Right. I just dashed off an article for TempleComp that started eerily resembling a response to this thread. But here are some things I found myself reflecting on.
Let's talk about the tyranny of structurelessness. I've just been introduced to this article, written in 1970 by Jo Freeman as a response to crises in feminist groups at the time, but the ideas came up in anthropology classes in college. In short, when an organization appears to be "structureless," in reality it has a structure that is implicit, nonintentional, and largely unconscious. That structure easily becomes counter to the group's aims, but since it operates invisibly, it's almost impossible to rework.
Barbelith was started with some of the same ideals as these "structure-free" groups that Jo Freeman is critiquing here. Ideally, we were all supposed to be equal, and no one's ideas were supposed to be weighted any more heavily than anyone else's, except on their merits. In practice, it doesn't work out that way. I (usually) know what Haus is getting at when he's being sarcastic, but if a new person were to post the same way I would probably assume they were being earnest. I am sure many moderators tend to agree with certain others' moderation requests fairly automatically, because they know those moderators regularly make good decisions, and it's labor-saving and usually reliable to expect them to make good decisions in the future.
But it's not just about moderation decisions. People get roped into roles here, sometimes to our great frustration. I know I've had wild personality shifts on this board as I tried to resist roles I felt uncomfortable with. But it's natural for groups to settle into that kind of unspoken structure as well. Someone will be the patient person who always takes it upon themselves to gently address potential problem posters. Someone will be the person to incisively criticize new and not-yet-well-formed ideas, often to their destruction. Someone will be the voice of the reasonable opposition. Someone will be the D3v1Lz 4dV0Ka+3!!!. Someone will be the naif. Someone will be the rational moderate. Someone will always vehemently disagree with one or two particular other people, and vice versa.
And when people are fairly settled in these roles, a few things happen: First, it gets boring. We have lots of conversations that are more or less the same. Second, it gets frustrating. Posters try to break out of their roles, and inertia makes it difficult to do so. Third, new posters find it hard to find a place when everyone else seems to have a distinct role and voice. Finally, this structure is difficult to change or even analyze because it's unspoken, unplanned, and largely invisible. The group may resist seeing this structure because we like to think of ourselves as individuals always making free and reasonable choices, and we believe we've constructed a situation that supports those free choices for everyone. In truth, the environment would support free choices better if the hidden structures could be made more explicit.
Then we've got the organizational life-cycle problem. Every organization, whether a museum or message board, starts with a certain amount of momentum and a certain amount of structure. As the project moves forward, structure increases in order to focus and direct the momentum, and momentum decreases as it gets absorbed in creating and maintaining structure. At a certain point, there is the risk that there will be too little energy left to sustain forward movement and maintain the existing structure. The structure can start to disintegrate. Sometimes this makes way for change to happen, new life gets injected and the cycle gets rebooted. That's the best outcome. Often, though, fighting change is seen as a way to preserve the structure that's left. If the organization is successful at resisting change, stasis or senescence are the two possible outcomes, and stasis requires more energy to maintain. Making change a conscious decision might be the only way to save an organization at this point in its life cycle. |
