Other words

[pecunium]

One of the things I wish Lj did better is building community. It's not that I dilike what Lj is, the ability to have, essentially, a news feed of people I like to read, and not have to open dozens of windows, hack my own code, etc. is wonderful.

It's very good at fostering relationships, but they tend to be either didactic, or a set of overlapping groups. There are some 400 people who read this. There are, at any given time, about a dozen who comment. No, there are more than that, but it's rare for more than a dozen to chime in on something, and the conversations are (as a rule) short exchanges, without a whole lot of side-chatter elaboration.

On Lj, one; generally, speaks to the author, and that's about it.

There is something to be said for that (and I think the threading functions are a part of that).

There are other blogs I like, which have a different dynamic, one which has some sense of inclusion: Orcinus, Pandagon, Slackitivist.

Boing-Boing is starting to build that. There's been a lot of tension about it; because part of the reason is the tragedy of the commons. Usenet has become a swamp. A vast bastion of Libertarianism. A place where a lot of people are offended that they can't do anything they want.

Boing-Boing suffered from that. They used to have comments, but the trolls came, and stank up the joint. So they hired tnh to practice her moderation-fu. I've been watching her style for a long time, because her blog, Making Light, has a wonderful community. It has community because it has rules (I have rules, because I watched Usenet go from fun, to toxic sludge, and I watched some of the folks I liked to spend time with move to Making Light, and keep the parts I liked, and I took the ideas I saw implemented there, and tailored them to my sense of order).

The proof of the pudding is how the hot-button topics get handled. Anyplace can be swell to hang out when no one is stepping on your corns. It's when oxen are being gored the community comes into play.

Making Light is the best, online example I can find (I think the folks here have done all right, but there have only been a few tests of the concept). Is it perfect? No. As with any other such place, being new can be hard (esp. if one is used to other fora; or comes in with a far outlying minority position). It keeps to its nature, even though the people change (in the course of the six, maybe seven years I've been something of a regular, a lot of active members have come and gone).

But (and this is the meat of the matter), there have been some real furballs, the sort which I've seen destroy other places, maintain a fair amount of civlility. They can be prickly, brash, blunt, even rude. As a rule, they aren't offensive.

The best example I can give is one on Ron Paul, which ended up drifting to abortion: how it went.

What I saw (and for reasons hard to explain, I went and re-read it all again today, because I was thinking about community, and how it works) was everyone (even when pisssed off) who was taking part being (as a rule) civil. I saw people reminding them that civil matters. The members take it upon themselves to keep the place the sort of place they want it to be.

It spills over, I've seen the ML regulars in other venue (some are known to comment here). They can be prickly, brash, even rude. As a rule they aren't offensive.

It's not a bad way to be seen.

Comments

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

The communities here, though, can really be bonding. I've made a lot of connections, and enjoy the company of, people from communities here.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

They can. There are people here I would be far poorer for not having met. This place has been support, and comfort.

But (and perhaps I failed in explaining it) the sort of communities I've found here tend to be smaller, and not posssesed of that sort of group identity.

TK

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

I guess...the ones here are large enough, more and I get overwhelmed (like I do, sometimes, on Somethingawful, the only other big place I hang out).

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

I don't know. Of the blogs you mention, I read Making Light and Pandagon; I participate more at Making Light and feel more identified with the community there than I do with Pandagon (although it gives me great delight to recognize MLers over there!), but I really think of LJ as my home.

I came into it when it was still invite-codes, with the intent of ordinary daily-life blogging and staying in touch with my friends; I got caught up in Potter fandom, and made some amazing friends that way; I maintained contact with Amber-fandom friends even after I'd dropped off the Amber Mailing List (and that played a role in intensifying the friendship with the person who's currently my housemate and best friend); and sometimes through THOSE connections, I met people I'd never have encountered otherwise, who've become closer and dearer to me than many I've met through accidents of geographic proximity.

