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17:56 / 27.09.06

I think what we're all taking issue with is the idea that the Head Shop excludes people who do not regularly use specialised vocabulary, regardless of whether you, Lula, know what hegemony means.

Yes Haus thank you, I'm well aware of that intention, I'm clear that it's not all about me and I would stand by my statement that the HS does exclude people.

I also think Mister Disco was misreading me, and for me his comments on mine made me feel marginalised, and it is things similar to that that make me leery of the Headshop. Instead of addressing the issue, it was suggested that people who do not use specialised language in everyday conversation perhaps ought to spend more time looking up words in the dictionary. I don't think that's helpful at all.

However, as I previously said we have been here many times to no resolve and I have no wish to do it all again. Especially when this is the outcome.

18:04 / 27.09.06

Guys, can I ask that this is continued elsewhere, either in the thread that already exists for discussion of the perception of Headshop or a new one on the same topic? It's not really got anything to do with the opening post any longer.

18:04 / 27.09.06

I don't have much to add but am finding the conversation here useful and interesting" doesn't add content, I for one haven't yet gotten chewed out for saying that sort of thing
This is often how I feel when reading the forum, but I've always had the impression that this kind of comment is exactly what is frowned upon in the Headshop as constituting threadrot. This is especially true of (imho) the more interesting threads where two groups are trying to hammer out an agreement or argue their own corner, where I'd feel that going in and saying "hold on, I don't quite get this, can you explain X" would detract from the main thrust of the thread and bring down scorn upon me.
This is all my own impressions, so I may be way off base and being unnecessarily touchy and paranoid, but I thought it might be useful to bring a non-headshop poster's viewpoint.
As for the fora where I am more active; Comics' recent tranquility I have watched with dismay. I guess there isn't currently any big non-superhero comic event or series that gets the same breadth of audience as your Infinite Crises on Planet M. Nothing like Promethea, the Invisibles, even stuff like Transmet, which all helped encourage posters and produced topics.
I wish G&G was busier as well, but currently it is ticking over, if a bit slowly. I have a couple of kind of topics I've been meaning to polish and present, but nothing really exciting. Maybe it will pick up as we head towards winter and evenings spent indoors seem more attractive.

18:10 / 27.09.06

I'm sorry to hear that, lula, and I think it is premature. The HS mods and regulars are, I'm sure, willing to give you a fair if critical hearing. I realise that that can be uncomfortable, but I also think that people are prepared to reflect and respond to constructive criticism....which is very difficult if people don't offer it.

19:11 / 27.09.06

I'd like to return to the subject of the comics forum for a moment because I too am concerned that with the higher churn rate of monthly titles graphic novels, particularly those that require greater effort onthe part of the poster to engage with, are left out in the cold somewhat. This has the potential to become a self sustaining cycle, where people who actively enjoy comics and graphic novels, but not those that are on regularly monthly schedules don't go into the comics forum and are not inspired to post when they do.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:17 / 27.09.06

As I said a page previously, that's kind of a problem when it come to non-major house comics.

I'm gonna start a thread on The Plot, if anyone's with me? I just need to sober up a bit.

20:10 / 27.09.06

A few brief comments, specifically around the Head Shop. I absolutely and strongly believe that every member of the board should feel able to contribute to the Head Shop, but I also don't think that everyone on the board is as knowledgeable about the subjects discussed in the Head Shop, any more than they might be about Music, Art, Fashion, Design, Film, Current Affairs or whatever.

My contention is that for pretty much any user there will be at least one or two major fora where they're going to be operating on sketchy information and where - as a result - they can't go around asserting things without expecting to be shot down quite quickly. The Head Shop is no different in that respect than any other forum, except perhaps that its subject matter is more rarified and harder for a lay person to contribute to effectively.

So basically people have to feel comfortable asking stupid questions or opening up debates or that they won't be crushed if they're clumsy as long as they're honourably so. Which is the next stage of the question. Does the Head Shop allow that kind of activity?

