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Is there, at this point, any wish whatsoever to save Barbelith amongst the more longterm posters?
It's a question that I've seen asked a fair bit, and we have threads with titles like "is this it, then?", and "where would we go when Barbelith shuts?", so it at least appeers that there isn't really any serious desire to change things in order to save it.
Further, there I see a lot of posts saying "I miss poster X and poster Y, they were intelligent and interesting."
So, the general impression I'm left with is that Barbelith was far better *before* than it is *now*. I wasn't around for *before*, but I suspect that it's probably true.
I'm one of the newer posters, and I did indeed stumble across Barbelith by googling "Morrison + Invisibles" or something equivalent. I suspect the email I sent for application was probably an embarressing gush about wishing to discuss Morrison's works and teh chaos majick with like-minded people, or something like that. I'm also white, male, straight, etc. I'm not on the breadline, so classify me as rich if you like.
But, I can't help those things, and I can't help being *new* either. Also, I think it's unavoidable that the new posters that you attract are going to have found Barbelith through Google in the same manner as I did. How else would they find it?
It seems to me that if anything is going to change, then a few things need to happen.
1) Firstly, the "old guard" need to properly decide whether there is a genuine wish to keep it going, and make it better. Is it possible to email all relevant parties, and try to reach some kind of consensus? If the answer is "yes, let's give it a go." then at least you can start moving forwards.
2) A repost of the intent and purpose of Barbelith, that becomes very visible to all parties. A post in each forum, in big fucking bold letters, should achieve that, and nominate someone (a mod?) to bump it every few days to ensure that it reaches everyone. This would help the newer posters, I suspect, who may be having trouble with understanding exactly why "womenhottlol" isn't Barbelith (as opposed to leaving them with "...but, it's a public forum, chill, I don't mean to offend..." as an option).
3) There were some good ideas in the Agressive Positivity thread - seeding other forums with calls to engage in threads going on elsewhere, for example, and whilst it petered out, there is no reason not to take what was good from it and re-apply it with a bit of passion. Backed up with other changes in attitude, it's not necessarily doomed to repeated failure.
4) I'm not quite sure how to word this one, so I'm going to rely on people grasping the intent: Try to make it less intimidating. Because Barbelith is populated by a number of people who have posted here for years, there are existing relationships (good and bad) that new users are not privy to. There are also in-jokes, memes, phrases etc that are meaningless to us.
Combined with "it was better in the old days, when the posters were more intelligent" it can be intimidating. For example, I've had my posts snarked at a couple of times, but have been unable to work out whether it was mean't in good humour, or was mean't nastily. I'm thickskinned enough to put that sort of thing to one side until I'm sure of intent, but even so, it still bothered me slightly at the time.
On the other hand, I've had people take time to help me with stuff, to help me rephrase posts in a more meaningful way, and so on, when they could have just ripped me to shreds. And it's those experiences that make me think that it's worth trying to make Barbelith a better place, because there clearly are people here who wish it be that better place, even if they're currently just going through the motions.
I don't know how much of this post is useful, but I'm happy to help if I can do so, and there is the desire. |
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