This is the city of Boston 
The land of the bean and the cod,
Where the weaving guild staunchly looks backwards
To the glory in which it once trod.

I guess we have very different concepts of how and why the web works and what is gained by posting vs study groups.  To me, study groups work on the lowest common denominator, which usually means that if there are 10 people in the study group one (we) would wind up doing something of immediate interest only 10% of the time.  In my opinion, life is too short for that.

On the other hand, if I post a brief announcement on the web that there is  something I find interesting on my web site, I end up talking to the (mercifully) few people who are genuinely interested in that particular subject.  Likewise, if someone else posts something that sounds like it is of interest to me, I can go look, and if it really does interest me, I can communicate directly with them.  Each time it can be a completely or partially different set of people.  Thus the focus can be much tighter; Both of us really like and appreciate that.

We have been invited a number of times to join a CW group, but neither of us can work up any interest or enthusiasm in weaving swatches, let alone swatches to someone else's specification.  Madelyn recently wrote an excellent editorial that differentiated between two groups of weavers that supported something that Katherine and I had observed before:  There are basically two kinds of weavers - those that love to design and weave primarily to show that their design makes good cloth; conceptually, they would just as soon hire someone to sit at the loom for them. (We suspect that this includes most active members of CW.) The others are the folk who like to sit at a loom and weave, and who design because they have to, so that they can weave a piece of cloth that pleases them.  Conceptually, they would be happy to get someone else to do the work of actual designing (as long as it was to their specifications), because designing just takes time away from sitting at the loom.  I suspect, but do not know, that you fall into the first
group; we are firmly in the second.  We design just enough (or get designs out of books and modify just enough) so that we get a design that meets our needs and that we would enjoy weaving. 

Coming out of a basic science background, the very concept that anything I do or write should not be shared as quickly and as widely as possible is not only incomprehensible, it cannot help but raise my hackles.  Thus, I could never participate in any group that is unwilling to share the results of its work as widely and as quickly as possible, which today is achieved through the web.  We believe in encouraging lurkers - they might even learn something and they cost me nothing since I am always prepared to share my thoughts, designs, and unventions (re-inventions of 27,000 years of weaving).  In fact, I have written
over 160 scientific articles, papers, and book chapters in my career, and I have not been paid for any but one of them, for which I received $16.00.  Science progresses because everyone shares information and thus we can stand on the shoulders of giants; hand weaving is seriously faltering because there is a large subset of weavers who clutch their tidbits of unvention tightly to their chests. A thousand years ago, the guild system and guild secrets had an economic advantage.  Since then, the Western world has discovered that the openess of the scientific approach results in far more rapid progress and greater economic benefit to all, which is why the guild system collapsed.  For some reason, large segments of the handweaving world has not yet come to this realization, much to their own detriment when compared to the far more inclusive stance of the woodworkers, potters, jewelry makers, etc.