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What Would You Personally Never Talk About In Your Ink Reviews?


A Smug Dill

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It's like there's this one little corner of ink behavior that I must fall into that no one seems to review: ...

 

The above remark got me thinking about the question in a more general way. What are some of the things you personally would never talk about in an ink review you produce, either because they are of no concern to you and so would never come up, or because they may be known to you but you categorically don't think are appropriate to share?

 

For my ink reviews, I don't think I'll be talking about:

  • How 'safe', 'friendly' or compatible an ink is to or with any 'vintage' writing instrument, with regard to material, component or mechanism.

    I don't have any 'vintage' pens and so the consideration will never come up; nor do I think it would interest the primary target audience of my reviews, which would be the subsets of like-minded fellows in the fountain pen community and of newcomers to the hobby. Should that information be desired by some readers, then...

     

    ... obviously, the prudent way for others to find out whether an ink is 'damaging' to their vintage pens, especially the ones they consider precious — for market value, rarity, historical or cultural significance, or personal and/or sentimental reasons — is to (be prepared to) sacrifice some less valuable and less precious test unit of whatever still exhibits the same material and mechanical characteristics that make the question of 'vintage' interesting to oneself. If the original sac, which possibly has already deteriorated with age and/or been physically compromised through past use, in a vintage pen would be chemically affected by an particular ink, but that sac can be replaced by something of more recent manufacture, and possibly of a different brand, in the market today to restore function, would that still be concerning, and would that be considered to have eroded the value of the pen? I don't know how to assess that, so all I can say is it would be up to the individual to decide how much time, effort and financial expense it is worth to source an equivalent sac, or fragment of equivalent (celluloid, urushi, bakelite of similar vintage?) material for immersion testing over a sufficient period. To me, it's nil; and I think that some users who feel their vintage pens are precious would already have made a firm decision never to use an 'unproven' modern ink — without 100% 'guarantee' that nothing adverse would come of it — but stick to the same three 'safe' inks in the use of those pens anyway, so arguably the value of showing them what other ink might be safe is also nil.

     

    That's not to say such users wouldn't find the ink review to be otherwise of no value; they might like the look of the unfamiliar ink, and be comfortable with using it in a modern $5, $50 or $500 pen with wild abandon; it's just a personal choice to be made, on each occasion, between using that ink for visual appeal and using the 'vintage' pens they hold dear, as opposed to exploring whether those two alternatives could converge.

    _
  • How an ink would fare on "cheap paper", "checks" (and I've intentionally spelt it that way instead of the conventional way in British and Australian English, because frankly I haven't seen the question come up with hobbyists here), etc.

    The sheer lack of meaningful or 'standard' definition of such terms and/or products make it pointless. I'm sure, as users of our fountain pens and inks of choice, and at the same time as consumers of services provided by entities such as banks and government agencies, and (possibly) as employees obliged to deal with whatever employers throw our way, we all have to contend with that issue some time or another, when we have no choice and no say over the paper stock used for forms and documents. Fortunately, in the vast majority of such cases the implication is that the artefacts in question are owned by some other party than ourselves, and whatever we write on them by hand is for the consumption or use by someone else; I'm not the one who has to be annoyed by the feathering or 'woolly' lines in the rendering of the written content.

     

    If one of 'us' chooses to employ "cheap paper", on account of the medium-to-long-term costs for an application that requires a high volume of paper and/or writing surface area, then surely it would make sense for that particular user to spend some money and effort on testing ink performance on his/her specific choice of paper, e.g. $30 upfront to avoid bad or unacceptable outcomes that would affect 100 $3 notebooks, i.e. a $300 "bigger picture" and that's before taking into account the value of the written content therein?

    _
  • How an ink would fare on some particular type of paper of which the weight is specified by the manufacturer and/or retailer in 'lbs'.

    That simply has no relevance here in the little part of the world I call home, and so it would never come up in my personal applications for fountain pens and inks; nor do I think it concerns my fellow hobbyists in "the better part" or greater majority of the rest of the world.

     

    I do understand some of my fellows have little choice but to contend with imperial measurement units in everyday life, and I sympathise; I grew up using pounds and ounces, feet and inches, etc. in Hong Kong when it was still under English rule, and many people around me found it difficult to adjust to the metric system when it was brought in. However, just as there are conversion charts (and apps) for converting grams (in published information) to ounces and millimetres to inches, I'm sure someone in that situation would do the research and/or testing to offer some sort of 'conversion' or translation of the characteristics of, say, Rhodia Dotpad 80g/m² paper to whatever "N lbs" papers are common for everyday applications in his/her corner of the world.

