Oh, and another thing re: growth and speed.

For a long time, most newbies were peeps who (like me) were told about the place, not peeps who stumbled across it linked on Whedonesque or Slashdot or the TV Guide channel. Friends of friends, well, you already know you've got a little someone in common, so yeah, there was less of a learning curve/period of adjustment.

This is fascinating for me because it's challenging my worldview. I take it for granted that if you're friends with A,B, and C, you will occasionally quietly say to C "What IS with A lately?" and you assume that B sometimes does the same about you. I think that that sort of quiet venting helps keep the larger friendship alive; if you sit on the resentment and never vent it, it builds up. If you do a reality check with one person, you get to vent, and you also get to find out if you're misbehaving. I think of it as midcourse correction; now I'm learning that some people think of it as betrayal.

I certainly do this in real life. I think it is just weird here, because at one point or another most of us ONLY knew each other from here.

However of course I realize that, say, Betsy and Dana, who talk to each other anyway, vent about things that happen here. i guess what would be weird is if Betsy just up and emailed ZoieFinch to bitch about me. Because they hardly know each other as far as I know.

Oh, and yes, backchannel happens.

now I'm learning that some people think of it as betrayal.

I'm getting the sense that not everyone was immediately on the same page you were, and that seems to be correcting.

Hmm. Perhaps I'm all Allyson and stuff, but I never felt all "one of us! one of us!". I don't think we ever were, though there might have been a pretense put up.

I'm not saying we threw a ticker tape parade everytime a new person came along but it seemed that we were much more accepting of new comers and more likely to see them as a positive addition rather than people to be wary of.

Backchannel is probably happening RIGHT NOW...

we were much more accepting of new comers and more likely to see them as a positive addition rather than people to be wary of.

Hmm. I never saw it that way, but I could just be looking at it through me-coloured glasses.

edit: the shift, I mean. It takes much longer for people to get to know people if there are so many more people, and so many more new ones. That shift I see.

Backchannel is probably happening RIGHT NOW...

AIFG?

Take it to email, however, is a good thing in general. I'm all for it.

we were much more accepting of new comers and more likely to see them as a positive addition rather than people to be wary of.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, wary of newcomers. I have ALWAYS thought there is a normal learning curve.

Backchannel is probably happening RIGHT NOW...

I'd almost guarantee it.