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

[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.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Yup. That instinct to resist imposition in a sphere normally calling for gradual mutual consensus needs to be resisted. B has been reading A's (rather personally-written) fanzines for years, and thinks of A as being a close friend -- and acts on this basis when they finally meet face-to-face at a convention, only to discover that A considers their relationship to be one of no more than rather-distant acquaintanceship.

The first time I was A, and the first time B, I was somewhat disconcerted, but being shy does help one avoid initial excess, and it's not difficult to cope with this situation once one identifies it. More precisely, I happen not to find it difficult -- but I tend to be, by Nature, a bit more informal & laid-back than most people (and, fortunately, not so aggressive about it as to be likely to cause offense/ /v/e/r/y/ /o/f/t/e/n/).

Personally, I like the idea of Fandom being on a first-name basis, even though this _does_ leave open the possibility of an assumption of degree of friendship that might not exist. It's great to be able to let people know I'm pissed-off at them by using the form: (Polite Address Title) (Last Name); it seems so... civil.

But yeah, making almost a fetish of egalitarianism results in some difficulty distinguishing degrees of relationship/intimacy. Somehow, we generally manage to get along reasonably well, despite this.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Computers (qu'elle surprise do much of this. I think it's why the fanzine mode of interaction (with some more aggressive moderation, to deal with the ability of lots of people to pile on, all at once) is one with a lot of success.

I recall when someone I knew, mostly by way of BBS (but one with a long history of social meeting) asked me a personal, and fairly rude, question. When I said it was none of his business he (and several others) said it was because he had made it so by asking.

They were affronted that I didn't see it that way, and continued to refuse to answer.

There is a sense of intimacy, no; there is an intimacy which the sort of personal, and oftimes revelatory, writing which comes up in fanzines and blogs (and overtime in chat). But that, intellectual intimacy, doesn't equal a personal one.

Clear as mud I am.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I can follow that first argument. "Anything I'm interested in or curious about is, by virtue of that fact, my business" (with a subtext of something like "my purpose/business in life involves trying to learn about & understand as much as possible, with nothing being off-limits" makes a certain amount of sense, to me.

I'm suddenly lost, however, when we get to them being affronted because you refused to answer the question. I think it's clear (or ought to be) that "None of your business" is an idiom, not to be taken literally, that posits a contradiction of the basic "nothing is off-limits" /a/r/r/o/g/a/t/i/o/n/ assumption. It's an assertion that individuals have a right to consider certain personal information -- to be determined by them -- to be private, and that they have a right to decide whether or not to reveal it, or with whom it will be shared. The culture in which I live certainly allows this, on a social level (and even In Court, under oath to "tell ... the whole truth", many questions would rightly be disallowed as being immaterial) -- though I'm often bemused by the areas some people consider subject to this Privacy, or not. (I don't, mind you, consider asking questions that impinge on this to be objectionable, but I can't see insisting or even expecting that anyone necessarily answer them.)

On the matter of personal, revelatory, intimate writing: You could probably seem as clear as the crystal of a goblet for serving a fine wine if you labored long and hard enough to construct all the necessary compartments and hone the connotations of all the words. But it still wouldn't really work, because humans just aren't that clear -- hardly any (with the possible exceptions of psychopaths or sociopaths), for example, actually have impermeable walls between "intellectual", "emotional", and "personal", so people's concepts and practices of these things (and of "intimacy") vary over such a wide range that useful discussions and generalizations may be impractical & inconclusive. (Or so it seems to me -- though this doesn't prevent me from making generalizations in this area, of course.)