For instance, matociquala fits both into the category of Amber mailing list friend, and RL friend (I knew her years before she was published, when we were in the SCA together), but she has a far wider readership than I command, due to her status as published author who blogs about her craft, and when she blogged about a Goth bowling expedition I dragged her on to welcome her back to the area, I wound up in a conversation in comments with another of her readers, who turns out to think about life in much the same way I do, and who's now one of my trusted friends.

Same for another person I originally met because someone linked to an interesting essay she wrote about... I think it was gender performance and Potter characters.

I guess I see LJ as having the same community potential as Making Light, just in a more diffuse fashion. The conversation doesn't take place only in one journal's comments, even if one post spawns loads of them (like misia's "No Pity, No Shame, No Silence" post) -- it gets picked up and carried across other journals, people link, the discussion grows, and connections are made.

I know that if it went away, there'd be a huge hole in my life.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Of the blogs mentioned, I'd say Slacktivist is the most ML one.

Maybe it's because I came to Lj, after I'd been in Usenet, BBSs, and ML. I like Lj, and even in my semi-gaffiation of the moment, a lack of it (a place I am in the catbird seat of what goes up) would be painful.

I was afraid I was going to screw this up. I don't think Lj has no community aspect, but it is, as you say, more diffuse. This is a good thing. The amplification aspect is good.

We benefit from being able to be independent. It helps. The things I've said here on torture; if nothing else get more readership for me saying it in my own right, rather than as comment in other venues.

Perhaps it's more of hanging out at school at Lj, and a part at ML.

I see why evilrooster works so hard at studying community. It's no one thing (and I did a poor job of making my awareness of that clear).

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

I'm a veteran of Usenet and BBSes as well -- oddly, BBSes AFTER Usenet, because I got thrown in at the deep end when I arrived at MIT in 1987, and only resorted to BBSes when Fidonet was the only cost-effective way I had to connect in the early 90s. For me, LJ feels more personal and controllable than Usenet, but broader than a single weblog (no matter how popular or how active the comments section).

And, of course, it all cross-pollinates. I added you here because of consistently appreciating your comments at ML. (I ought to ad evilrooster too!)

[shunra.livejournal.com]

You mention difficulties "if one [...] comes in with a far outlying minority position".

You have pinpointed an issue not just with online fora. Observe the general discourse in the United States (political, ethical, emotional - you pick it, any field). So narrow a band of opinion is accepted that even having an opinion becomes suspect.

One way of looking at it is that in the U.S. it is less pronunciation and more opinionation that has a single acceptable register, where everything else is consigned to the trash heap.

I'm not sure how the electorate a republic can continue to function cohesively with such a monoculture of opinions. Perhaps it no longer does.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Democracy depends on some level of monoculture. The minority opinions have to believe they are still incorporated in the grand scheme of things.

If the polity stops feeling that, civil war ensues.

I've seen some studies which posit the largest electorate which can be sustained by a direct democracy is about 5,000. That's, oddly enough about the size of Athen's electorate during the Peleponesean Wars. A similar size seems to have been the case for the other large cities in Greece.

I think the largest flaw I see in those studies is they seem to take Greece as the archtype, and so other polity (such as Switzerland) which seem to manage with a much larger elecotorate (and I don't know enough about the Dutch Polder evilrooster was mentioning to know how large the functional unit of the directly democratic aspects are) and have done so for far longer than the heyday of the Greek city states.

But with a great deal more homogeneity Switzdeutch/Romansch/French and Catholic/Protestant distinctions notwithstanding.

TK

How narrow a monoculture?

[shunra.livejournal.com]

If I am all apples, and he all pine, would we really need a fence?

My darling husband is half Dutch, half Swiss; I grew up within an undemocratic but decidedly opinion-encompassing culture in Israel. What I'm seeing/feeling here is a marginalization that excludes all but a very narrow band of opinions - sort of a Rovian "permanent Republican majority": if you're not within the band, you're an outcast. Salon's Glenn Greenwald refers to the sought quality as "Seriousness".