From my perspective it seems that at the moment the Head Shop is not anywhere near as intellectually challenging or diverse as it was a few years ago. Actual philosophical / cultural studies questions have been rather overwhelmed by identity politics, BDSM and gender politics. If people are finding it oppressively difficult to contribute to this space and wish it to become more populist and less ivory towerish, I'd argue strongly that this should be resisted.

But I'd also say that if people are not feeling able to ask big dumb questions or to ask for clarification on things they don't understand that this is a problem and anything that can be done to fix this situation should be considered promptly.

ONLY NICE THINGS

20:28 / 27.09.06

Well, as you say, Tom, it's already less intellectually rigorous, and the only way to let everyone play freely in it would be to make it less intellectually rigorous still.

However, there's a distinction between playing freely and participating in, and I'm a bit worried about:

This is often how I feel when reading the forum, but I've always had the impression that this kind of comment is exactly what is frowned upon in the Headshop as constituting threadrot. This is especially true of (imho) the more interesting threads where two groups are trying to hammer out an agreement or argue their own corner, where I'd feel that going in and saying "hold on, I don't quite get this, can you explain X" would detract from the main thrust of the thread and bring down scorn upon me.

Because I really don't think it would - unless you either ask something or say something that has already been discussed at some length two pages back.

20:41 / 27.09.06

That's my feeling too - that people should feel able to ask those kinds of questions without thinking they'll get ridiculed (I don't think they would get ridiculed, but I suspect that their anxiety is real).

Jack The Bodiless

10:59 / 29.09.06

I agree the issue isn't whether a newbie to the Headshop would get ridiculed for asking a dumb question, but that they think/fear they would, in the same way as the old stand-bys "Is Barbelith Dying?" and "Is There A Barbeclique?" reflect as much on the person asking the question as they do the actual state of events.

Why these opinions and points keep being raised, and how the issue can be addressed - these are the interesting questions. Historically, people have posted defensively on the subject once it comes up again (boiling the general responses down, "if you can't stand the Head, stay out of the Shop/Barbelith is not boring, it is you who is the boring one, ahhhh/there is no Barbeclique, see, all my cliquebuddies agree with me"), and then claimed the subject had been discussed previously, something which always struck me as completely self-defeating if the actual aim was to stop having the discussion. It's factually correct, and completely wrongheaded. If people are so clearly expressing a sense of disenfranchisement, in however small a way, then telling them they're imagining the whole thing and to stop being so needy/insecure/paranoid is hardly behaviour conducive to stopping them. In the same way, Haus starting posting to this thread with the sentence "If you are not prepared to think about things, you'll come unstuck" is hardly designed to reassure people anxious about posting to the Headshop*, as Haus is known (and knows himself to be known) to have a Ginormous Brane and the impression the vast majority of people here have is that Haus has a higher standard of thinkingmanship than your average poster to this board. While "Haus loves you. Come to bed" might be too far through the reassuring right into the scary miss mary, I hope you can see my point.

*Haus has clarified his point subsequently and in a non-snippy way - I'm just selecting a convenient, one-sentence example of the slight thoughtlessness I was describing.

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:59 / 29.09.06

Well, Tom has stated as an aim not to reduce the intelllectual rigour of the Head Shop. Various others have stated as an aim to get more people feeling comfortable with posting _in_ the Head Shop. Anything that advances those two aims, I think we can get behind whole-heartedly.

13:09 / 29.09.06

Just in the interest of tidiness, and to prevent us running two parallel threads dealing with the same material, shouldn't we keep this discussion to the General Headshop reflections thread?

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:29 / 29.09.06

I don't think there's a huge amount more to say, but yes, I'd suggest so.

