Quote:
Originally Posted by aerius
The primary purpose of Head-fi as I see it is to talk about headphones and headphone related stuff. Reading through this thread is seems a lot of people have lost sight of that, or they don't get it in the first place. This is a place for discussing headphone stuff, and Jude's priority as far as I can tell is to keep this site running so that we'll all have a place to talk about headphones well into the future.
The for sale/trade forums, group buys, that to me is just part of the fringe benefits of the forum, it's by no means the core purpose of Head-fi. This is not the headphone bazaar nor the headphone bargain gateway.
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I've just read this entire thread, and this recent post by aeruis pretty much sums up my point of view as well (although I didn't quote the last sentence because I don't think there is any need for name calling).
In any case, I'm happy that head-fi has become such a strong and passionate community for audio enthusiasts. I've learned a whole lot here, have participated in many ways, and have made some great friends through head-fi - not "just" friends, but great friends! So I'm thankful for what head-fi represents and consider my chancing upon it to have been a serendiptous blessing in my life. Really. It's fun, it's free, and it's a nice place to hang out. It's all good. Yet, I am quite concerned about its future, particularly in terms of finances.
In my opinoin, these sorts of threads - although quite interesting and not intended by any one participant or group of participants to be disrespectful in any way - do nonetheless have the tendency to become counterproductive. Everyone wants to play armchair quarterback and give their views about how the site ought to be run. We should all just be happy to have what we have in head-fi, full stop. To the extent that Jude feels the need to make certain changes for the broader good of preserving the future of the site, we should acknowledege his right to do so and leave it at that. Jude is an open-minded and even-tempered guy, and I'm quite sure that he does benefit on an information level (at least to some extent) by getting a general understanding of how his "constituants" might "feel" about any one particular aspect of the site's administration.
But the fact remains that he's the person who needs to make the bulk of the business decisions, at least under the present model. And you know what, the man seems to be quite comfortable with this responsibility! To the extent that I may have some views that I feel might be helpful to him, the route that I would normally take would be via PM.
Again, I'm not saying that this isn't interesting stuff to read, and do suspect that Jude will benefit from the good points that many people have made, but I hope this sort of thing never happens in a grocery store. I can't imagine what it would be like trying to buy a 2 liter bottle of Diet Coke in the midst of 101 people giving their views to the general manager about how to run the place. Maybe I'm missing something, but if I were Jude (and you can all be thankful that I'm not), I'd be tempted to write a very simple policy: All group buys are hereby banned! I really can't see where this would hurt anyone too badly, and it would ensure that the sponsors are never undercut in any serious way. There is always Google if you're looking for a better deal.
In other words, I don't think that the whole "goup buy issue" is that big of an "issue" at all. It is certainly on the periphery of what head-fi represents, so please let's let the man decide what he thinks will work best and then get behind him and support his reasoned conclusions, whatever they might be.
