Speaking as one of those long time lurkers, I've been reading lugnet.cad since I first found out about ldraw in fifth grade, but haven't ever been able to contribute.
As soon as I saw the post announcing the opening of these forums, I jumped on over and was among the first to sign up.
I am extremely thankful for the creation of this forum because it provided me with a voice in the community that had not been available to me before.
On a similar, albeit less happy, note: As a minor gripe, I still have no proper way of conveying my thoughts to the LSC as their forum is private. I think it is perfectly reasonable for the LSC to want to restrict posting in its discussions to only its members, however, I simply wish that were not the case, especially since this community (so far) seems to be a place where nearly all discussion that takes place is constructive. IMHO, I don't see why the LSC shouldn't simply be the authoritative voting body of the LDraw community, and open discussion to the community at large.
I understand the importance of not passing amendments which would be counterproductive to the advancement of LDraw in general, and that it is the members of the LSC who are best equipped to judge whether a proposed change would have adverse effects or not because it is comprised of members who best understand the workings of the currently available set of ldraw tools, and to whom the effects of said changes would be the most readily apparent. None the less, I still wish I had a proper channel for providing input to the fundamentally democratic process of establishing standards.
Just my two cents.
As soon as I saw the post announcing the opening of these forums, I jumped on over and was among the first to sign up.
I am extremely thankful for the creation of this forum because it provided me with a voice in the community that had not been available to me before.
On a similar, albeit less happy, note: As a minor gripe, I still have no proper way of conveying my thoughts to the LSC as their forum is private. I think it is perfectly reasonable for the LSC to want to restrict posting in its discussions to only its members, however, I simply wish that were not the case, especially since this community (so far) seems to be a place where nearly all discussion that takes place is constructive. IMHO, I don't see why the LSC shouldn't simply be the authoritative voting body of the LDraw community, and open discussion to the community at large.
I understand the importance of not passing amendments which would be counterproductive to the advancement of LDraw in general, and that it is the members of the LSC who are best equipped to judge whether a proposed change would have adverse effects or not because it is comprised of members who best understand the workings of the currently available set of ldraw tools, and to whom the effects of said changes would be the most readily apparent. None the less, I still wish I had a proper channel for providing input to the fundamentally democratic process of establishing standards.
Just my two cents.