On Mon, 4 Feb 2002, Rodent of Unusual Size wrote: > > I think this list in general is very hospitable to new posters > > Now with *this* I personally disagree. From my admittedly > limited experience on BRIN-L, I would rate the list about 7.5 > out of 10 for cliquishness. (I may not have been *here* long, > but I've participated in mailing lists w/o number for nearly > two decades.) > > MHO FWIW.
For a long time Brin-L prided itself for being not very cliquish, very open, and very civil. Then nastiness happened and Dr. Brin felt it necessary to leave, and some will say that this is the source of all misery. I doubt this is the cause so much as an effect (which, yes, can in turn be another cause): groups of people (communities, organizations, whatever) tend to become more inward-looking over time. A group that may begin by being "about" something in the world beyond itself tends over time to change, until one day the group is "about" itself, which tends to translate into people fracturing as they struggle to define themselves and one another in terms of the group. "Familiarity breeds contempt" is a saying which means several things in different contexts. In the context of Brin-L, I think it means that the better we know on another, the harder it is to hold ourselves to the polite standards we strive to maintain for strangers (what we used to be to one another) and for the gaze of admired "superiors," i.e. Dr. Brin. You get to the point where you anticipate people's moves; what was once impressive grows tiresome; what once seemed funny now seems mean; old quirks now seem malicious habits. Lately Jon has proposd resurrecting the Week In Review. I used to work on the WIR, and it is a time-consuming chore to say the least, though often fun as well. If the WIR is revived, I'm sad to say that I'm not interested in working on it. For me, it's too much time and stress. On the other hand: what if we also start a different institution? I'm thinking about Topic Scouts, people who will consciously keep an eye on the news and their reading and introduce new things to talk about, sowing seeds for conversation if you will. One thing that Dr. Brin was very good at was finding things he was interested in and offering them to the list for discussion. Some folks do this already, but a Topic Scout would in addition to forwarding an article or URL offer an opinion about it. One doesn't expect all seeds to bear fruit, of course, but Topic Scouts might provide viable topics for discussion other than the latest headlines about the latest war, crisis, or public scandal. Nor need Topic Scouts mean that a WIR not be done, but because Topic Scouts need not work on deadline nor recap extremely long threads when they happen, they might give us more bang for the time invested, with less stress. It might also give us an excuse for friendly competition, granting meaningless but gratifying "alpha scout" awards to people who bring the most topics or spark the most "productive" threads. Whaddya think? (Arbitrarity:) All it takes to be a topic scout is to post a message with SCOUTED: yada yada in the subject header, and in the body of the message, list a URL or a synopsis of the subject, plus your opinions. (The SCOUTED bit is for tracking messages for competitive purposes, if such are desired at all, or just to gratify curiousity, and also to affirm the practice as a Brin-L institution, should it evolve into such.) I'll go looking for a topic and try to post one soon. Marvin Long Austin, Texas This might have been tried before but I've forgotten Maru