I wonder whether the narrowness of the acceptable band is inverse to the size of the band of men composing the electorate.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine, novalis has the idea of a bit torrent type distributed network that would replace LJ, and not rely on potentially disruptive companies.

Mght work as a good way to have LJ type communities.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I have to question whether communities _can_ be "built". Or should be. (I don't much like cheerleaders, or manipulators, on general principles.) It seems to me that communities mostly just grow, with the realization that they are communities coming after the fact. And "LJ" is vastly too enormous to be a community _per se_ , as is (perhaps) any open-membership system on the net nowadays. Too many people, with too little in common, and too little Need to be in that particular place. (I've seen that happen in Science Fiction Fandom over the past half-century -- people now sometimes _talk_ about it being a Community (or even Family) but I think it was much more of one back when there were only five or six hundred people active in it, and they all read pretty much the same books.)

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I think built isn't the best of terms. Grown? Fostered? Inculcated?

I do think they can be made to happen; what one gets will not always be what one expects, but like pruning a tree, the shape can be guided.

TK

[shunra.livejournal.com]

Do communities crystallize out of supersaturated solutions?

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Fostered, yes, or encouraged, and nudged to affect direction (but physical vectors aren't accurate predictors of where it will go). I'd suggest that the largest & strongest on-line Community might be AOL -- which features most of what I happen to consider the worst aspects of artificially-constructed (pseudo-) Community.

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

[thirstygirl.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I've been musing about this a little during an internal debate over whether I was going to move from Lj or not in the most recent kerfuffle.

My flist is pre-dominantly people that I know in real life and so there is a place for the combination of reviews, social updates, and random rants on economics/feminism/politics that makes up the majority of my posts. We get some pretty good fights going on in some of the rants given the range of views in my social group but it stays civil because, well, we're friends. [I ended up sticking with Lj because if I had an Actual Blog I felt my posts would need to be Actual Posts and not this combination of fluff and content.]

However I am also a member of several communities on LJ which seem to have managed to get a group energy going. You see the same people commenting on different comms and you know them- again the mods and the main commenters have managed to get a civil tone predominating. When there is unjustified snark you will get other users, not just mods, pulling people into line. I think it's partly talking to the same people in different comms that gets users invested in maintaining the tone of the comm- you want it to be a nice place so you can talk to your friends there.

[I came across you via Slacktivist and Pandagon, even if I seldom comment here]

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

The moderators take an active role, yes? There is a set of expectations? Or is it rather a set of rules?

I ask because evilrooster has gotten me to thinking of how community comes to be, and then how it works; sustains itself, or dies.

I have fluff and content. I don't know that I'd have it be any different if I had a freestanding blog (I won't say real, because this is real, and I have a larger readership than I think I could maintain elstwise. I also probably have fewer trolls).

I blog for me. That it pleases others is a wonderful thing (and I might not keep it up, had I no feedback), but if I did it for them it would become a flat, and lifeless, enterprise.

I am pleased to discover that my, intermittent, presence at Slacktivist (and even more intermittent at Panddagon) was interesting enough to lead you here.

Thank you.

(and I look in on your journal. I've been less than active on Lj of late, so I can't say if I have it on my regular reading; I need to recheck that list anyway)

TK

[thirstygirl.livejournal.com]

Hmm, seems to be mostly expectations. Most 'pull your socks up' comes from other members but mods step in occasionally. Very occasionally actually as there seems to be a common agreement to be civil.

I suspect for some of the communities it's because, as I said, you end up talking with the same people over and over again so that as a commentator you start to feel some stake in keeping the place nice- it's not just up to the official owners of/posters to the comms.

[betnoir.livejournal.com]

I find this interesting in light of the most recent LJ Drama. Several people asserted to me that LJ is a community.

And I found myself...puzzled. I don't view LJ itself as a community, but a platform for *building* community.

Oddly, Making Light is, to me, a community.

