What I'm commenting on is the tendency of the community to take issue with a new person's actions that they let slide for somebody who's been here a while.

I saw this as the sort of thing where my friend Tamara of 10 years can say, "Hey bitch! You're blocking my view of the tv." But Sebastian, who I just met, had better use different phrasing, even for the same sentiment.

Is this the definition of a clique? If Sebastian is perminantly shut out from the "hey bitch" stage because he came around too late, then yeah. But things don't feel that rigid to me here. I can see where someone could hear Tamara and think, "So that's the phrasing that Calli's OK with," and get slapped down for going with it. It's a lot harder to suss out boundaries like this online, because of lack of body language, yadda, and yadda. But people seem to be going with the politer forms of "chill" to start with.

Oh, wait. We all hug Jesse, too.

I teach online and it's a very hard line to walk between saying "this is how we converse here" which is my job--and sounding condescending or bossy. Sometimes the mere act of explaining can sound punitive and patronizing or the person spoken to finds the mere act of being told what to do pushes all kinds of buttons. It's very difficult-- I have years of experience at it and still fuck up on a regula basis.

MM--I think some of the stuff for Newbies that has felt like exclusion to you might have been people honestly trying to say "Our boundaries are a little different than other places , let me explain them" At least that's what I was trying to do with Schmoker and I think others (not everyone of course) were trying to do. I can see where I might have given a diferent impresion and I am sorry for that.

I'm all for new blood coming in- How cool are Plasmo and Deena and Paul and lotsa of other peoplel I'm forgwetting right this second? Very cool.

MM if someone you'd never spoken to before went into natter and asked your wife to take down her pants so she should be spanked, would you have reacted precisely the way you reacted to Phill? Perhaps.

Perhaps not. But I wouldn't come into Bureaucracy and scream about it, and I would be upset and embarrassed if a dozen or so other people chimed in with "Yeah, let's GET HIM!"

We're not going to have a GROUP hug, Connie, but EACH of us is going to hug YOU...

Cool! Or not, depending on if I'm channelling Diana from "Waiting for God" or not when you all get here.

Awwww. I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy inside (re. p.m.m.'s love).

I'd like to suggest that this is the civilized way to handle people who annoy you -- gossip behind their backs.

Wow do I not agree with this. If you can't say it to someone's face, my personal policy is to try not to say anything. Not saying I'm always so angelic, but to characterize gossip as civilized doesn't work for me. IJS.

I don't know if we've ever been the community MM suggests we were until recently, but I think the fact is that some of us think we are. And it may be an impossible ideal. Worth working for, but to work for it the blinders have to come off. We ain't perfect. Sometimes we're wrong. Sometimes we ignore people we don't know because the posting pace is too frenzied, and sometimes we ignore them because, possibly, we're too lazy to make them feel welcome. I say we because I do it too.

This "Core Buffista" thing really bugs me, too. Maybe 'cause I don't feel like one, but knowing that such a thing exists is not quite the same as speaking about it as if there's a secret cabal.

That was all kinda random. Sorry.

Christ. My employer's software developer's list is having a flamewar about Martin Luther King.

What IS it about January?

Is this the definition of a clique? If Sebastian is perminantly shut out from the "hey bitch" stage because he came around too late, then yeah.

But these people don't get the chance. If Sebastian tried that and all your friends jumped on his shit and made him feel like leaving never to return...

At least that's what I was trying to do with Schmoker and I think others (not everyone of course) were trying to do. I can see where I might have given a diferent impresion and I am sorry for that.

I have to say that I have been really admiring your way with the newcomers that sometimes rub people the wrong way, but I think have good intentions. You are gentle and firm and not condescending at all, IMO.