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I mean, to be fair Life Critic, going over the threads from that point in time, there was remarkably little significant criticism of the idea in the Proposal thread, it’s not until page 4 that Mordant / Aunt Beast registers a personal objection on the grounds of duplication of material / attracting people who see Barbelith as just an Invisibles site that there’s actual substantial negativity. There are, no doubt, small negative comments peppered around that thread and elsewhere around the board at that time, but what does that tell us? That the level of interest was not sufficient to overcome a certain amount of negativity and the high expectations / indifference of other members of the board, that being: not that high.
Once the idea of issue by issue discussion threads was chucked, the discussion that did take place seemed (to me) to be quite good for a bit, then it petered out, several people who said they would contribute didn’t, and then it stopped after loss of interest. It’s not the end of the world, and probably not a sign of the end of the board either. If anything, I’d take it less as the discussion being closed down by senior members than the conditions just not being right for an actual conversation to flourish. Given the number of other worthy threads that don’t so much as start, having two pages of reasonable discussion on the Invisibles could be seen more generously as rather good going, and personally I’m more concerned that there’s a deficiency in numbers / interest / attention span to make it worthwhile attempting to discuss certain other topics, but as that’s more subjective with regards to what individuals actually want to discuss, so it’s probably not really a Policy issue.
If there’s not sufficient interest on at topic (or if they’re addressed in certain ways or at the wrong time) to actually generate discussion, conversation, actual back and forth, then those issues won’t translate into interesting. thriving threads, and while that might affect us all as individuals (and I know it gets to me) it’s probably just one of the things that we need to adjust to. To go back to your question of why there were insufficient contributors, that there was an unfavourable reaction from certain quarters of the board to the recent Invisibles thread should resonate with anyone who was reading the board with their eyes at the time – but unless more people are prepared to come forward and say “I was made to feel unwelcome” and by what, which given the fact you seem to be talking about a general low-level degree of animosity towards the idea would seem difficult to substantiate, then it seems more likely that there were insufficient, under-motivated contributors because, well, there were insufficient, under-motivated contributors, and nobody else was that bothered. That was just how the board was. If I’m simplifying I apologise, but I’m in a bit of a rush tonight and honestly I don’t see what the drama is.
Just as a small note, I don’t wish to insult your mighty past observing magicks CHaus Majickian, but from memory it wasn’t actually intended purely as a re-annotation thread, but rather as one part-annotation one part re-reading and discussion. It’s a difference that might not actually have been borne out by the actual thread, but however imperfect it probably seemed a significant distinction at the time, there actually being at least some genuine desire to discuss the book on the board and the experience of re-reading it. |
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