If this is true… than I… still… dont… care…
Originally posted by That dude who made the article
You are at a party, and you get bored. You say “This isn’t doing it for me anymore. I’d rather be someplace else. I’d rather be home asleep. The people I wanted to talk to aren’t here.” Whatever. The party fails to meet some threshold of interest. And then a really remarkable thing happens: You don’t leave. You make a decision “I don’t like this.” If you were in a bookstore and you said “I’m done,” you’d walk out. If you were in a coffee shop and said “This is boring,” you’d walk out.
I’m in RPGC. “It’s an interesting group, and rather hilarious too! Why should I even think of leaving?” and then I went to the chat to share my thoughts on how this thing is a complete waste of good typing time. :mwahaha:
This is RPGC in so many ways , my GOD O_O;;.
“So even if someone isn’t really your enemy, identifying them as an enemy can cause a pleasant sense of group cohesion. And groups often gravitate towards members who are the most paranoid and make them leaders, because those are the people who are best at identifying external enemies.”
Ah…what kept the rebellion going…
"If you want to make it better, there’s a list of things to do. It’s Open Source, right? Just fix it. “No, no, Microsoft and Bill Gates grrrrr …”, the froth would start coming out. The external enemy – nothing causes a group to galvanize like an external enemy. "
Wertigon!
“And the worst crisis is the first crisis, because it’s not just “We need to have some rules.” It’s also “We need to have some rules for making some rules.” And this is what we see over and over again in large and long-lived social software systems. Constitutions are a necessary component of large, long-lived, heterogenous groups”
Yay, RPGC’s government
"Less is different – small groups of people can engage in kinds of interaction that large groups can’t. "
Ah… Old MB nostalgia x_X.
"In Joi’s conference call, the interrupt logic got moved to the chat room. People would type “Hand,” and the moderator of the conference call will then type “You’re speaking next,” in the chat. So the conference call flowed incredibly smoothly. "
Its so funny to see how RPGC evolved (older staff that have been to meetings will understand quite well…)
The rest was also very interesting. Good read. The staff esp should go through ALL of it. Its long but its worth it.
Probably, it depends on who “we” is.
I see. And what’s your definition of “is”, Yoshmeister?
Main Entry: is
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English; akin to Old High German ist is (from sIn to be), Latin est (from esse to be), Greek esti (from einai to be)
present third singular of BE
dialect present first & second singular of BE
dialect present plural of BE
Main Entry: be
Pronunciation: 'bE
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): past first & third singular was /'w&z, 'wäz/; second singular were /'w&r/; plural were past subjunctive were past part been /'bin, chiefly British 'bEn/; present part be·ing /'bE(-i)[ng]/; present first singular am /&m, 'am/; second singular are /'är, &r/; third singular is /'iz, &z/; plural are present subjunctive be
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English bEon; akin to Old High German bim am, Latin fui I have been, futurus about to be, fieri to become, be done, Greek phynai to be born, be by nature, phyein to produce
Date: before 12th century
intransitive senses
1 a : to equal in meaning : have the same connotation as : SYMBOLIZE <God is love> <January is the first month> <let x be 10> b : to have identity with <the first person I met was my brother> c : to constitute the same class as d : to have a specified qualification or characterization <the leaves are green> e : to belong to the class of <the fish is a trout> – used regularly in senses 1a through 1e as the copula of simple predication
2 a : to have an objective existence : have reality or actuality : LIVE <I think, therefore I am> <once upon a time there was a knight> b : to have, maintain, or occupy a place, situation, or position <the book is on the table> c : to remain unmolested, undisturbed, or uninterrupted – used only in infinitive form <let him be> d : to take place : OCCUR <the concert was last night> e : to come or go <has already been and gone> <has never been to the circus> f archaic : BELONG, BEFALL
verbal auxiliary
1 – used with the past participle of transitive verbs as a passive-voice auxiliary <the money was found> <the house is being built>
2 – used as the auxiliary of the present participle in progressive tenses expressing continuous action <he is reading> <I have been sleeping>
3 – used with the past participle of some intransitive verbs as an auxiliary forming archaic perfect tenses <Christ is risen from the dead – 1 Cor 15:20 (Douay Version)>
4 – used with the infinitive with to to express futurity, arrangement in advance, or obligation <I am to interview him today> <she was to become famous>
Now, I was asking Yoshmeister.
Well if all that means something, I think I don’t care. Correction I know I don’t care.
Then keep your trap shut and post somewhere else. If you don’t care, we don’t want to fucking hear it.
This is some good stuff.
"Writing social software is hard. And, as I said, the act of writing social software is more like the work of an economist or a political scientist. And the act of hosting social software, the relationship of someone who hosts it is more like a relationship of landlords to tenants than owners to boxes in a warehouse.
The people using your software, even if you own it and pay for it, have rights and will behave as if they have rights. And if you abrogate those rights, you’ll hear about it very quickly."
I dunno if RPGC has ever been fully successful like this, but if it has, then it was because the relationship described in the first paragraph was the most true to how we did things, a friendly relationship of a landlord to tenants rather than just seeing handles as not-real-people.
Cause I think there are enough people here who really believe in RPGC, and think it’s really awesome, certainly that was extremely powerful when we all demonized Jim like Sin said, that was probably what kept everybody together when we really didn’t have a site…but even without people saying how much Jim sucks, I think the community (the artistic community especially, like with fanfiction etc.) produces enough things that make people genuinely proud to be part of RPGC, and that certainly lends itself to the cohesiveness of this community.
"So there’s this question “What is required to make a large, long-lived online group successful?” and I think I can now answer with some confidence: “It depends.” I’m hoping to flesh that answer out a little bit in the next ten years.
But I can at least say some of the things it depends on. The Calvinists had a doctrine of natural grace and supernatural grace. Natural grace was “You have to do all the right things in the world to get to heaven…” and supernatural grace was “…and God has to anoint you.” And you never knew if you had supernatural grace or not. This was their way of getting around the fact that the Book of Revelations put an upper limit on the number of people who were going to heaven.
Social software is like that. You can find the same piece of code running in many, many environments. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. So there is something supernatural about groups being a run-time experience. "
Like, whatever, I think that somehow this group of RPGC has that weird supernatural grace to remain so cohesive over so many years - that is, somehow we’ve managed to attract a bunch of truly awesome people to moderate, to be part of the community, and it’s just amazing to look back and see how such random things like what led us to look at the site/decide to get involved, everything those seemingly random things led to afterwards, all up to the present. It makes one hold RPGClassics with an almost religious reverence, which is what I think a lot of people here see it with (though of course they’d never admit it :D).
It’s cool. Cool beans, Z-man.
-Mazrim Taim
Hm, a very interesting read
One can only truely be killed from the inside. By oneself.
Brilliant article. Not that I have read it, I’m just pretending that I have.