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Hi Mike -
Great comments!
In lugnet.general, Mike Rayhawk writes:
> > > These people want to talk about everything _except_ the LEGO model I posted
> >
> > That's a perennial complaint. I've got a fairly strong opinion about that
> > one, which I don't wanna share in this thread :-)
>
> My personal feeling is that there are some unwritten rules that strongly
> *discourage* talking about a LEGO model that someone posts. I certainly
> have the impression that no matter how well-intentioned, if there is a
> single sentence in a comment that isn't perceived as the most sugary-sweet
> encouragement then there are more than a couple LUGNET mainstays who will
> stomp the poster's throat for it.
Yep. I think it's not too cool when people are afraid to post constructive
criticism. I think though, people only get upset at posters when they say
something blatantly negative about a model - which discourages anything
which could be perceived as negative. I dunno, a complex subject.
> There are plenty of models that I was fascinated by and would have liked to
> post about, but it always seems to be a choice between holding myself to
> that kind of Disney superficiality, or having any of the points I was trying
> to raise get lost in the static of all the
> "friendliest-place-on-the-internet"-nazis yelling at me afterwards. As a
> result, I don't make public posts about models, period. Whether the LUGNET
> community is worse off for missing my opinions is debatable of course.
I think several subsets of the LUGNET community have discussed and welcomed
the idea of constructive criticism of models. I can think of .space and
.build.mecha off the top of my head. There are people who are sick and tired
of the attitude that you have to come in here with kid gloves in order to
participate. Political correctness is stifling, sickening, and destroys
authenticity in communication, IMO.
> With that in mind, let's take the 'LEGO community' question to a concrete
> example: Matthew Moulton, a member or no? He seemed to be a fan of the
> brick, had a lot of 'ideas' to contribute and made a pretty hefty effort to
> promote them, participated like crazy (albeit in a wildly dysfunctional
> way), and certainly made a big impact on the evolution of LUGNET culture.
> I'll grant that in the present sense he's not a member of the LUGNET
> community; I'd guess that he still fulfills the basic requirements to be a
> member of the LEGO community (unless his experiences here turned him off the
> Brick or something).
MM could be an example of someone who was a member of the community and
participated positively or neutrally for some time, until changing the way
he interacted here and by his actions prompting other members of the
community to push him away. Becuse of his distructive actions, vitriol and
malice towards the LUGNET community, he was removed, and for a good reason.
Now by some definition, if MM is still actively building and has
relationships with other LEGO fans, he could be a 'part of the community,'
or a part of 'a LEGO community.' I certainly don't believe anyone who was
here at the time of his rampage would willingly accept him into LUGNET, much
less at a fan event in their hometown, and rightfully so.
> > I like the norms we have on LUGNET, simply because they make discussing a
> > whole lot easier. Let words speak for themselves, no silly emoticons, font
> > colors, sizes, crappy animated avatars, etc. Yet, to some, that's a turnoff,
> > and an elitist attitude.
> >
> > But, I've seen where some people either can't, or think they can't discuss
> > something adequately without those elements. To me, that just clouds and
> > diminishes whatever the person's trying to say, and promotes less
> > intelligent conversation.
>
> I'm not a big fans of emoticons etc. either, but rational conversation isn't
> everything. If you're in full left-brain mode, hashing out the finer points
> of LDraw naming conventions or something, all the personal-expression
> accessories are just going to get in the way. On the other hand, I think
> there are plenty of areas in which communicating in emotional terms doesn't
> makes you less intelligent or diminish your message. You can't really build
> a sturdy community without at least some people engaging in the kind of
> interpersonal communication in which limiting themselves to rational text
> would just cloud and diminish what they were trying to say, and promote less
> intelligent conversation.
People communicated emotions just fine, and still do, without the need for
emoticons. It's a good thing LUGNET provides an outlet to those who want
communication where words speak for themselves, and there's no frills on the
side. People who want to communicate with graphics, animations, emoticons,
and badly drawn MS Paint avatars have other venues in which to converse.
I think it's a good thing there is a place like LUGNET which appeals to this
particular demographic. I don't think this place is the center of the
universe, and I encourage others to participate in the style of online forum
they choose. I think that those who are comfortable communicating with words
rather than pictures do just fine building relationships here, via email,
via phone, and in person, and plenty of emotion can be expressed adequately.
That said, I'm not totally understanding your last sentence. I feel strongly
that having text only as a medium promotes intelligent conversation. There's
plenty of possibilities with (shudder) ASCII art to aid. I use only the
basic smilies/frownies(R) [1] and 99% of those here limit themselves to that
too.
Before anyone here thinks I'm anti-kid, cause it seems they tend to
gravitate towards a more graphical form of online communication, read this post:
http://news.lugnet.com/general/?n=41871
I'm very much *for* kids being involved in various LEGO communities. Even
this one on LUGNET.
The bigger point I have been trying to make by starting the thread (and I'm
very pleased at the original ideas so many others have put forth here) is we
are many different types of people, in the hobby for different reasons.
