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Our aim is to create an online space where the standard of conversation, discussion and debate is higher than anywhere else online.
What I meant to say was what constitutes Higher discussion, conversation and debate?
Is it the language used or how effectively codified an idea is, is it how educated the proponant of the idea is?
I'm not sure what "codified" is intended to mean here, but I think it's honestly a bit simpler than that, in the specific case of Barbelith. From elsewhere, in answer to the question "what would a sport forum on Barbelith provide that could not be provided by a different, sport-centred forum?", I said:
The answer to that is precisely the same as the answer to "what does this offer that dedicated Music/Magick/Current Affairs/Film fora do not", which is the company of members of Barbelith. That's it.
If the membership of Barbelith becomes indistinguishable from the membership of any other message board then, since we do not actually have anything that marks us out as special (hence the inaccuracy of "comic-book board" - Barbelith is not that distinct, and far more exhaustive discussion of comics can be found elsewhere), then there is nothing much to mark it out from any other message board apart from the colour scheme and some functionality.
However, if we assume that these members contribute towards a high level of conversation, discussion and debate, and that this is therefore what makes Barbelith distinct, we then have to ask what connection that has with those involved being "clever". I don't think there *is* much of a connection, per se - all of the characteristics identified as "good clever" by Deva add to the experience of posting and being responded to on Barbelith, but so do readiness to listen, kindness, a willingness to be corrected, an ability to stay on topic, a recognition of the right of others to hold opinions, amicability, getting excited about badgers and all sorts of other characteristics. Likewise, in some cases "bad clever" can actually be a useful characteristic for keeping a high level of conversation etc on Barbelith - for example, in the responses to Innercircle or the Fetch, where exclusion was a useful and productive response to a situation in which some fundamental elements of Barbelith being a worthwhile place to interact were being threatened.
Of course, at other times both bad clever and bad stupid are undesirable. Many posters have used bad clever, or an approximation thereof, to try to bully others into either silence or departure - often this is about relentlessly gainsaying and harrying people until they no longer have the strength to continue engaging with Barbelith. This tactic has been tried with varying degrees of "cleverness" behind it, and with varying success, but it is a fairly obvious example of where education is not a positive characteristic, but only something providing a broader range of offensive possibilities. The "right to breed" thread contains a startling number of different incidences of different ways to exclude and attack, some of which could be described as clever, others as clever-clever and many as head-meltingly stupid...
So, I'm not sure that clever/stupid or indeed good-clever/bad-clever are complete representations of the attitude of Barbelith to useful and non-useful posters, nor indeed that there *is* a Barbelith attitude to useful and non-useful posters. |
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