On 24/09/2013 17:38, Per Witte wrote:
Great DVD! Nice last read! I particularly enjoyed Marcel's piece on how QPC
came to be. Thanks for that.
Now its over, mainly due to the lack of copy and readers, which in turn is
probably due to much reduced activity. For my part, I stopped contributing
due to the almost total lack of feedback. You spend hours of free time on
something, doing your best to make it relevant, intelligible and enjoyable,
and then pour it into a black hole. Pointless. In my case, it was probably
the QL-community telling me to shut up and take up knitting instead;
I don't think you should blame yourself. It is a universal problem in
the QL community.
in the
case of Norman and others, perhaps it was merely the silence of eager
anticipation.
The tragedy is that Norman now has had feedback and knows from the
number of people that registered with him how much his articles were
appreciated. I found it frustrating as editor of QL Today that we had
very little feedback. In the later years there was a heavy emphasis on
assembler and I wondered whether it was too technical for most readers.
Given the reaction to Norman's registration offer I think perhaps not.
The problem is it is virtually impossible to tell the
difference! Duh! In a commercial environment feedback is amply provided in
terms of profit/loss (and complaints), however on the free/open/voluntary
scene it is much harder to tell whether more of the same is wanted,
correction is needed, or whether its time to change tack. I think that this
laziness(?) is one of the reasons for our rapid demise.
I think one of the problems we have is that there are many people in the
QL community who are loyal to the QL, but who are no longer active
QL-ers. We should never forget how revolutionary the QL was at the
beginning and how much that meant to people.
Since the last issue was published I have had an email from a former
trader from the black box days who came across some old issues of QL
Today on eBay. He now seems to follow my website and is one of the
people who bought a subscription to volume 17 to get the DVD. He has
never seen QPC and is looking forward to trying it out.
One of the things I like about the web is that you get feedback from the
statistics although it is not easy to discover who are the QL-ers and
who not. (I get numerous hits from China - their search engine robot!)
Nevertheless I get an idea of what topics people are interested in. This
is one of the reasons I think an in depth website would be a good idea,
but, guess what, no feedback!
Finally to get on my favourite hobby horse, the Quanta officers want
the members to be apathetic. The organisation has frequently stifled
discussion and the constitutional amendments in the last decade were
designed to decrease democracy rather than increase it.
Thanks to those who persevered for so long! Goodbye QLToady!
Thanks from me to our, all too few, faithful writers. I first felt QL
Today was becoming editorially unviable 3 years ago, but we managed to
go on for another 3 years. I particularly liked the practical nostalgia
content of the final issue,
Best wishes,
Geoff
_______________________________________________
QL-Users Mailing List
http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
