Well.
Where to begin?
It is the nature of threads in these communities that people come and people go. To "prove" that point I went back to the thread header page and under "Go To Reply #" started typing in past post numbers: 25,000; 20,000; 15,000; 10,000; 5,000.
What it "proved" was something far different than I expected. The vast majority of the names posting then were the regulars on the thread now (or at least until yesterday). Jorj, Neenny, Gizmo/L1, Gloop, mph, Gary, John Pitera, MKC, Sarkie, Smithee, Rich1, and a few others who have moved on or are on hiatus perhaps ....
How many other threads on SI would that be true of? The answer can be counted on the fingers, probably of one hand.
It may also be the nature of Web communities that they are transitory. It is, unfortunately, easy to abandon one's investment in these communities and friendships. All one need do is disappear, or start his own competing community, or say "I don't want to or can't talk to you anymore," and that's that. The original community is altered, or may disappear altogether. The friendships often die too.
Yet we should not underestimate the impact of doing that. The impact both on those who leave and those who remain, if there is even a place to remain. For the cost of abandoning the group, for whatever reason, is a sense of loss, a sense that something which has become part of the fabric of many lives will no longer be part of that fabric. It is also a cost of not getting along even as we disagree that it threatens to provoke the response that this time it did provoke.
Does everybody feel better that this place we have all developed the habit of visiting may be torn down? Does anybody, even those who have left, feel that way? Does anybody feel good that the investment they have made in the friendships formed and the ideas exchanged may go bankrupt?
I am a relative newcomer to the thread. I have lurked here since about post 10,000 or so, but for my own reasons never posted. One day JXM and I bumped into one another on another thread and he invited me over here. I am very glad that he did.
I also can be an argumentative sort, and several people have expressed disagreement with the substance or the style of what I have said. Yes, Rich1 was one of those people, and I didn't think he was right when he did it. But he wasn't the only one. Smithee got irritated with me at least once or twice, so did Sarkie, I think a couple of others have as well.
I also don't think everybody failed to stand up for Gizmo. If he feels that way, he's wrong. Every post I remember reading on the subject took his side. I exchanged e-mails with him expressing my views, which I did not feel it was appropriate to express publicly. But this is not about who was right and who was wrong.
I hate being PC too (in case you haven't noticed <g>), but I didn't consider it the hostile creation of a pro-PC environment when people disagreed with me or with Gizmo or with you. You know, when people disagree with me I pretty much always think they are wrong; it's just the way I am. And I can be a real SOB about it, as some of you have discovered.
But the real question is: Should the thread be tossed aside like yesterday's fish wrapper over something like this? Don't get me wrong, I like the new thread, I have posted over there, and I think it should continue to exist as a place where the triangle picks and related stuff can be explored. (And they have been just phenomenal picks so far too.) I just think that it would be sad to throw away this thread where so many of you have congregated for so long without really, really believing that it is the right thing for both the individuals and the group.
If that is too PC for you, so be it. I wasn't around as part of this group during most of its life so far, and I may very well be gone soon. I am the one you can most get by without, because I have not been a part of the fabric of the thread from the early days.
I find it supremely ironic that the origin of this spat was a discussion of a personal get-together by members of the community. When a thread feels enough closeness to travel and congregate in person, that suggests that there is a personal, emotional investment by the members that is usually lacking in Web communities. And yet it was a discussion about that topic that led to this.
I would ask everyone, those who have left and those who have stayed, to ask themselves: Is this really the way I want this to end?
MAD DOG |
