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estebanana -> RE: Fastino Conde 1986 without signature? (Sep. 1 2013 1:09:27)
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Burdo,
The thing that you get that not everyone understands at this point is that you need to separate process from commerce of you want to have discussion that will benefit both professional, semi professional and learners. The other glaring problem, dare I say it, is total lack of moderation and classification of separate areas where process and commerce can exist separately. I'm not a purist in the sense that I demand zero commercial engagement, that is silly. However as the luther section exists now there are no boundaries which delineate how far ir is acceptable to go.
What happens is that someone pushes too far to promote themselves and they only stop when they are shouted down by the general crowd, and even then they don't stop. These kinds of fights or tense scenarios should never even occur, and would not if the boundaries where out front and not some unknown wall that is pushed to an unhealthy place time and again. The addition of those, quite innocently after all, asking about connoisseurship, how to collect, history, value, potential for value appreciation etc. create further tensions to an already strained atmosphere. All that information is important to help people understand the guitar, but belongs in its own category for two reasons; it is a vast discipline on its own worthy of a place of study, and it sets up a decided conflict of interest for those who are trying to make a living building guitars.
In the "real world" a maker would be paid money for his or her opinion, or the opinion would be given as a professional courtesy to a regular customer. That is how the string instrument business works. It's not good for makers to have a website where you not only have to compete with zero boundaries for how much a person can self-promote, but also be in a situation where it's as if the users of the Foro feel an entitlement to your opinion, which you should be paid for, or be given customer loyalty in exchange.
And to bring it home and address your situation, there should be a more careful separation between self-promotion, commerce and the development of connoisseurship because not having those boundaries in place hurts the development of beginners. Builders at all levels of guitar making can give valuable information to the discourse on the Foro, but this will not happen if the more experienced builders get shut out or feel unappreciated or have to exist in a context that is adversarial due to lack of boundaries.
The real question is how long will it take for users to ask for a more structured environment that keeps fights and tensions from building into shouting matches? And will those boundaries be established and tended to by the gardener or be delegated out to sub gardeners? For example, if you had few guys like Lenador, who's shown he's a stand up and even handed guy, tend the various sections and quench disagreements before they happen there could be more dialog about both process and connoisseurship. The atmosphere is getting hostile because the guitar makers that populate the luthery section are virtually powerless to run the section democratically. If the boundaries where more clear the process of talking about process could continue at several levels at once.
It's really simple: Separate the development of connoisseurship and commerce from the process of learning to make guitars. People should think about that issue as a part of developing aficion for guitar making.
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