"We fear change!"

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Actually, Alan, having been through all the waves of entrants to the Forge (and three to five such waves at GO before that), I don't see it as "noise" at all. I see it as amazing wealth. What I don't see is the realization that such wealth needs to receive a specific sort of interaction or it will fall away into noise.

Folks, without mentoring and modeling and to willingness to participate, the Forge will fragment and die. Look at the "Lots of folks at the Forge" thread that I referenced before. Bluntly, if you want the site to continue in the way you like, then you have to become ... well, a mentor, and a good role model. That means some effort.

Best,
Ron

[A.Neill]

Sorry for the point by point. I've been called on two counts - and I guess I'm guilty on at least one of them.

Actually, Alan, having been through all the waves of entrants to the Forge (and three to five such waves at GO before that), I don't see it as "noise" at all. I see it as amazing wealth. What I don't see is the realization that such wealth needs to receive a specific sort of interaction or it will fall away into noise.

See now, I knew you were gonna say that and, of course, you're right....

Noise is what the Forge strives (and more than mostly succeeds) to reduce and eliminate with well focused, well thought out and well sourced posts. But subjectively, with an increase in the volume of posts (and threads by God!) there is more "noise" for me – it's harder to find what might be good for me. I just can't spend all of this wealth at the moment. Maybe a little bit of a paradigm shift is required in terms of content delivery – that's were I was going with the frequently updated "frontpage" idea.

Folks, without mentoring and modeling and to willingness to participate, the Forge will fragment and die. Look at the "Lots of folks at the Forge" thread that I referenced before. Bluntly, if you want the site to continue in the way you like, then you have to become ... well, a mentor, and a good role model. That means some effort.

Yeap – guilty. I for one certainly do more taking than giving and it is a point well taken. Ask not what the Forge can do for you and all that. But you did encourage us to ask......


Alan.

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings Paganini,

How goes your Halloween?

It goes well. Forge now, Tai Chi in an hour, and orchestra playing tomorrow. Life is good.

Sounds like you had a full evening.  Hope you didn't get tossed around too much at Tai Chi, unless you wanted her too.

How about you? Just think, you could be watching A Charlie Brown Halloween! :)

I didn't even tune into the SciFi channel to see Shatner host their little movie marathon thing, it's a good thing, Charlie Brown.

But yeah, that's exactly what I was getting at.

Funny thing is, this thread seems to still be going.

But would you say it is "active" or "reactive"?

heh


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[Walt Freitag]

My timing sucks.

Here I am four days into an eight day out of towner with limited Internet time and bandwidth, and this topic comes up.

I certainly see myself as representative of that "middle guard" or "next wave" or whatever you want to call it that's being challenged here to measure up to the kind of interaction with old-timers that I benefited from when I arrived here.

For what it's worth, I saw this coming. Months ago I was reading posts from Ron and Mike and Fang and thinking to myself, "self, you're going to have to learn how to do this." Some know this because they've received occasional "how am I doing in such and such thread" PM queries from me. My hope was to join, though, not replace, the old guard.

The surprising thing -- and here I come to the main point -- is that I joined less than seven months ago. That's quicker than I expected for me and others who joined at around the same time to be asked to step into a more meta role in the discussions. A zig and a zag in the population curve appear to have resulted in relatively few people getting their six-month badges at a time when the rate of new discussion to be involved in has gone up more quickly. I think this is a temporary glitch that time will help fix rather than make worse.

No complaints here or any particular insight either. Just thought it might look strange if I remained silent here. I'll be able to join back in in a few more days.

- Walt