Olin Lathrop wrote:

> RussellMc wrote:
>>> I am becoming more convinced that having good PIC and EE
>>> is mutually exclusive with the existance of OT.
>>
>> Can you provide any supporting logic to this claim?
>=20
> Of course it's impossible to replay the last dozen years and see what
> would have happened without OT.  We'll never know.  This is just
> speculation, or call it a theory if you like.  Unfortunately it is
> not a easily testable theory, but I don't know how to fix that.

I guess we all agree here (I do, at least), and consider this to apply
to my comments, too.

> I think a fact we can all agree on is that the volume of discussions
> about PIC issues and the electronics connected to them has seriously
> declined over the last dozen years or so.  That is also about how
> long OT has been in existance.  This decline was slight in the first
> few years, but has been significant since then.  One could therefore
> argue that it started a few years after OT.  It's hard to pin down.

Possibly, but I think that's not much more than a correlation, or
possibly two (unrelated) effects of the same cause.

> There are various possible causes of the decline.  Three important
> contributors that I can think of have been the rise of the Microchip
> forums, overmanagement of the list by James, and OT.  I think another
> cause is that the PIClist is relatively unknown to PIC users. =20

I agree with the Microchip forums and the last point (which is a
consequence of the forums), but not with the other two. In fact, I
almost was driven away recently by a member of the current admin team,
for what appeared to be personal problems.=20

> So where does that leave OT?  I think it is a immediate turn off to
> new people, should they somehow stumble accross this list. =20

Not for me. I'm not constantly involved with PICs; the nature of my
professional work varies over time, and currently I'm not too often
involved in electronic design -- and I generally choose to spend my
non-professional time with other activities. So I'm here for the general
discussion -- technical or not, mostly because the level of collective
knowledge in this group is quite high, and the "BS factor" quite low.
For some people this apparently means that I shouldn't participate here
at all, but others seem to feel similarly.

> Instead, the first thing you see are people talking about drugs, oil
> heat, and "Winblows".

FWIW, I found the experience report about Adderall interesting, and also
the exchange about the heaters. The Winblows thread can be seen as a
chance to help someone intelligent to clarify his relationship with a
tool that he apparently uses daily.=20

> And don't think OT doesn't detract from real discussions.  I know I've
> spent time occasionally writing a long response to some OT post, and
> then felt I had no time left when a real question came along.=20
> Sometimes I may write a cursory answer, sometimes just skip it
> altogether.  How many people can honestly say this hasn't happened to
> them too?  I think this happens more than most people realize.

I can agree with this -- but to me, all this shows is that there is a
real need for these topics, or else we wouldn't respond. I at least
think that the topics I choose are the ones I want to choose... and I
don't think I would be better of if the topics I choose to respond
weren't there :)

> For example, Justin asked about how hydro turbines are controlled in
> OT when it clearly should have been TECH. =20

I also agree with this, and we could be more vigilant in re-tagging such
posts.

> It was a reasonably asked and legitimate question, just not for here.=20
> Surely there are appropriate places to talk about that stuff.

There probably are, for most OT stuff. But there's also the "community
factor", and just hopping around from group to group asking
"group-relevant" questions without being part of the community isn't
that attractive of a communication model, either.


To finish, I think one important factor in the decline of PIC issues is
that by now, the smaller PICs are a quite old architecture -- they
weren't ten years ago. And PICs have more competition now, especially
the bigger (newer) ones, but also the smaller ones. So the "new and
unique" factor has gone down considerably. This may be a common reason
for both the decline of PIC issues and the rise of OT issues -- but if
this is the case, this may simply show that here is a community that
wants to stick together even if discussion of PIC issues is not so
important anymore for most as it once was.

Gerhard
--=20
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