Rule one - Never Volunteer

[threemonkeys]

Oh dear, it seems I have agreed to be on one of the blogging panels at Conflux. It also seems that I am one of "Four men who are never far away from their blogs talk about blogging and its impact on developing and maintaining the community."

I only seems appropriate to note that here and call for comment. Just what sort of communities are blogs anyway?

Comments

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

Noisy ones?

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Actually I thought I'd been rather quiet lately.

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

So you have, but that doesn't make the community quiet. In fact, the community nature means that there's always one person, banging away on a drum and another singing in a corner and another, back to the crowd, ignoring everyone else. One of us always has something witty to say and another wants to grumble and still another wants to tell the rest of us about every single facet of their life.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Well said - I might steal that.

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

See how many people spot where you got it from :).

[mundens.livejournal.com]

Heh! I can come and heckle then! :)

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Heckle away. Every community needs a jester. :-)

[fishlifter.livejournal.com]

Waaaaa. I wish we were going to Conflux...

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

And in turn, those of us who are going wish you were too.

Actually, I am on another panel - a discussion on how Australia & Australians are seen by others. If you wish I can use the opportunity to pass on a second hand hello and still be more or less on topic.

[fishlifter.livejournal.com]

If you pick this up in time, then yes please!

Australian fandom contains many people we've found to be friendly, fun, intelligent, helpful, hospitable, and great company. They're almost uniformly dreadful at responding in writing to fanzines, but very welcoming whenever we come to see them in person. So obviously we have to keep coming back. Wouldn't want to live there, though; apart from anything else, I couldn't stand the summer.

We hope to see you again soon too. You are, I hope, thinking about the 2009 Eastercon -- and thus about running for GUFF?

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Yes - in time. Also, yes the GUFF notion is still in my head

[cat-i-th-adage.livejournal.com]

Communities of shared interests over temporarily congruent locality. There are the latter, too, of course, but I have blogger friends I've never met in the flesh, because they write about things I'm interested in.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

The voluntary nature of joining such communities of shared interest is interesting. In contrast, most of the "temporarily congruent locality" (nice phrase) communities come from things like where you live or where you work - usually you don't know much about these communities until after you join.

[cat-i-th-adage.livejournal.com]

Well, and we can lurk in the shadows and watch what goes on, to see if it suits, very easily. And I've heard several times that it's considered good etiquette to do that, before joining a forum or whatever, to learn the written and unwritten rules of the community first.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Good point *makes note*. Lots of good stuff that can be extrapolated from that - how communities react to outsiders (online trolls) is something to think about too.