> > Get a tan, have some pina coladas and come back rested and ready.
rAmen. I subscribed to the Discuss list at about the same time as I subscribed to another list, that of the Aerican Empire (there is a strong sense of community there, and a lot of noisy signal). A year or so ago we had the most posts in a month of any month in the list's 15-year history, because of several controversial threads where many lurkers chimed in, and the list's frequent mailers had intense arguments (some very edifying, some ending in flame wars such that the Emperor had to put a moratorium on posts for a day or so to let people cool down). Although everything was quite interesting, it was somewhat tedious to read and very difficult after the initial stretch of conversation because the discussions had boiled themselves down to very specific topics, and members who had wanted to make a more general comment missed their chance. Although recent events here have been a lot more amicable and mild by comparison, I felt a little like there was not much I could contribute to the threads that most interested me, which is not always a bad thing - for example, I was asked by name (among others) to comment on the tautology discussion a week or two ago, but I felt I did not know enough about the topic without some substantial research to add anything that had not already been said. It was OK, because the thread continued on to some fascinating areas. (For the record, I used 'tautology' because it had been used previously in the thread, not because I necessarily thought it was the best word for the definition I was thinking of. My knowledge about how I conceive of 'tautology' is currently limited to XKCD <http://xkcd.com/703/>and the ensuing discussion <http://fora.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=56593> [particularly here<http://fora.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=56593&p=2012943&hilit=703#p2012943> ]). The Aerican discussion simmered down because people got tired, stopped posting, and then started posting about more mundane stuff, which seemed to give some relief, an outlet for social interaction without obligation. Here I guess people agreed to disagree (Your Interpretation May Vary). So I wonder if [online] communities consistently tend to have cycles like this, and whether the nature of the autoredirection across groups is similar (for instance, in periodicity). -Arlo James Barnes
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