The observations made about your own two clubs are quite interesting Graham. Maybe you are right about the technicality of both, I seem to suspect so too. As I stated earlier, maybe its our society these days. It seems no one wants to
work towards something anymore, note that I underlined the four letter word "work."
I sometimes think that our modern technology has also brought along with it stupidity and the dulling of ones mind for our younger generation. If you cannot get it at the click of a mouse or a jerk on the "joy stick" it is not worth the bother anymore.
You have brought about an interesting observation on this site, for example the posting of multiple images in a single thread. I have noticed that there are a few, not many that have continuing images of a particular subject. I think primarily what we are concerned with here is detracting from anothers posted work to draw attention to our own in that persons same thread, unless it is requested of course. If this were allowed the size of one single thread could be quite large and have an extensive amount of pages not to mention, maybe the originators disgust at having his post ravaged by other membes. As to how that would affect the operational capabilities of the site I do not know, our senior administrators would have to address or answer that.
You made the statement:
this forum is a shining example of what is effectively an on-line club
I never thought of it that away but you are right Graham, we are and a very effective on-line club when it comes to photography, whether through the microscope or with a macro lens but note I said photography and not scientific study. There are some posts in which our members do provide a good deal of interesting and thought provoking information on their particular subjects however and I do find that to be very interesting since I myself lean towards the scientific applications of such posts.
I personally would think that an on-line group involving microscopy techniques and subject research/projects would be great and when it comes to subject research our macro counterparts could be able to contribute as well. Low power stereomicroscopes are used extensively in some studies and a macro lens is just as effective. Also from the images presented on this site, they seem to be much better than a stereomicroscope.
So with all the above being said, could our site here straddle the fence and delve into the scientific applications of our members work? Would a subject Research Forum be extensively utilized by our members or draw other individuals to our site? Not many other sites that I am a member of have an image uploader as efficent as ours, nor does any other site have such a
professional, well behaved and amiable group of members willing to contribute thoughts, ideas, and suggestions.
Professionalism I find to be the greatest asset this site has, as pertaining to our members
So again could we straddle the fence as I stated above. I think it is worth a try. As they say, "nothing ventured, nothing gained." If its popularity increased maybe it could break off into a site of its own with great sucess. Who knows?