I could reiterate my position again, but I think I've either made it and it's being ignored, or it won't be gotten.

It's that I don't get it. Maybe i need a thesis statement.

See I would do this, but then it makes me wonder what everyone is saying about me! Because I am paranoid.

Me, I'm just as happy not to have to get into an argument every time I annoy someone, when they can just as easily ignore me. Because I'm conflict-averse, and believe in ignoring things until they go away.

Speaking as someone who has been around a while, and still doesn't feel completely like a Buffista(partly because I don't post a lot, partly because my opinions are frequently in the vast minority and partly because good percentage of my posts seem to be written in invisible ink), a lot of the discussion does seem come off as The Cabal Says There Is No Cabal, but I'm a bit hypersensitive on that issue.

I mean, I do realize that a good bit of the postings in Natter and elsewhere that irritate me are just So-and-So's wacky sense of humor, so I should just chill, but there does seem to be the feeling that some can get away things others can't.

Argh, I'm not making sense here, and I'm repeating what more articulate posters have said, so I'll go back to lurking in this thread.

Sophia is me, in here anyway.

The problem is that we---those of us that were here before the Firefly Population Explosion---are on the defensive with everyone.

I don't think any of the new members are really getting the kind of welcome that they would have gotten if they had shown up before Firelfy aired or if they had shown up on Worldcrossing.

From my point of view it seems that everyone new is seen as a potentional trouble maker rather than someone who is cool.

I know the attitude before about new people was "one of us! one of us!" and now the attitude is "prove yourself."

I've seen more than one post that starts "I didn't find this board through a Firefly Link" or "I'm not here because of Firefly, I 'm a long time lurker."

And frankly it bothers me that people feel that they have to justify why they are here before they even say anything.

Now, I'm not saying that's how ALL the Buffistas are acting, but that's how THOSE posters felt. That they had to make sure that we knew they were okay before they posted anything. back on TT, we aren't a collection of threads that had to go hide wh

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...

That's true. But I don't think that what's been happening here, at least not in the threads I've read. Sebastian -- and by Sebastian I pretty much mean that Meinike guy -- hasn't gotten off one "Hey bitch," been gang thwapped, and run off. He's said it, been advised against it, and repeated it with a non-charming mixture of defensiveness and insults. People seemed to get a bit tense over the situation and Bureaucracy swelled in a near-histaminic reaction. It's still kinda red and tender (to over-stretch a metaphore) and smaller stimuli are irritating it. But it seems like people have still been going with at least one request for chilling when they've felt upset by another person's post. It's when the response to that request is lacking that people get unwelcoming. Is this group-jump happening in The Music Swells thread, or another I'm not reading?

There was a great deal of dismay expressed when the link here appeared in places we didn't put it. Not a quote: "There will be people coming here we may not like! It's too late to protect ourselves! The days of wine and roses are over." Maybe we could have gone into more of a "Do we have enough glasses for everyone? What about chairs? OK, we'll all sit on the floor" mode.

And gossip is what's made that possible. IJS.

Urg. Well, if that's true, I guess I'd rather have not known it.

Yep, we're all learning how bologna is made, and it's not necessarily a pretty sight.

But, Connie, it's a sociological truth that a lot of new people coming in at the same time endangers the stability of the existing group. Whether it's your real-life neighborhood (hello, gentrification!) or your virtual one. I think there was some overreaction to the board getting all the publicity it did, but I understood where it was coming from, and it makes more sense, in terms of how communities actually function, than your suggested alternative. Which I do, however, like, because it has made Cher's debate speech (ETA: Alicia Silverstone's character in Clueless -- not the singer!) about US immigration policies replay in the back of my head. "And, in conclusion, may I please remind you that it does not say R.S.V.P. on the Statue of Liberty?"