Thoughts on exclusion and culture

[pippin_999]

--- In HPFGU-Feedback at yahoogroups.com, "Haggridd" 
<jkusalavagemd at y...> wrote:

> I took your comment on this being a matter for the members to 
mean  that the consensus of the members would drive the 
development of the  list no matter what any current group of 
mods desired.  How did TBAY  become a feature of the main list 
in the first place?  I wasn't  there, but I seriously doubt some 
admin type proclaimed "Let there be TBAY!" and TBAY sprang 
forth fully formed from his/her brow (How  is that for a mixed 
metaphor?).  I think the future evolution of  list practice will be 
similarly consensus driven, not imposed from 
 on high.  Is that still a "me too"?<

Pippin: speaking for herself

I don't think David meant to move the goal posts.  I think he was 
saying that when we try to come up with metaphors for list 
interaction we are at best re-enacting the parable of the blind 
men and the elephant. (My apologies if this is not what David 
meant.)

 That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to use metaphors, but we 
should be aware that the person who's got hold of the trunk and 
is insisting that what we have here is a like a snake, may be just 
as right, and just as wrong, as the person who has hold of the 
trunk and is saying, no, it's like a tree, and I'm *annoyed* that you 
don't grasp its essential treeness, and furthermore, I *hate *
snakes. <g>

Ultimately the list admin cannot control the way the members 
perceive the elephant, ie the list. Nor can it perceive the entire 
elephant.  What it can do, because it has the advantage of having 
heard many descriptions of the elephant, is let  people know that 
 it may be unwarranted for people to assume that  a) their 
perception is the only correct one, or b) it would be a healthier 
elephant if it didn't have parts.

To expand on that last point, my sense is there's a general 
free-floating anxiety about the existence of subcultures on the 
list. I think subcultures are a natural feature of a group where you 
have hundreds of people interacting, or rather, a group can't 
remain that size unless it has developed some strategies for 
accomodating subcultures.Otherwise it must limit its size so that 
subcultures don't develop, or else  rigidly repress them (and 
develop a subculture of enforcers, yuk!).

It's just a fact that people change the way they interact depending 
on the size of the group they're in. Everybody knows that two's 
company but  three's a crowd, and most of us have seen that a 
group of ten or so can be really close friends, but in a group of 
thirty there's bound to be some feuds going on. When you get up 
past a hundred or so, (and there are usually at least 200 active 
posters at any given time) people start to feel lost in the crowd 
and want to assert their individuality. 

Oddly enough, one of the ways that people assert their 
individuality is to group up with other individuals who are like 
them. That, IMO, is why people identify as  SHIPPers and 
TBayers and so forth. 

So, IMO, unless we are just gazing into the Mirror of Erised  
without regard for what is true or even possible, to  wish for a 
more close-knit group, I think, is really to wish for a smaller one, 
(or a more paranoid one, but I don't think anybody wants that. I 
could be wrong. <g>)


Pippin