Science - is it allowed?

[BillO]

I have noticed that politics and religion are verboten topics on TCC. However, where does that leave us with discussing scientific tangents?

With many scientific discussions it is impossible to completely avoid the political or religious implications of the science. For examples there are the topics of the environment (a political hot spot) and it would be nigh impossible to discuss simulation hypothesis without getting into some discussion of the religious ramifications.

Inquiring minds as asking (well, one is).

[Matt K]

My idea of that restriction, and I think others share my view, is that we don't want to alienate teachers from recommending the site (which was a concern with the TTF as we had a number of people delete their accounts and ban it merely by the existence of some fairly contentious material). I tend not to like the "heckler's veto" but at the same time, the ultimate goal of this site is to serve as a repository for information about trombones. There's lots of places to go to talk about other things if that's your aim! Bear in mind that the vast majority of traffic to the TTF was not trombone related. At that point, one does have to ask if the purpose is to talk about trombone or talk about the other stuff and why not just have a forum for that?

I'm inclined to say let's keep everything as close to on-topic as we can, which means excluding even topics of sciences, economics (for example, as they relate to international trade as I know that was a hot topic with regards to the Q series, Wessex instruments, etc.), etc. so that we can be a source of information about trombones, full stop.

[timothy42b]

Glendenning just wrote a book called the Art and Science of Trombone Teaching.

I didn't see any politics or religion in there.

There is still some controversial stuff though.

[Matt K]

Glendenning just wrote a book called the Art and Science of Trombone Teaching.

I didn't see any politics or religion in there.

There is still some controversial stuff though.

Writing up a sticky to clarify! Haven't finished yet though.

Science is okay if it's related to the trombone. E.g. Acoustics, metallurgy, physiology such as breathing, etc. Posts that are off topic are not since there are a near infinite number of places to shout into the abyss of indifference that are the human psyche, but there are very few places that you can do the same about trombones much less places where those content will be kept safe for the future to use as a reference.

[MoominDave]

What about trombone science topics where people hold positions religiously? i.e. Against the available evidence and tenaciously.

Just messing, don't worry about the question... I promise not to start a thread about bell metals...

[timothy42b]

The old trombone-l, the precursor of these forums, had a strict rule that all posts had to be trombone related.

Sometimes we had an off topic post that ended: "Mandatory trombone related content, I just bought a 6H."

[MoominDave]

Every forum develops off-topic content, and every forum has its own particular way of handling that. I thought the TTF way of doing it was in principle a sensible one, though in practice it often didn't get things close enough to right, particularly for the comfort of those that find robust speech intolerable.

This initial TC position is also a sensible one, though in time TC will develop off-topic tendencies as regular contributors get all talked out about trombones, and evolve to cope with that. I fully expect it to have a more off-topic-y shape in a few years' time.

[bhcordova]

The trombone-l also had numerous posts stating 'mandatory trombone related content - beer'

[Schlitz]

@

[MoominDave]

The illustration that my post above was drawing was that TTF did not start out with the intention of hosting a strong off-topic area, at all. However, the way these communities develop tends to result in the growth of such in time - some regular posters find themselves all talked out on the forum topic, but not wanting to leave the community - and so on every forum a group migrates from on-topic material to off-topic material. TC might profitably be stricter about the off-topic content than TTF has been, and it might be luckier in the people that drift to the off-topic area (TTF had several whose personalities clashed very badly), but it's still the same forum concept.

[timothy42b]

This initial TC position is also a sensible one, though in time TC will develop off-topic tendencies as regular contributors get all talked out about trombones, and evolve to cope with that. I fully expect it to have a more off-topic-y shape in a few years' time.

Then it’s not really a Trombone site, and I’d expect teachers to continue recommending against it.

Well................ but if the signal to noise ratio is perfect, the flow is inhibited, and a helpful community never develops. I've seen forums like this too, at work, where "important" people insist on everything being on topic to their satisfaction, and none of them have lasted.

[BGuttman]

The reason for the existence of The Trombone Forum was off-topic content.