     

    I do look forward to some sort of international standard to do with physical, behavioural and/or qualitative characteristics of paper some day, but if I were a betting man, I'd wager everything will be specified in metric measurement units, and whatever is chosen as the frame of reference would not be 'lbs'-centric.

    _
  • Effective cost of acquisition of the ink as a commercial/retail product.

    Unless I'm gloating about what a bargain l I scored, which would be more likely to act a deterrent to those who cannot get the same deal (by not being in the right place at the right time, and/or with the right connections), how much I've spent to get my hands on retail bottles of the ink is only meaningful to me, and has little bearing on how much it would cost someone else or in different circumstances to acquire; and the price of the ink is not an inherent characteristic of the ink anyway.

     

    The list price or MSRP (Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price) — e.g. a 60ml bottle of Platinum Carbon Black ink, designated INKC-1500 by its product code, implicitly has an MSRP of ¥1500+tax — in the product's home market is a different matter. Usually the information is there for anyone to see anyway; and if a reader finds he/she could get it cheaper than the MSRP(+tax) converted to local currency, he/she may (or may not) think that is sufficiently favourable to pull the trigger on buying the ink, assuming it is appealing on account of what he/she has seen of it in reviews and images.

     

    I'm inclined to think that how and from where to get a retail ink product cheap is a matter for the Market Watch forum, and not relevant to an ink review.

    _
  • The pH value of the ink.

    Even though I wasn't a completely newbie at the time, at one point — during a year-long stretch in which the tendonitis in my writing hand was so bad I couldn't write six lines on an A5 page before throwing the pen down in pain — I bought myself a pH meter on eBay, and even paid the excessive eBay Global Shipping Programme charges to have it delivered. Sticking a probe into a small amount of ink I've transferred from a retail bottle into a sample vial was something (I imagined) I could and would do given the circumstances and given my operational limitations at the time.

     

    I never used the damn thing once since it arrived, and never even opened its box. I can't even remember why I thought the pH value would be at all relevant to me, such that I spent a $100 on acquiring the instrument. I don't think I'll start now, especially when my pens — including (or even especially) my most favoured and/or precious ones — don't seem to be particularly sensitive to strongly acidic or basic inks.

I'd be interested to know what you won't test and/or talk about in your ink reviews; but I'd also welcome comments about whether you think what I (or someone else) described as being of no concern or inappropriate to discuss in an ink review, especially if you feel it's so important that if I (and/or they) won't talk about it, then you'll just have to do it yourself and close the information gap for fellow hobbyists in the fountain pen community, because you personally think it's so important and that everyone else — inclusive of the industry, semi-professional reviewers on YouTube (or the Internet at large), and volunteer contributors to online forums as such — has neglected and let the greater collective down.

 

Unless you count my late father's Geha that fell to disuse for some forty years.

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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Chromatography. I know it seems de rigeur for ink nerds, but I couldn't care less about it... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Vintage. Cursive italic. Iron gall.

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You never know what detail in an ink review might be useful to someone.

"Don't hurry, don't worry. It's better to be late at the Golden Gate than to arrive in Hell on time."
--Sign in a bar and grill, Ormond Beach, Florida, 1960.

 

 

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You never know what detail in an ink review might be useful to someone.

 

True, but that's not the point or spirit of an ink review, is it?

 

I review a product (or service, restaurant, or whatever) and then publish the content online because I want to tell my peers something — i.e. data, information, observation about specific aspects — at my expense (of time, effort and material costs) about it, and at least for me the exercise is not predicated on what prospective readers (who are unidentified, and may or may not end up reading it individually) find useful, but of what I'd what them to be aware. A review is my, the reviewer's, "looking back" at something and telling others about it, not an investigative report commissioned by unidentified readers who had no investment, stake or contribution to the study or project, and not fulfilling a charter of "filling in the blanks" of whatever information manufacturers and retailers have failed to provide to the community as a collective.

 

So...

 

Why do you review any product and publish the content for others' consumption? What's in it for you, and what won't you talk about because those aspects do nothing for you personally, and are not worth your investment of time and effort to explore in your study of the product and include in your output?

