The purpose of this blog is to provide a single location on the internet where interested parties can find papers, advice and discussions from experts in the sport.
No forum of this type currently exists. It is different from email, bulletin boards, forums, and collections of papers by one author on his/her own website.
Here, the intention is to not only collect existing works, but more so to encourage new works by those recognized experts, and also some new works written and edited cooperatively by several experts. Note that these works will, in most cases, be carefully structured and thoughtfully edited rather than the "off the top of my head" type of comments seen in emails and, to a lesser extent, in bulletin boards and open forums.
But since we're just beginning, we'd like to hear your ideas.
How do you think this blog should be organized and run?
Before answering, think about the existing communications available to Bullseye shooters.
- Bullseye-L - A by-subscription email list. A member sends a message to "the list". That message is forwarded as email to the hundreds of subscribers. Anyone may ask any on-topic question at any time, and anyone may respond, either privately or to "the list." In practice, volume may vary from several dozen messages in a single day to as little as one or two in a week. Additionally, the list moderator (and owner of the service) occasionally steps in to keep the discussions on the topic of Bullseye shooting and, in extreme cases, exercises his sole discretion in removing individuals from the list. Although the moderator is a benevolent dictator, all subscribers understand and accept these "rules of life" on the list.
- Encyclopedia of Bullseye - A traditional web site with articles, reference works and information of interest to Bullseye shooters. Inclusion of content is at the web-site owner's discretion and through his direct action -- that is, he must do something to add to or modify the web-site (or grant others those same priviledges).
- Various forums - Too numerous to list. Several gun-related forums have sections or are used by those interested in Bullseye shooting. These are "open forums" to which anyone may pose a question and anyone may respond. The quality of information is highly variable and it can difficult for newcomers to tell which are the answers from experts of significant achievement in Bullseye and which answers come with a great deal of sincerety but little else. Messages and responses tend to be relatively short but, on occasion, extended discussions with valuable content may develop. Readers may need to follow these extended discussions on an on-going basis as ideas may develop in one direction but later change and "supercede" earlier comments.
This blog hopes to find a slightly different niche, one in which information has a longer lifetime than the flurry of emails on Bullseye-L and its limited archive, where accomplished individuals can post articles at a time and in a manner of their choosing, where newcomers can find expert information without having to sift wheat from chaff, and where experts can choose to collectively develop an article or series of articles through a cooperative effort, all without requiring a moderator's or owner's direct intervention. In other words, the selected contributors maintain the blog's content.
What do you think? How should we do this?
Please add comments to let us know.
6 comments:
The bullseye list is perfect. Why try to "fix" it?
Bullseye-L does have a lot of great information, and many of those who post truly are experts.
But with dozens or more messages on some days, I don't always have the time to read each message, or may not know that I *should* be interested in some topic. Or worse, my abilities may be such that I simply cannot benefit from the information when it is offered.
The 10sandxs.org blog, on the other hand, is intended to collect that information so it is available at a time when you know you *are* interested.
And in case you haven't noticed, the Bullseye-L archive doesn't seem to catch 100%, nor does it last forever. If you miss something in the email, you may discover that it is not in the archive and, therefore, lost.
10sandxs.org doesn't have to "catch" messages as they fly past. Articles are positively posted at 10sandxs.org. They don't disappear over time.
Additionally, articles at 10sandxs.org can be modified by the authors as their opinions change, as they find better techniques, and as they discover better ways of explaining things.
Copying existing articles from other places (forums, regular web sites and Bullseye-L email) violates their copyright. How do you propose to try and collect all the existing good material?
For new works, the copyright will belong to the author, not 10sandxs.org.
But for existing works, you are correct: we can't just copy. Instead, we will have to find out who owns the copyright -- if the article first appeared on a website, the website owner has to be consulted unless they have specifically assigned the copyright elsewhere -- and then the permission of the copyright holders has to be given.
You'll be able to tell when you look at 10sandxs.org articles because such articles will typically have a note such as, "Reprinted with permission" and, nearby, will be a statement of who is the copyright holder.
For new articles, 10sandxs.org will list the author as the copyright holder. That means anyone wishing to reprint from 10sandxs.org will need to contact the author and get their permission before posting the article on another website, printing it in a book or magazine, including it as a column, or using it in any other form.
Hi Ed:
One of your responders mentioned “the Bullseye-L is perfect.” I really don’t think so! Don’t get me wrong I love the BE-L; unfortunately it lacks direction and at times depth.
Why not simply seek out credible authors? Invite them to do a piece that’s in-depth on a particular subject. Once a month would be a fairly good refresh rate.
Tony
There are a lot of good threads on some of the forums that could be converted into some real valuable information. Often there is one contributor who brings the majority of the ideas. That's one good source I've been thinking about. (There's a recent thread at targettalk from Steve Swartz that comes to mind.)
The difficulty is first some minor tweaks of their forum contributions for a more formal presentation as an article instead of a discussion, and then getting folks to let go of their writing before they've made it perfect.
My role will be "finder of interesting content", convincer that more effort on the author's part would be good, and then light-touch editor and heavy-whip cracker as needed to get the job done.
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