TTF started as a part of the Online Trombone Journal (currently being run by Chris Waage). We had trombone content and a section called "Practice Break". OTJ management wanted to eliminate Practice Break and we had a number of members who wanted to keep it. One of the Practice Break posters was Richard Byrd, who offered to take over the Trombone Forum part of OTJ. The result was The Trombone Forum. Unfortunately, Richard has not seen fit to maintain his foundling and that's why we are here.

Personally, I haven't visited OTJ for quite a long time, but I do recommend any youngsters looking for great guidance go there to read articles related to trombone playing.

[Schlitz]

@

[DDoghouse]

Okay, just how do you have enough time to play trombone, and talk about religion & politics, at the same time?

I practiced 2 1/2 hours this afternoon. I'm done for the day, now I can do other things like browse this forum.

Does your local performing group allow that?

I don't understand where you're going with this. A performing group is not a discussion forum.

Show me one critically performing group, that's actually had long term success doing that.

See above

What happened to the other site that allowed that? Oh yeah, never mind....

The other site is down due to technical/admin issues, not due to content related issues.

Interesting points coming from one whose highest post count is in Tangents.

[ghmerrill]

Just a thought (from someone with decades of experience in areas of science), but if you're interested in "scientific discussions" you might look into participating in some scientific forums where those aren't a "tangent".

Of course, in those forums there will be some expectations concerning your interest and competence in the subject. If you really want to discuss scientific topics and issues, possibly the best place to do that is in a group where you, in turn, can expect a reliable degree of knowledge and expertise. As an analogy, I don't think I'd be making postings about trombone-related topics to a forum devoted to, say, pharmaceutical biochemistry or one devoted to cosmology or gravitational theory, etc. Or, for that matter, to one devoted to environmental science or theology. But maybe that's just me.

[BillO]

I belong to the physics forum and several electronics forums. However, they don't usually object to discussing trombones in their off-topic areas. Perhaps they, being scientists, are a little more open-mined?

Over at the physics forum, a discussion regarding a musical instrument would get very technical. Something like the practice of adding weight to valve caps would be considered as being too specific to bother discussing - an effect lower than the 'noise in the system' using the coarseness of the current models causing it to vanish to insignificance.

Here, some folks take adding 4 or 5 grams of weight to the balance point of a 7kg bass trombone as causing a 'night vs day' difference. They also might not even know what 'noise in the system' means.

What I'm getting at here is that discussions take on a different tone and carry different meaning in different environments. Even if a scientific discussion on TC did not revolve around trombones but instead around the cosmos, it would be a very different discussion here than on the physics forum. Is there no merit in that?

In any case, the real problem with having off topic discussions of any kind is that some people love to stick their noses and small minds in where they don't belong. To me it's simple, if I'm not interested in the topic I can easily ignore it. I don't have to read it if I don't want to, and if I do read it and find it's not my cup of tea, I can move on and leave others to their joy. Some other folk (aka small minded busybodies) can't resit imposing their morbid dislikes on others.

I come across people like this all too often in my life - small closed minds. They pis... ahh, peeve me off when they take it upon themselves to interfere with my life .

I will try to refrain from discussing non-tromboney things here going forward.

[hyperbolica]

BillO-
Yes, I agree that the situation of banning "science and economics" is just a bad plan. If you want to say "no off topic conversations", that's one thing. If you want to say "all off topic conversations in this opt-in space" that's another. But banning "science and economics" is evidence that all we need to do to ban the discussion of materials on sound is to add just a slightly differently misguided nutcase to the people who think their opinions are more valuable than others. And where does that end?

I find myself much less interested in participating at a place that is likely to ban whatever topic I want to discuss today. If you don't understand how science and economics are related to music - perhaps that is the idea that should be banned.

[JohnL]

What happened to the other site that allowed that? Oh yeah, never mind....

The other site is down due to technical/admin issues, not due to content related issues.

I think he's referring to the number of people that left the old site because of some of the rancorous exchanges in the OT areas, not to the fact that the site is down right now.