Posted by mair on January 24, 2005, at 11:31:19
In reply to Re: small town groups, posted by Dr. Bob on January 24, 2005, at 8:25:46
> > 1. How large do you envision that these groups would be?
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> I don't know, between 15 and 50 posters?Just so you know, by my rough count, there are well fewer than 50 regular posters on every board except the meds board and probably on social. I'm sure the psyche board is used by more than 50 people, but recently, it's really only been used by 30-35 I think. So you really already have several "small town" boards. This tells me that it's not size that you're intrigued with, so much as restrictions on use. If you peruse this thread, you'll see that for those who commented, it's the possible restrictiveness that bothers most.
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> > 5. What happens if a member of a small board drops out or decides he or she needs to take a break from the Boards? Does he or she lose the spot? If there is an opening, who fills it?
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> If access is restricted, maybe it would be more fair if posters did? And they might be considered to have dropped out if they haven't posted for a while. Open spots would be filled according to #2.This is a tough one because people take breaks from Babble all the time, in fact many of us see breaks as being beneficial, and sometimes they're necessitated by personal circumstances or recommended by Ts. How will that dynamic be affected by the prospect of losing one's core base of support? As a person who's taken a fair number of breaks, I can tell you that there's something very comforting about being able to come back here and find some of the same people who were here when you left. I don't think PB will seem anywhere near as accessible if I come back and find that many of those people are not accessible to me.
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> >
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> Maybe one way of looking at it would be, in a small town, it's generally easier to get to know your neighbors. And in the big city, it's generally easier to find something (in this case, information). So with a combination, you could have both neighbors you know and access to information.
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> But someone might not be interested in both. They might want to spend all their time in the big city. Or they might never want to go. That would be fine, too.Here's a problem with your analogy. I live in a small town, and the notion that you get to know your neighbors more easily in small towns is a myth perpetuated by people who live in cities. You may have a nodding acquaintance with more people, but I think that's about it. More likely, in both types of places you seem to end up hanging out with the people who have similar interests or with whom you click in some way. When you move out of either a small town or a city, it's very difficult to perpetuate your old friendships unless both parties really work at it. If you start breaking us up into different small towns, and we all become comfortable with that arrangement, we will drift apart and become unavailable to one another. It's not what we may prefer, as you suggest. I think it's more what will simply happen by default. It takes a lot more effort to keep a friendship active than it does to let one slide, and if time is limited, people are likely to devote most of their time to what's most familiar, eg the small board. Other connections will just become more tenuous.
I also think this will make the Board seem incredibly less inviting to lurkers, new visitors and to those who take breaks for awhile and come back. You can restrict us from posting on certain boards; you can't restrict us from reading posts on restricted boards. So you're going to increase the number of instances where someone feels that they're on the outside, looking in.
Mair
poster:mair
thread:441543
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20050116/msgs/446770.html