 

Edit:

 

We don't operate in a world of complete and reliable information, and I don't personally believe we (as consumers, members of the community, etc.) 'deserve' complete and reliable information provided at someone else expense. I offer information to the community because I think the information/coverage is incomplete, and if it's (subjectively) at 80% right now, I'd like to contribute such that those who are like-minded would get 85% coverage (and reduce their 'risk' from 20% to 15%, which is a relative reduction of 25%), while those who don't think or feel like I do may now get 82% coverage because of my efforts.

 

The goal, for me, is not to eliminate risk on the part of others' spending when I've already taken the risk of acquiring something at my expense assuming it'll partially satisfy my needs and requirements. How do I 'reward', or better serve, fellow fountain pen hobbyists who think like me (e.g. prefer modern to vintage, prefer Japanese and German make to, say, American and British brands offshored to Southeast Asian manufacture), as opposed to those fellows who are more, well, 'different'? I focus on what I, and others who are like-minded, care about, when I gather and disclose information about something.

 

That's fundamentally what I'm asking, without putting the obligation on anyone to "complete the picture" for everyone else, whether it would cost them $1 or $1,000 to do so. What won't you spend your time, effort and money on to provide to other as a volunteer with no expected reward?

Edited by A Smug Dill

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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Chromatography. I know it seems de rigeur for ink nerds, but I couldn't care less about it... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Hi all,

 

This would probably be my choice, too. pH value and other "safety" issues do have relevance to those who like to mix inks or use delicate antique pens.

 

 

- Sean :)

https://www.catholicscomehome.org/

 

"Every one therefore that shall confess Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father Who is in Heaven." - MT. 10:32

"Any society that will give up liberty to gain security deserves neither and will lose both." - Ben Franklin

Thank you Our Lady of Prompt Succor & St. Jude.

 

 

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Everyone has different standards and finds different aspects of reviews more or less important. I don’t mind any kind of review as long as the ink color is shown well and relatively accurate. Nothing will substitute getting a sample and testing it for myself, but seeing More reviews of any format helps put together a more complete picture of an ink before one decides to spend money on their own sample or bottle.

 

Moreover, some reviews can show an ink look another user hasn’t experienced, because they use different nibs or paper.

Edited by Intensity

“I admit it, I'm surprised that fountain pens are a hobby. ... it's a bit like stumbling into a fork convention - when you've used a fork all your life.” 

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Of course the point of an ink review is to be useful to someone. If I weren't trying to help others appreciate an ink, why would I take the time to write and share a review in the first place?

 

 

That isn't my view at all. I take the trouble to produce and publish a review, as opposed to keeping everything in my private catalogue and/or knowledge-base, because I want to tell someone by broadcast or multicast something about a product, and in doing so would ideally serve my purposes. More importantly, let's say (as it's no secret) that I'm into modern pens that are readily available on the market, and don't think vintage pens have anything special functionally or value-use to offer me; and I understand some fellow hobbyists think and/or feel differently, but that's fine by me. If I publish something, I'd be more keen that the like-minded subset of hobbyists benefit (more) from what information I share; what anyone else gets (or doesn't get) out of the content is incidental, and I truly don't care (but I'm not trying to deny them all value from reading my product reviews altogether).

 

So, "useful to someone" is not inherently meaningful unless I know who that someone is, and preferably also useful in what way(s). I read from @pajaro's statement that he/she was referring to "someone" who I don't consider to be like-minded, because otherwise my concerns and priorities would already align with the reader's, and I'd have already covered the relevant topics because those topics or aspects interest me and I want to talk about them in my product review to let others know.

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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I wouldn't talk about not talking, I'd just talk or not talk.

Life is too short to drink bad wine (Goethe)

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How about the inverse of this question...what is missing from ink reviews that one would want to see?

For me, how the ink looks in various nib widths. I use Japanese F and EF almost exclusively and some ink that looks great in a M or B is insipid or illegible in an F or EF.

As for chromatography, I don't think it is necessary but it's great fun, so why not?

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I realize I am so unsophisticated, but I use Waterman Serenity Blue because I like it better than the black and purple version. And. someone said vintage pens like wet inks.

 

So, a review means nothing if I don't like the color, that it does not wash out well, or that it seems to be dry.

