seen in seven years on this list, the word "lurker" has been applied to people like me. As all of you must know, the use of that word derives from chat rooms, particularly those with sexual content. As such, the connotative meaning is so pejorative that it's only millimeters away from "wankerer."
I'm not a "lurker," I'm a "learner."
With thanks for all the help I've gathered here,
David A. Lawrence
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