> I enjoy discussions about photography as well as discussions about > equipment. Is discussing photography - especially with Pentax cameras - off > topic?
I certainly hope not. That would be rather limiting, not to mention unenforceable. We do have an unspoken rule, however, to ignore Bruce Rubenstein when he has one of his periodic attacks of dysphemism and cusses and insults other peoples' immediate female forebearers, and I plug my fingers in my ears and go WAH-WAH-WAH-WAH really loud when people start talking about guns. We generally do our best to stay away from politics, mainly because the Republicans on the list are pathetically blind to how wrong they are and we don't want to antagonize them. When the conversation devolves to alcoholic drinks, the LUG (Leica User Group) holds long discussions about single-malt whiskies. When we do, we talk about home-brewing beer. That about sums up the difference between the two groups. Talking about home-brewing beer is on-topic because our list-owner is named "Brewer." When the pooh-bahs of the list (I am NOT!) get into pissing matches about who knows more, it's considered good manners not to change the thread title so people can more conveniently delete the messages without reading them. Pal sometimes sounds supercilious. This is okay, because for the most part his information is very good. Cotty drinks, but we love him. These are the topics we have already completely exhaused: whether the 50/1.7 or the 50/1.4 is better; everything having to do with tripods; everything having to do with flash; everything having to do with lenses; everything having to do with camera bodies; everything having to do with the camera industry; everything having to do with film; everything having to do with processing; everything having to do with all existing Pentax products. The above list leaves off 781 things we have also already discussed to death. The only reliable topic of conversation is predicting the future. This we do at great length and sometimes with great fierceness. The less we actually know about anything, the better our discussion are. Take it from there. Once again, welcome to Kindergarten! --Mike
