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Pirates versus Ninjas is the future d00d. Jeez. You non Pirate/Ninja people make me sick. Er. Um.
Okay - right then. Interesting thread all things considered. Back to the person who was discussing the divergence between TMO and Barbelith - I think I can remember what happened there - it was when we all decided that Barbelith should be about more than Grant and gradually started to work out what we meant by that. As we did so, I gradually came to the conclusion that the biggest distinguishing characteristic of Barbelith was that it was higher quality than pretty much any other discussion board I'd seen. And at that point, I started talking about the possibilities of the board as being, "The aim of Barbelith is to create an online space where the standard of conversation, discussion and debate is higher than anywhere else online and in which everyone has a say in the running and management of the board" which is now entrenched in the wiki. People generally liked the idea and we went with it and it has been - in the first regard at least - I think enormously successful.
The second regard - not so much, and that's my fault and the fault of my absence of technical skills and time to learn and/or develop them (or build relationships with people who can build em).
Some of the other stuff that happened is also a matter of public record - our long concerted troll attacks, which I found myself dealing with almost daily for a long time, came at a point where I started having a massive upswing in daily work-related stress. Each attack would destroy all conversations going on around the site, and people started leaving in their droves. I tried my hardest to deal with these situations as they occurred and put out fires, but I couldn't, and the moderators were restricted in their abilities to do anything either because of the technology. Eventually my mind snapped, and it came down to one decision for me - we'd either have to close to new members or I'd have to shut the place down and encourage people to start a new community elsewhere. At the time, I think people accepted that the current state of affairs couldn't continue and there was general (but not total) agreement that we should close the doors to new members for a while, until we could figure out a better solution.
Of course, initally everything got back to normal, but after a few months it became clear that an online community like Barbelith really needs new members in order to stay fresh and have any value. During that time, I think I'd argue that the community that was here lost some great people, and got slightly set in its ways, and felt a bit sorry for itself. I am as responsible for that as anyone - more so probably. But then we opened the doors to new people under pressure from some of the existing board members. This was partly because I'd made the board searchable on Google, which it had been originally and then had stopped being when Cal and I developed the new software. Because the conversations we have here should NOT only be of use to the privileged few who post here, I was very very keen that we should help other people find the place and be able to read the great stuff people wrote. Unfortunately it brought with it some more aggravating people. Which - along with renewed troll attacks - put paid to an open door policy in about a week. The existing users practically begged me to shut the doors again. Obviously this wasn't optimal.
Anyway, a long time passed and we gradually came to some new conclusions - that we could handle a vetting process for new users collectively - working as a group, without support from software. Clearly it's not ideal, but I have to be honest with you guys, I think it's basically working. It puts a bit of a barrier up to people joining, some fairly simple hoops that anyone actively interested in a longer-term engagement with the board will have no problem going through. And it means we get a manageable influx of new users.
Now, my personal opinion about what's going on at the moment is that the board is just starting to come back to life again in a meaningful way. We have a way of getting people in (and there's no reason at all that we shouldn't be approaching people as well that we really think have something to contribute and getting them through the process), and we have a sold basis and structure for running the place. The older posters, myself included, have a lot to offer the board in terms of helping people get their heads around the place and representing all the accreted knowledge about how to run a community effectively. And the newer posters have different perspectives, new ideas, challenges to some of the entrenched positions and a new energy that we all need.
The question we've got is quite simple - how do we turn that relationship from one of friction between old and new into both feeding off the other. At the moment the elders are slightly brittle and resistant to change (and I include myself in that), where the n00bs are over-confident and aggressively revolutionary. We just need to find a way for them to work together, to help the older users trust the newer ones and the newer ones understand the mission of the community and the problems we've experienced.
To be honest, I really think we need to reinvest in the idea of the project itself. We need to get back to the creative and excited visionary heart of the enterprise, rather than scrabbling over details and getting resentful. If we're aspiring towards something great, then these differences will evaporate. So at the smallest level we need to get these Terms and Conditions together - have you guys got anywhere with that yet? We need to have conversations about the governance of the place - do we want to find new ways of choosing moderators? People were keen on that a while back. Do we need local FAQs for each fora, managed by that fora's moderators? Do we need to start thinking about organising Barbelith events that are about the subjects we care about as much as they are about socialising? The Donnie Darko Halloween trip a couple of years ago was amazing and I'm completely prepared to help that kind of thing happen again if people liked it. But we should be thinking about real-life equivalents of the discussions at their best. How to get in speakers and people we rate from outside the community. That kind of stuff.
And sure, if we need to start thinking about changing the name, and moving on in a new fashion with a new sense of what we're here for, then that's good too. I can move the software to a new domain if you think up one you'd like, I can do a refresh of the look and feel if it's really necessary. It might take a while, but it's not impossible by any means.
I think we need to get ambitious, but in different ways - let's concentrate less on the failings of the software which we can't do a lot about, and concentrate more on the social structures around the site and see if we can use other bits of software elsewhere to organise things. Are there other sites that you guys use a lot that we could simply integrate - Flickr for example? Or del.icio.us? Do we need meetup groups, or a relationship to upcoming.org? Do we need to find people who are prepared to start finding out about local events on given subjects from around the web?
There's too much of value here to throw away, too much good intention to be treated as if the enterprise were cynical or insular, too many good people to let fall away. The community needs to grow with its members, our project needs to change with its people, our aspirations change with those of the people who made this place possible. And it's all manageable and we can do it.
So where do you guys want to start? |
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