Subject:
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Re: Memberships - so many people I don't know
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.people
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Date:
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Sun, 28 Nov 1999 12:21:16 GMT
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Viewed:
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938 times
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In lugnet.people, Todd Lehman writes:
> Of course you can always step out of your "safe zone" periodically and check
> out groups/boards that you don't normally read. That way, you will have
> seized the opportunity to meet lots of people, rather than being passive and
> missing it. Just a different way of looking at it. You have to work a
> little (read more groups) if you want to meet lots and lots more people.
Of course I can, although I wouldn't call it a "safe zone".
[I wrote]:
> > It almost feels like I've gone from a small school, where everyone knew
> > everyone else, to a university, where small cliques are created by finite • and
> > similar interests with little or no contact with anyone outside of the • clique.
>
> Well, first of all, near as I can figure, there are many, many more people
> here now today than there ever were in RTL 1-2 years ago. So it's going to
> feel like there are more people because there are more people. And the
> reason they can get into groups and become closer is because it's now
> possible to do that, where it wasn't before.
That's a definitive given.
[major snip - none of which I disagree with]
> > Is anyone else experiencing this? Is this a good thing?*
> >
> > Ed "Boxer" Jones
> >
> > *LUGNET is a great thing; the question is are the "cliques" that have formed • a
> > good thing.
>
> Well, I wouldn't call them "cliques" -- in fact, I haven't actually seen any
> real cliques here yet, have you?
"Clique" was a poor choice of words. I have not seen any cliques. Using my
university analogy, I'd say "majors". But "special-interest groups" also
works.
> What we have are special-interest groups,
> and that's a different thing. We've got a group of CAD developers, for
> example, and a group of Robotics hackers. We've got a group of folks in
> Italy speaking 20 messages in Italian every day, and a group of folks in the
> UK speaking 15 messages in English every day. Each group has its own
> jargon, it's own culture. Many people do venture outside of their favorite
> groups, but those who choose not to would not be here in the first place if
> the signal-to-noise ratio wasn't acceptable to them.
>
> In other words: If you have a large community of people and you don't break
> it down into special interest groups -- and try to prevent cliques from
> forming -- then the result is a very low signal-to-noise ratio for your
> average participant who's only interested in a few topics (very few people
> statistically are interested in *everything*). And as soon as you have a
> low signal-to-noise ratio, people start dropping like flies, even as new
> people join in. After a while, all you're left with is people who either
> enjoy a very wide range of things or can filter out what they consider noise
> easily. It turns out that's not too many people. That's why there were so
> many familiar names in RTL as it got big. I can't even count the number of
> people who dropped out over the years as things got too unmanageable, but I
> can easily count the familiar names who stuck it out over the years.
>
> At any rate, it's not a good thing or a bad thing -- it's just a natural
> byproduct of a large user population. I guess it's a good sign.
>
> --Todd
True
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Memberships - so many people I don't know
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| (...) I didn't mean that to sound insulting -- sorry. (...) I thought of one other reason -- it has to do with name frequencies...see what you think about this theory: When scanning articles in newsgroups, there are usually a whole bunch of posts (...) (25 years ago, 28-Nov-99, to lugnet.people)
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