"Respect science, respect nature, respect all people (s),"

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Youll never please everyone so simply please yourself. Write about whats important to you. How the ink in a pen makes you feel. Ramble on about anything. Some will align with you others not. Those that like it, will, those that wont, wont. Some may even tell you, even then, pay no heed.

 

Part of the joy of FPN for me is that everyone has a voice.

Whether youre top of the reviewers like Sandy1 or an inky rambler like me, someone somewhere is enjoying your input.

 

😇

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Youll never please everyone so simply please yourself. Write about whats important to you. How the ink in a pen makes you feel. Ramble on about anything. Some will align with you others not. Those that like it, will, those that wont, wont. Some may even tell you, even then, pay no heed.

 

Part of the joy of FPN for me is that everyone has a voice.

 

 

True, the reviewer's voice does not entirely circumscribe the conversation. if one omits something of interest to some others in the community, any reader can enrich the conversation with a question to be answered, not necessarily by the reviewer (who might not know the answer or care to discover it), but by any other reader who has insight on the topic. For example, if a reviewer doesn't cover whether the ink is easy to flush from a pen, a person commenting can ask that question, and any other person on the thread can answer, whether or not the original reviewer cared about that topic.

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True, the reviewer's voice does not entirely circumscribe the conversation. if one omits something of interest to some others in the community, any reader can enrich the conversation with a question to be answered, not necessarily by the reviewer (who might not know the answer or care to discover it), but by any other reader who has insight on the topic. For example, if a reviewer doesn't cover whether the ink is easy to flush from a pen, a person commenting can ask that question, and any other person on the thread can answer, whether or not the original reviewer cared about that topic.

 

Or hopefully that person can be inspired to write their own review, covering the points they thought were omitted.

 

Honestly what I don't like is when people explicitly state things like "I didn't do this, because I couldn't care less about this property". Actually stating it is effectively taunting those who do care. I have seen such reviews, unfortunately. In my opinion, if a particular ink property or behavior is not important to a reviewer, just skip it from the review and say nothing about it.

“I admit it, I'm surprised that fountain pens are a hobby. ... it's a bit like stumbling into a fork convention - when you've used a fork all your life.” 

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Or hopefully that person can be inspired to write their own review, covering the points they thought were omitted.

Yes, exactly that.

 

Honestly what I don't like is when people explicitly state things like "I didn't do this, because I couldn't care less about this property". Actually stating it is effectively taunting those who do care.

With this I strongly disagree. To me, it's about clear and unambiguous separation of concerns, which even when I worked for a large corporation is, should we say, rigorously practised. Even when 'we' all worked for the same entity and supposedly have the same overarching goals, there's usually a rather firm line, on the part of each 'actor' or doer, delineating "this is what I will do" and "this is what I won't do". Yes, many parties would avoid talking about their individual lines, and simply not do anything that is across those lines from their perspective. That's when certain things "fall through the cracks", into gaps that nobody can clearly see and point to, and creating problems that cannot be solved once and for all but keep arising, even if on the odd occasion one party would just go one step "above and beyond" for whatever the reason and save the day for a particular project or initiative, only for the next one to fall down again.

 

Better to say, "this is what I won't deliver or cover with my time, effort, budget, allocated resources, etc." no matter how much those extra things are required or desired by some other department, team or entity. If the latter needs them, then it's better that there is a clear understanding — with or without agreement — that those things won't be delivered in the status quo, and it will need to arrange at its own cost, expense and risk to have that coverage. If it would cost department A1 only $100 to do a certain thing, and department B2 $5000 to do the same, but A1 does not see it as its problem, concern or area of responsibility, then stating, "I don't care whether you need it, I don't care whether it may cost you fiftyfold what it would cost me to deliver, I'm not going to do it and you'll have to sort it out yourself," is useful to both parties; so how is that a taunt? Sure, 'we' could just write everything out in roles and responsibilities chart (or RACI matrix, or however you want to frame it as an artefact), not explicitly talk about what each part won't do, and then leave it to some business analyst to come in after the next problem situation blows up to discover and question, "Why isn't there a line for this thing that is considered necessary?"

