Community involvement...
Oct. 13th, 2001 02:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpIn a comment to my previous post, fellow LJer ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rillifane notes, "This isn't the first cyber community I have been involved in. I eventually wander off and the consideration you reference is the reason."
Same here. Of a number of cyber communities I've been involved with, perhaps the most memorable was the Byte Information Exchange (BIX), which I helped beta test and where I moderated a couple of conferences. My participation there lasted about 4 years and then started to drift off, ending shortly after taking a job at Borland.
The common factor in all those "other" communities was that pretty much everything said/posted in a forum was forced down the throat of everyone else in that forum. This led to a number of flame wars that, if you're into that kind of thing, made for some pretty confrontational involvement. It was hard to go off into a "corner" of a forum to socialize or talk about something quietly, because you'd have to wade through everyone else's conversations (and flames) to read what your interlocutor(s) were saying.
The same is largely true for Lantra-L, a translator's mailing list that, in my opinion, has been sidetracked from its original mission of being a resource for translators, instead becoming - the last time I was joined - a vehicle for flame wars, most of them political. (In the end, boring as well.)
What immediately attracted me to LJ - past the ability to simply muse and not necessarily have to engage anyone else in the community in a dialog - was the ability to create your own community of friends and to be included in the communities of others. If you find, after some time, that someone on your friends list is becoming too argumentative (or a pain in the neck for some other reason), you can drop that person from your list and go on largely intact. If you look at the friends of your friends, it is likely you will find others to add to your own community. Being able to post privately or for friends only is icing on the cake.
As a result, this organism called LJ has its own self-stabilizing environment that can be very conducive to stress-free participation. The key part of the previous sentence is "can be." No rule says you can't bust out like Ethel Merman and carry on good old-fashioned flame wars that require industrial grade asbestos suits to withstand.
I just need to back off on the accelerator pedal. I'll be fine.
* * * It's about a quarter after 2 in the afternoon. I've had about 3.5 hours sleep since coming home at 9 or so. I need to verify I've done everything properly on my taxes (since I won't have any opportunity to work on them tomorrow, and it's best not to wait until Monday for this crucial step).
I then plan to hit the sack again around 7 or 7:30, in order to sleep until 10, at which point I'll be refreshed to face the schedule I mentioned yesterday.
Cheers...
rillifane notes, "This isn't the first cyber community I have been involved in. I eventually wander off and the consideration you reference is the reason."Same here. Of a number of cyber communities I've been involved with, perhaps the most memorable was the Byte Information Exchange (BIX), which I helped beta test and where I moderated a couple of conferences. My participation there lasted about 4 years and then started to drift off, ending shortly after taking a job at Borland.
The common factor in all those "other" communities was that pretty much everything said/posted in a forum was forced down the throat of everyone else in that forum. This led to a number of flame wars that, if you're into that kind of thing, made for some pretty confrontational involvement. It was hard to go off into a "corner" of a forum to socialize or talk about something quietly, because you'd have to wade through everyone else's conversations (and flames) to read what your interlocutor(s) were saying.
The same is largely true for Lantra-L, a translator's mailing list that, in my opinion, has been sidetracked from its original mission of being a resource for translators, instead becoming - the last time I was joined - a vehicle for flame wars, most of them political. (In the end, boring as well.)
What immediately attracted me to LJ - past the ability to simply muse and not necessarily have to engage anyone else in the community in a dialog - was the ability to create your own community of friends and to be included in the communities of others. If you find, after some time, that someone on your friends list is becoming too argumentative (or a pain in the neck for some other reason), you can drop that person from your list and go on largely intact. If you look at the friends of your friends, it is likely you will find others to add to your own community. Being able to post privately or for friends only is icing on the cake.
As a result, this organism called LJ has its own self-stabilizing environment that can be very conducive to stress-free participation. The key part of the previous sentence is "can be." No rule says you can't bust out like Ethel Merman and carry on good old-fashioned flame wars that require industrial grade asbestos suits to withstand.
I just need to back off on the accelerator pedal. I'll be fine.
I then plan to hit the sack again around 7 or 7:30, in order to sleep until 10, at which point I'll be refreshed to face the schedule I mentioned yesterday.
Cheers...
