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I don’t know if courtesy is exactly what sets it apart, though that’s there. When I first found the place and then since I joined the thing that stood out for me, beyond the range and quality of the discussion, was the sense of community. The unique qualities of that community, as opposed to any other, and how they are experienced by different members, are probably difficult to adequately describe, but are presumably based on the same basic features communities generally are constructed through: trust, mutual respect, shared interests, commitment to the community as a whole. I think because it’s based on the idea of a community with shared values engaged with different topics, rather than a single focused area with otherwise dissimilar members, it helped to foster the basic feeling that the people you were engaging with would be good to go for a pint with, or have round for tea, or put up for the night just because they were on Barbelith. There’s a generosity there (which Barbe-meets in my experience were a great example of) that’s different to that present between individuals with more established relationships, and it’s not something I’ve felt from other boards, though presumably it exists to some degree.
Maybe it’s an over-serious way of looking at it, but for me participating in Barbelith as a community appears to involve both the sort of active engagement in the conversations of the moment, the something to do over your lunch hour side of things, and the ongoing attempts to build substantial discussions that would develop over time. The sense that, by contributing something of value, because of the varied interests on the board even if something was forgotten quickly or wasn’t immediately taken up that incrementally one was adding value to the community as a whole, because someone out there would appreciate it. There was an exchange of information that was based on indirect reciprocation, but that you still felt bound by. Obviously sometimes those aspects are mixed. If I’m right, that sense of “building for the future” isn’t as present in other, more immediate boards, and that clearly shapes the way their members contribute to them. I’d agree about the sense of untapped potential being continuous, but I think that holding to a standard, even if it’s an artificially constructed and impossible to reach one, has a lot of positive benefits, not least of which is the exhilaration when one then two then three good posts blossoms into a fantastic conversation.
I don’t mind Barbelith being slow food, but some of us are starving here, and the board’s functionality is such that our jaws are wired shut. Without speaking for anyone else’s enjoyment of the board, I don’t think acknowledging that Barbelith is fundamentally just a message board, because of course that’s true, changes the fact that it isn’t a static environment, and the type of things that it’s good for as just another message board are also changing, and people will inevitably respond to that in variety of ways. When so many members have left or gone quiet, and when the activity in the important areas feels so minimal, conversations falter or don’t even begin, and consequently there grows a sense of futility about contributing when it feels like there will inevitably be few people left interested in reading. There’s still good stuff being posted here, but the lack of the same variety caused by the staleness of the membership means that the idiots attract a proportionately much greater attention, people get distracted more easily, it’s harder to get threads started and when they do there’s not the same plurality of viewpoints. Even if there are other or better message boards out there, I don’t think it’s surprising that people are despondent about the state of the board and their expectations of it have become deformed, because they’ve invested their energy here and in the sense of community as a whole, and there’s no reason for that to be transient other than through neglect and a breakdown in the functionality.
Anyway, whatever happens you’re all invited round for a cheese sandwich.
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Not all at once though. |
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