 

Obviously, if there's a big boss N levels up over the top of both departments, it could always lean on A1, or give it some incentive to "be a team player" and help out, and/or allocate extra budget to A1 so there is no effective cost/loss for the department's bottom line to provide more. But this is where an online "community" is different — there is no boss over the top of anyone, there is no shared goal that everyone has agreed and/or can be expected to serve, and there may not even be room for effective negotiation. However, if the lines are drawn and stated, then at least someone can decide whether they need to acquire their own materials and make their own testing endeavours, or at least have a starting point to try to negotiate with someone else to do the work at lower 'cost', instead of come in later and asking, "Why hasn't anyone else done this? I need to know this information!"

 

I have seen such reviews, unfortunately. In my opinion, if a particular ink property or behavior is not important to a reviewer, just skip it from the review and say nothing about it.

How about the inverse of this question...what is missing from ink reviews that one would want to see?

That's another part of discovering what won't be covered, if nobody puts their hand up for it in the volunteer effort model, even if for whatever reason people want to avoid saying "no" and also find it an affront for others to say, "not my concern."

 

However, I'm personally less interested in charting out a comprehensive information architecture for all there is to know about an ink, than for those users who already know what they personally want to know — i.e. their individual information requirements — can do their own assessment (yes, that means effort on their part) of what remains an obvious gap with no incumbent delivery provider, and start looking for solutions (yes, that also means effort).

 

Edit:

I thought about it some more just now. While this may not be the dictionary definition, to me, to taunt is to intentionally cause affront and elicit resentment from someone by word or deed. So why would stating, "I don't care about X" be considered taunting to those who care about X? I'm well aware the vast majority of my fellows here on FPN don't — and don't care — about writing in Chinese or Japanese, or writing in any language to fit 5mm line spacing (irrespective of whether the guide marks are parallel ruled lines or form a square/dot grid), or both, even if Chinese fountain pen users most likely constitute an absolute majority of the fountain pen user (as opposed to enthusiast or hobbyist) community worldwide. I've seen occasional comments (more than a few times) about not caring about writing in Asian languages, or putting down very fine unconnected lines, as if they truly believed there is no call and no place for it in an English-speaking (as opposed to English cursive handwriting) forum, as if how we communicate with each other using a common language supposedly limits our lifestyles, interests and concerns.

 

I don't see how that would be an affront to me just because I care, and I care enough to put in a lot of effort to produce writing samples introducing that element into the discussion when talking about and showing pens and nibs, as well as do a lot of thinking to articulate an analytical perspective for such.

 

Ah!

 

Maybe I would resent it if I imagined what I cared about was so mainstream, "natural", essential and/or fundamental to the hobby, only to be told it isn't the case. I wouldn't be taunted for caring about X, but my unsubstantiated belief that I'm inherently aligned with and supported by the "voice of the community", as if those two things are part and parcel with each other and cannot be logically decoupled. Or maybe I would resent it if I expected to get something (e.g. useful information) or service, at no cost to myself and justified (to myself) the expectation because what I cared about was surely sufficiently representative that, out of dozens of reviewers who speak up among thousands of fellow enthusiasts and hobbyists, someone would have covered or provided it at their expense already? In that case, again, what the actual X or McGuffin would be incidental; the affront would arise from being told, openly at that, that I was wrong in my expectation, and that I wasn't getting what I wanted (for nothing). I'd have to look after myself, at my own expense, as someone with an interest shared only by a minority.

 

So, @Intensity, was that the angle from which you thought declaring, "I don't care about X," would be effectively taunting someone? Because that seems to fall well short of implying, "You're a fool for caring about X."

 

How about a declaration of, "We're of equal standing in a heterogenous collective, but I'm not like you; we stand apart in priorities and preferences, but can all contribute what we want to the whole on whatever matters to us individually, without aligning our efforts in service of a better shared outcome absent agreement of what that looks like."

Edited by A Smug Dill

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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It just occurred to me that, as with a thread about ink reviews I started two years ago, to promote discussion from the perspective of the ink reviewer — i.e. information producer, provider and/or publisher — someone would quickly want to co-opt such discussion into being about the needs and wants of the non-self-sufficient information consumer, who does not appear to stand prepared to take any risks or contribute any effort or funds into building up the collective, virtual knowledge-base, but only have something to say about its inadequacy.

Last time, I thought 'workshopping' how to lower the operational requirements and costs — in terms of time, effort, skill, and expenses due consumables — in the previous discussion would help lower the barrier to entry and/or increase productivity, so that more hobbyists may decide to give it a go and trigger more actual review activity. That was seen, and even criticised, by some fellow forum members as a negative discussion and a disservice to the community, as if out of fear of alienating those who never wanted to put in money and effort into enlarging and/or improving the knowledge-base.