Make of that what you will.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I see nothing odd in viewing Making LIght as a community -- Teresa and Patrick came from the Fanzine Fandom Community, which had (since about 1930) been discovering (and re-discovering *sigh*) the same principles for sustained and useful discourse that apply to OnLine discussions. (You might think that a time-lag of several months between statement and response would damp the flames, but I assure you that simmering for such a long time, with the lid on, can build up a significant head of steam. As well as encourage some strange mixtures of metaphors.) They brought to that blog not only the elemental concepts, but also a significant core of people who shared that experience and understanding, to shape the community in this new forum or medium. Much the same thing happens, less spectacularly, when other old-time Fans establish their smaller, individual communities by way of "Friends Lists" and regular droppers-in. (These principles are pretty much universal, and I suppose they've been developed (if not necessarily articulated) within many other groups of people who like to /t/a/l/k/ communicate; it just happens that I'm most familiar with s-f Fanzine Fandom.)

And (perhaps OT, but I've lost track of the threading) "rude" has various significations -- including the implication in the fact that (as Lee Gold put it) "Fans tend to practice Family Manners". With family (and friends) it's often acceptable to be bluntly outspoken in ways that would be perceived as rude under more formal circumstances. We do need to keep this in mind, and ameliorate our responses accordingly.

[betnoir.livejournal.com]

"Fans tend to practice Family Manners". With family (and friends) it's often acceptable to be bluntly outspoken in ways that would be perceived as rude under more formal circumstances. We do need to keep this in mind, and ameliorate our responses accordingly.

Ah, and this is where I have tremendous difficulty with fandom as a whole. There are individual folk within fandom who are as family to me. But the majority of the teeming masses just...aren't.

And having that sense of Immediate Family forced upon me just because we are both in fandom is likely to kick in my flight or fight instinct.

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

>>But (and this is the meat of the matter), there have been some real furballs, the sort which I've seen destroy other places, maintain a fair amount of civlility. They can be prickly, brash, blunt, even rude. As a rule, they aren't offensive.>>

I'm amused that you use the term "rude" in the same breath as "civlility[sic]". I'd say that if someone was rude they aren't civil. And aren't some people's rudeness another person's offensiveness? prickly and brash, i'm OK with. That happens. But rudeness.....it's in the eye of the beholder.

From Dictionary.com:
Rude - discourteous or impolite, esp. in a deliberate way.
Synonyms - uncivil

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

There are differences. I recall a post where (I was furious) I told someone, "I don't give a damn why they are doing it".

I recall a time on usenet where I told someone soldiergrrrl, if you're reading this is was Hindenraker on UML) that if he meant what he said, and came to my neighborhood, I'd shoot him.

But I didn't call him a small-dicked little pissant. I didn't call him a coward. I was polite about it.

That's civil. And civil is good. Civil doesn't mean things are pleasant. It means they aren't nasty.

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

I never said that civil doesn't mean things are pleasant. I specifically said that prickly and brash are ok.

One person's rudeness/prickly/brash ("civility") could be another person's "offensensitivity" (bloom county). When thinking about how to respond to someone, that should be kept in mind. Whether that changes a word or two or not at all, I don't know, that's up to the responder. But I think it's an important thing to remember in the heat of the moment.

You told someone that if they meant what they said, and then came to your neighborhood you'd shoot them and you think that was a civil statement. Do I understand you correctly? Yes or no will suffice.

Building/Reinforcing a Community

[xenolee.livejournal.com]

It's too easy to read an entry in an LJ blog and not
look at the comments, and that doesn't foster a spirit of community among the commenters, merely a spirit of attachment toward the blogger.

If you want to build a community, start an alt newsgroup, where everyone who subscribes reads all the messages on all the threads that interest them.

Or start a mailing list for those who read your blog, like the mailing list Tom Digby set up for those who read his monthly Silicon Soapware.

Of course neither of those will let you post your photographs. You could start a LJ Community for that, with each photo as a separate entry, generating its own comments, encouraging other people to post their own photos.

You can set up newsgroups and mailing lists as moderated, which lets the moderator ride herd on uncivil messages and spam. More work, higher quality. How often those two things go together.