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Mystical, Academic or Aesthetic (again)
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Littlestone
Littlestone
5386 posts

Community or Clique
Sep 07, 2006, 16:44
Not believing something and being a majority isn't really a clique, only if there's a deliberate attempt to exclude ideas. I don't remember any of that, only resistance to a couple of people pushing their views too hard.


Precisely, though perceiving TMA as cliquey is perhaps understandable if you're a newcomer. Personally, I don't think that's the right word to use to describe the Forum - community might be a bit more accurate. People really do get to know each other here, both as internet friends or actually by meeting up and becoming 'real' friends. That's not cliquey, it's just normal group interaction. TMA seems a much friendlier and more eclectic place than it did a couple of years ago. Newcomers are generally welcomed with a greeting and listened to, and unless their posts are downright offensive they're give a lot of slack to air their views. It's only when they bang on about their pet theories ad nauseam, or are abusive, that the 'residents' get fed up and start to object.

Forum debates though can sometimes be a bit of a high-wire walk - the line between disagreeing with someone and being perceived as confrontational is a thin one. That's not to say (intellectual) confrontation is a bad thing - the most boring communities are those where there is no intellectual confrontation. Political cartoonists and satirists are confrontational by nature, and it worries me when people/groups try to silence them. Guess it depends what the motive for disagreeing or confronting is; if the motive is just to stir up trouble then it's unacceptable. If the motive is to get things out in the open and discussed then it's acceptable. Perhaps Forum etiquette should be just the same as the etiquette we try to follow when entering any new social group; introduce ourselves, get to know who's who, and the general feel of the place, then start to contribute, debate and, yes, even confront.

It's stating the obvious, but the more that members get to know each other the more unlikely misunderstandings will arise. The hilarious leg-pulling over Goff's emergence from Rillaton Barrow is an example of that, and again shows TMA more in the light of a community than of a clique. Personally I like TMA the way it is, there's a nice crossover of ideas without having sub-categories that some of us might not actually bother with (and that would be a pity). There's also a lot of fantastic information and humour on TMA - one minute you can be saying to yourself wow didn't know that, or look at that fantastic photo, and the next thing you can be rolling around on the floor :-)
In reply to:
Re: Mystical, Academic or Aesthetic (again) (nigelswift)		 Replies:
Re: Community or Clique (moss)
Re: Community or Clique (doktoratomik)
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