This time, I'm still coming in from the individual reviewer's perspective, and hopefully by bringing into open view what types and pieces of information will not get much, if any, coverage in ink reviews from those who are already producing them (or already inclined to produce them), it will motivate some of those who prefer to just sit back and be beneficiaries to change tack, start buying ink and doing reviews their way, to remedy the perceived shortcomings and perhaps "show others how it's done", because they are unhappy and dissatisfied with the status quo. Again, it seems to be seen by some as a bad thing I'm doing.

All I want is for people not to sit the hell back and wait to be serviced. If someone is interested in whether certain iron-gall inks would corrode the sort of nibs they use, or certain saturated inks would stain demonstrators, fantastic! I'm not taunting them for caring about those things, and I'm actually looking forward to their throwing some (I presume 'spare') nibs into vials of iron-gall inks and soak, for however long they think is meaningful and conclusive enough, and sharing the results. Same as whoever wants to soak pieces of transparent or translucent 'precious resin' in certain inks and see if they stain, and/or what it takes to remove the resulting discolouration; I think it'd be great if they did that. That's without damaging any of the nibs or pens they feel precious about, because they using separate test pieces (which I don't or may not have, and am unlikely to acquire for such a purpose) they've acquired and are prepared to sacrifice.

If someone just wants to know the answers without doing the testing themselves, with or without sharing the results of their investment of effort and material costs with the community afterwards? That's fine too, but I don't think it'd be a disservice to make it apparent that they won't get what they want with that approach.

So, my view is that talking about it can only help, not hinder, the growth of the collective body of knowledge, whether contributors are motivated by need or want, by passion or by dissatisfaction. We don't all care about the same things, and that's great for the vastness and diversity of the results from the aggregated investigative efforts, no matter how much of it is perceived as 'wasted' due to overlap in uncoordinated study activity. Users who are put off by such talk and take the position of, "Fine, if you won't serve me and tell me what I want to know to start with, then I won't do nuthin' for you in reciprocity either, so there!" most likely weren't going to be motivated by their own needs and wants anyway.

By the way...

I started this thread because of what @arcfide wrote, which got me thinking. He has since decided to fill in the information gap with his own efforts and, furthermore, share the results of his investigation, presumably because he truly believes it is useful information for the collective/community to have. I'd like to think that's the spirit, and I sincerely thank him for that, even if I personally don't care about Noodler's bulletproof blue inks, or Stub nibs supported by generous ink flow used in conjunction with types of paper on which I don't write. I hope that he doesn't feel he was being taunted by my not caring about the same things, but simply as he put it,

Okay, given that I couldn't find good information out there, I did the testing myself.


 

Edit: added inadvertently omitted words

Edited by A Smug Dill

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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With this I strongly disagree. To me, it's about clear and unambiguous separation of concerns, which even when I worked for a large corporation is, should we say, rigorously practised. Even when 'we' all worked for the same entity and supposedly have the same overarching goals, there's usually a rather firm line, on the part of each 'actor' or doer, delineating "this is what I will do" and "this is what I won't do". Yes, many parties would avoid talking about their individual lines, and simply not do anything that is across those lines from their perspective. That's when certain things "fall through the cracks", into gaps that nobody can clearly see and point to, and creating problems that cannot be solved once and for all but keep arising, even if on the odd occasion one party would just go one step "above and beyond" for whatever the reason and save the day for a particular project or initiative, only for the next one to fall down again.

 

To be fair, almost all of the reviews on this site are short enough where if something is not included, it's already obvious that it's not included. Like say water resistance tests. Also saying that you won't include such tests in your review is not the same thing that saying you won't do them because you don't care about that property. The latter is what I usually don't like seeing in reviews.

“I admit it, I'm surprised that fountain pens are a hobby. ... it's a bit like stumbling into a fork convention - when you've used a fork all your life.” 

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Also saying that you won't include such tests in your review is not the same thing that saying you won't do them because you don't care about that property. The latter is what I usually don't like seeing in reviews.

 

 

I have equal respect for your not liking (to see) something in reviews and to express that dislike in discussion, as I do others not caring about something to do with fountain pens and inks and express that apathy in discussion.

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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