Someone early on opened me up to the fact that we are actually many
different communities, rather than one community. There's nothing wrong with
LUGNET having its norms, set up by the group which the site appeals to, and
nothing wrong with other discussion sites having their own (different) norms
as well. I want to encourage the whole of the LEGO hobby to grow, not just
LUGNET. Certain spinoffs of this thread have centered around LUGNET, and
that's OK, cause afterall, that's where this discussion is taking place :-)
Ideally - and someone talked to me about this on the phone last night - it
would be great for a pan-community discussion such as this to take place on
neutral ground. I'm not going to take the effort to set up a dedicated site
for such discussions though - so I'll take the best we can get for now :-) I
really am thinking of several BrickFest roundtables to discuss this topic
and others (such as more collaborative, open efforts from LEGO community
resources). I know again, BrickFest isn't the ideal and most neutral place
for such a discussion, but we take what we can get. I don't think there's
any venue which could be considered 'better,' since each venue would have
it's advantages or disadvantages based on myriad factors (geography, fan
base, participation, etc).
> Not that those kinds of messages really seem to be appropriate for public
> LUGNET posts. It's always painful and vaguely horrifying when somebody puts
> up some kind of dramatic emotional way-too-personal post around here;
> fortunately it's pretty rare. Also fortunately, LUGNET is only one of many
> centers for the community and there are plenty of other more appropriate
> methods for community members to participate in that type of communication.
Yep!
> > One of the things Jake and I had a side chat about was a point he brought up
> > - communities and relationships in them are good and bad. And I'm REALLY
> > paraphrasing here, and adding to it. Incidents, discussions, people who
> > aren't nice/positive/etc still exist in the community if they're active.
> > "Community" in the real world isn't rosy. Neither is it in the LEGO world.
>
> I think that people who aren't nice/positive/etc are crucial to a rosy
> community, they're what gives it vitality and depth. Any time people get
> together and are allowed to express real opinions there's going to be
> conflicts at varying levels and to varying degrees. A community where
> people are always nice/positive/etc is denying themselves a huge range of
> the human experience; that's about as close to the opposite of rosy as I can
> think of without being dead.
We've seen a couple negative incidents in the past couple weeks, too. There
was the point where Tom Stangl very bluntly chastised Nick Crocco for
complaining that no one cared about his creations (due to a lack of
response). There was another incident (which arguably I instigated) when I
questioned Jesse Alan Long [2] for his corrective attitude in response to a
post.
In the first incident, individuals were upset at Tom for his harshness,
while they didn't totally accept Nick's apparently whiny attitude. Nick
admitted fault, Tom persisted with his claim.
In the second [3], Jesse became offended at a simple question of mine, and
proceeded to raise a ruckus, until Todd intervened.
Neither of these incidents were really positive things, but both were
arguably growing pains in the community. Not saying they shouldn't have
happened - cause in a community you get the good and the bad, the positive
and the negative.
But we have two different types of incidents here, by their very nature. Tom
has been participating in the LEGO community positively for years. He's an
active member of a local club (BayLTC), and an all around good guy. He is
known for writing blunt posts which several have been offended by. But, all
in all, Tom will be here tomorrow, and the next day, contributing to
positive discussion and being an active LUG member. Jesse, on the other
hand, appears to lack a measure of communication skills and has in the past
caused a considerable amount of trouble here on LUGNET. Regulars know this,
and often wince when he posts, wondering what's next. He's not an active
club member, and threads he posts in have a habit of developing into
misunderstandings or debates.
Is it wrong to chastise Jesse for his behavior here? I don't think so. The
chastisement I have participated in [4] and have witnessed was for the
betterment of the whole of the community. This kind of thing happens in real
life. We're not babysitters, and if people can't act civil in a community
after some measure of attempted correction and guidance, they are naturally
eventually ostracized.
> > > Is the future of the LEGO community more in face-to-face contact
> > > or virtual contact? Both...but I think online contact will be
> > > dominant for the foreseeable future. Although I do hope local
> > > groups and small face-to-face communities grow (as I think they
> > > will).
>
> I disagree. Online contact will be dominant for the LUGNET community, but
> there are a lot more people playing LEGO with family and friends than there
> are people on LUGNET, and I think the communities of two or three people are
> a lot more important to the LEGO experience than our community of several
> thousand. I don't expect LUGNET will ever replace that dynamic or should
> ever want to.
Note, I said the future of the 'LEGO community,' not the future of the
'LUGNET community.' Of course, the LUGNET community will exist primarily
online :-) That's not to say that there won't be greater numbers of people
participating in in-person LEGO communities, some which may be plugged into
LUGNET, others which may not be.
There's a distinction that needs to be drawn here, between the world of
LUGNET and the world of LEGO. They are not one in the same. LUGNET exists in
the realm of the LEGO hobby, or 'LEGO community,' where the LEGO community
is not contained wholly within LUGNET.
> > I think that remains to be seen. As more ventures start getting the word out
> > more and more about the hobby, we'll see some fresh blood and growth here.
>
> It's always good to have fresh blood cycling through, but I'm not sure how
> further growth will really make any relevant difference. I mean there's a
> big difference between a community with 20 members and one with 2000, but is
> there any real difference between having 10,000 people and 20,000? There's
> only so many names and personalities you can keep track of before everyone
> else just becomes anonymous background noise.
Sure. I think for example, LUGNET has near reached a saturation point, at
least on the newsgroups, where the world of LEGO is far from such a point
(if one can be reached).
> Just my two cents.
And a very good two cents at that! I definitely enjoyed your perspective on
things :-)
> - Mike.
-Tim
[1] Frownies(R) are a registered trademark of Despair, Inc.
http://www.despair.com/demotivators/frownonthis.html
[2] a known and once banned disruptor (intentional or not) of things around here
[3] and this could be a poor example, cause I'm *very* biased
[4] I don't view either of my two posts in the last incident as
chastisement, by the way, in one incident I raised a legitimate question, in
another I offered a bit of humor :-)
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