...As for what counts as on-topic and off-topic here, I'll remind everyone that the title of the thread is "Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread", and not "Test Equipment Discussion Only". As far as I'm concerned, anything people discuss here that helps them deal with the financial, physical, and emotional distress this addiction causes is fine, with the common sense exceptions of subjects known or likely to cause highly polarised and/or emotional conflicts, such as politics, religion, and the like.
If we want to make it TE only, then technically components, prototyping, pinball machines, and A/V electronics are all off topic. I have a simple method for dealing with "off topic"/posts I'm not interested in; I skim past them.
I believe this thread to be self-policing for the most part, my personal opinion is that Mod intervention isn't really necessary here except on the rare occasions when heads butting together goes past the few posts it should take to either solve differences or agree to not talk about them.
Hear, hear! ![Clapping :clap:](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/clap.gif)
mnem
![](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=81471.0;attach=1002869;image)
I'll direct your attention to the line above regarding OT posts...
Forum rules trump thread rules
See forum rule #5
I've had a chance to sleep on this... and I'm going to choose my words very carefully here, because nothing less than the heart & soul of the
TE Anonymous Thread itself, a community space many of us have invested a lot of time (our most precious resource) in, lies in the balance.
This... this completely misses the point I was making. Which is no surprise, because as with most of the misunderstandings which happen in here, it was taken completely out of context, which in this case is
vital to its intent. That context being in response to
AVGresponding's definitive post above.
The point I was making is pretty simple: There is no line about OT posts, because this thread has been an OT thread since its inception.
As
AVGresponding so succinctly states, this thread has
always been about
Test Equipment Addiction and how we manage our addiction, and its effect on our lives, our finances (especially
that ![Wink ;)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/wink.gif)
) and our families and even our work.
It started out as a joke... a parody of a 12 Steps program... which resonated so clearly with a large portion of your viewership that it soon took on a life of its own; spawning its own language, numerous subculture memes, and even a informal swap/trade back-channel of parts gifting and pro-bono brokerage to help folks get gear from "them as have" to "them as needs".
But at the heart of all of it has been the core principle of this space being
TE Anonymous; I invite anybody here to go back and read the first dozen pages.
You'll have to read that far before you see the first post showing the insides of a piece of TE; and that was presented as parodic TE Addict pr0n.
In fact, it isn't until page 20 that somebody posts what we now consider to be the mainstay of the thread: a quick
"Don't turn it on, take it apart" photo gallery of the insides of a piece of TE. Page 35 is the first discussion of any kind of "How-To" subject (removing scratches from plastic), and
in fact, the "TE Technical Talk" that is the other mainstay of this thread was considered OT until we started discussing the Jim Williams pulser with bd139's arrival on the scene somewhere around page 80.
This is an electronics forum, so try to stay on-topic. We understand that threads drift off-topic, but try not to start deliberately and grossly off-topic stuff.
megahaul of nicest vintage gear. is it permissible to post pinball and audio stuff ? @gnif ?
Acceptable, but taking this off topic to non-electronic related things is not permissible. This is an electronics forum and this topic is under "Test Equipment", so please keep it related even it it's tenuous.
There is some flexibility but this thread had gone too far off topic.
Again... that is the problem, isn't it? Despite some users demands that this thread be
only about TE... it was founded and for most of its life has been about
TE Addiction. We all deal with it in different ways... we come in here to talk about how eBay sucks right now, or how shippers destroyed something, or even how we deal with not being able to get new gear to tinker on.
Saskia restores vintage Pinball machines as a diversion, several members are amateur shutterbugs and car technology fanatics, Cubdriver has his cats, Cerebus and bd139 talk programming and even grumpy old
med brings his carpentry in here because it holds up his TE acquisitions.
My point being... it is the huge
diversity of interests displayed here that make it not only the largest in terms of post count, but also
by far the most read thread on eevBlog.
this topic is under "Test Equipment"...
Yeah....
why exactly is that...? I mean, as the history of the thread itself shows, while it
includes TE, the core of the topic right at the top of the page is
community-based support. Nobody asked for it to be stickied to the top of the TE section; we haven't had any problem staying at the top of any list on the forum since about page 30.
![Confused :-//](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/confused0024.gif)
I'm going to suggest something here that probably won't be popular... but maybe the problem isn't the content, which is still mostly about the same TE Addiction and related activities it has always been... but
maybe where it has been placed on the forum.
Maybe instead of hogtying this thread with OT restrictions that are explicitly contrary to the origins of the thread, we need to move it to the "Everything Else" section where, as you say, OT stuff belongs and let the thread sink or swim of its own accord. I'm pretty sure it does not matter where you put it... the interest will continue, and it will still have one of the most popular viewerships on the platform.If you continue to try and hammer this thread until it fits into a nice tidy 2U square so it fits neatly in with the rest of your rackmount TE, you will kill it, sure as night and day. Yes, you will have a nice tidy forum again, but like most of the existing oodles of strictly TE threads it will be about as generally interesting as watching a mantle clock, and for the same reasons.
At least if the thread is in the "Everything Else" section, it will have a fighting chance to stand on its own two legs.
mnem
Please don't turn this space into Vintage Radio Forums...