15:46 / 29.09.06

I think these are the things I believe to be a priori assumptions for our conversations about The HeadShop:

* That the forum should not be forced to become less smart to make people feel more comfortable
* That users who participate in the board who are not as knowledgeable as other users should be circumspect and careful and ask questions a lot rather than asserting ill-thought through opinions and getting cross when they're challenged
* That users who are prepared to do the above should have no compunction or anxiety about posting to the Head Shop, being safe in the assumption that they will be given support and have stuff explained to them without people in the board shooting them down or making them feel stupid.

Does this seem to be reasonable?

17:16 / 29.09.06

Sounds good to me.

paranoidwriter waves hello

18:10 / 29.09.06

Very reasonable (sincerely).

Again, thanks Tom. I still owe Barbelith a donation to help out... One day; promise. As soon as I can work out how best to do it and actually have the funds spare.

15:33 / 09.10.06

Going back to the stats, yes, there seems to be something of a resurgence, especially looling at active posters. It would be interesting to see if there is something like an 80/20 rule in terms of poster-concentration - what proportion of posts are generated by the top 10 or 20% of posters... my hypothesis would be that there is significant skewing of post volumes towards a small proportion of posters, it would be nice to see if that is the case or not.

TC made an interesting comment:

"I'm interested in how we can get some of the activity in the Conversation distributed more effectively through the rest of the board and why that isn't happening already. I'm a little concerned that the Temple is becoming a bit of a separatist parallel entity - thriving in its own right but not really part of the larger community."

Doubtless this has been commented on before, but the board seems set up to atomise discussions into "sattelite" sub-fora. Clearly this is benefiting Temple - interesting to see it doing so well when some old hands in Temple sometimes complain about the level of debate not being what it was. But clearly most people prefer the "integrative" and relatively freeform Convo to the specialist sub-fora. If there is a desire to drive traffic to the subfora I wonder whether some form of quicklinking from the Convo page to hot topics in the subfora might be beneficial. Probably not easy to do though.

18:11 / 09.10.06

That's something I've thought about before -- my first post in the Wishlist thread, actually, was more or less the same thing.

I think it's interesting that some people are thought of as "Temple regulars" or "Head Shop regulars" or "Comics regulars," and I wonder if the multicolor, single-column layout is underlying (or underlining) this tendency.

14:17 / 10.10.06

Grant:
I think it's interesting that some people are thought of as "Temple regulars" or "Head Shop regulars" or "Comics regulars," and I wonder if the multicolor, single-column layout is underlying (or underlining) this tendency.

Yes, I think it is. One must search through each forum to find a topic of interest. If what you want is collection of differentiated forums, with convo as a (relatively "giggly") crossover point, then this is fine. Of course some people participate in many forums quite happily, so it may not be an issue.

A statistic on forum usage would be interesting. An idea of the mean number of forums visited by Barbelith users and the spread of the distribution would tell us how "atomised" the community is.

But it wouldn't tell us if we should do something about it. For one thing, lurkers are a huge part of B's audience, and they may well surf across many fora.

16:11 / 10.10.06

I think it is a mistake to assume that people post more in Convo because they prefer it. Don't people generally say it's easier to post in Convo? Doesn't require much thought or effort? Posting there because it's less work seems a little different from posting there because it's better-liked.

I do think linking is a good idea though, a good way to make the place better interconnected.

20:44 / 10.10.06

I'm not going to promise that this page will be around for anything more than a few weeks, but in the meantime I thought it might be a good way for people to fix some of the divisive stuff they might have been feeling across the site recently - Barbelith Recently Updated Threads (restricted to the colourful fora for the moment).

Happy Dave Has Left

14:35 / 09.10.07

I don't know if it's wishful thinking on my part, but when I log in and check the 'Recently Updated Threads' page (which is a major help to people like myself who only check in once or twice a day, and also to compulsive threadwatchers), I've noticed a definite increase in both the number of new threads being started and participation in existing ones.

It would be super interesting to see some up to date stats to see if this is just my imagination.

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