Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Gee, that's a good queston. no one refused to be interviewed, but i
can probably count on the fingers of one hand, throughout the 20 or so
years i've been a repoter, the number of times people have refused to
be interviewed. i've often wondered why that is....
  

    
Robynne (gorey) says in #150:
"It cam be argued that there was a decline in the quality of
participation with the introduction of Engaged."


I keep hearing (and reading) comments like this and it makes me wonder
what I'm paying my monthly WELL fees for. :) How are things worse now
and why do you still return? (honest question, really)

I have been a member (and employee) for several online communities
during the last 7 years and I've seen this happen in every single case;
older members complain about things going downhill after such-and-such
technological change or when so-and-so got here. Are then all online
communities in a perpetual decline? Or what is it that changes our
participation as members to make us all eventually feel this way?
  

    
Oh, that's built into Life - "Apre moi, le deluge"
  

    

I'm curious to hear what Katie has to say on this subject, given that she
talked to many old-timers in her reserach.
  

    
research.
  

    
I have never bought that line about things going downhill when engaged-only
accounts were created.

The userids of those people are different -- more than eight characters long
and often hyphenated -- which makes it easy to spot them and marginalize
them.
  

    

I haven't noticed that, <tnf>.  I've noticed some people with
Engaged-only ids who have been marginalized, but what about people like

<angie-aaron>?  And we all can name some non-Engaged-only ids who've
been marginalized.  It's behavior, not the kind of account they use
that gets some users marginalized, istm.
  

    

My major objection to the hyphenates was having to look at their bio to
find out their e-mail address instead of just dashing off an e-mail to
puffball@well.com.  It was an extra step that seemed like a real chore to
me and an obstacle to the spontaneity I was used to, and I was concerned
that it would change the nature of discourse.  I don't think it has.  So,
I agree, if hypenates feel isolated, it's a self-selected isolation.

Having said all of this, I should relate that I've heard from folks who
have been on the WELL not nearly as long as those who are reminiscing
here, and they are lost in this conversation - we sound like a bunch of
old relatives sitting around the dinner table on Sunday afternoon talking
about things that happened before they were born.  

It's their WELL, too, and their perspective is just as valid, so I'd love
it if some of them would step up to the plate and have their say.
  

    
Boy, I'm glad I don't have one of them hyphens in my userid :)

But I am an Engaged-only user in this incarnation (a few people no
doubt remember ffmike from the earlier days). When I signed back up, it
was the cheap way in, simple as that. I never gave a hoot about pico,
switched to sweeper as soon as I could, didn't use the Well for email
(CompuServe was a much "better" address for my career) and stayed away
from the command line in the earlier incarnation anyhow. The Well was
never about the software for me.

In fact frankly I think the only thing that brought me back was
nostalgia. Most of my online interaction these days is elsewhere.
  

    
I have been a member (and employee) for several online communities
during the last 7 years and I've seen this happen in every single
case;
older members complain about things going downhill after such-and-such
technological change or when so-and-so got here.<<

Yup. Happening in two other spaces I hang out in currently; and these
spaces are barely over a year old. The "old timers" who joined up when
there was only a small core of regulars are reacting to their nice
little clubhouse being filled up rapidly with people they don't know.
Getting crowded by the pool, so to speak. In one or these other spaces
I very much understand teh phenomena -- the community has grown to over
31,000 members in 13 months.  But hasn't the WELL stayed pretty
stable, even shrunk in size since those halcyon days, pre-early
nineties?
  

    
I saw that happen in a Pratchett and an Angel fan-based communities.
You go in and start posting all happy that you found someone with
similar interests and the community starts growing and the original
people start coming on and posting extremely unwelcoming comments
because the topics have proliferated and there's more "new" posts to
read through and the "feel" of the little clubhouse community they had
when there were only 10 or so of them is gone. 

One would think that the sites were MADE to collect new people and
keep it going and dynamic. But the unwelcoming posts often do drive
some people out and then the community goes dead. OR the oldsters leave
entirely and the newer people alter the community. 

I think that's just the way communities work. 
  

    
I'm not thinking it's shrunk as a community. As I think was mentioned
earlier in this discussion, a lot of folks were using the early WELL as an
ISP, and many of those left when the ISP biz split off.

Also, if you define the community by who's posting and disregard lurkers,
could be that we've grown.

(Somebody will have stats on all this stuff, but my sense is that the WELL
has gained members and energy since it became part of Salon.)

Re. Engaged vs. pico - a knowledgeable pico user has powerful tools that
the Engaged user lacks, and many of the host tools are pico-only, so pico
is critical to the character of the WELL. But for basic participation
Engaged is fine. People complain about Engaged, but the WELL's version is
optimized and pretty stable.

Dave mentions the cruelty or nastiness of the WELL, and I've heard echoes
of his observation in other communities. Hell, Dave, you know what that's
about... a bunch of us around here are bald egos and we're bound to
clash. Your ego's not exactly tiny, so you tend to spend a lot of time in
clash mode. Odd, though: everyone I've met f2f from the WELL, including
nasties, has been quite civil and pleasant in the flesh. Being a jerk on
the WELL is, I think, kind of a game, and many of us play from time to
time. Some people are more tolerant of conflict than others, some even
enjoy it, within bounds.

Reminds me of an ongoing issue I've had with my wife. She was an only
child and I had a snarling brother... so I was more tolerant of conflict
than she was, and took it less seriously, seeing it as an acceptable mode
of expression and communication. For her, it was unacceptable.

Over the years, she became more tolerant of conflict (helpful in a
relationship) and I became more sensitive to her aversion.

On the WELL, we have people who like a verbal brawl now and then, some
like to brawl constantly. The conflict-averse who come to the WELL and
wander into a flame pit before they've come to know the community wander
away thinking, "What's so great about the WELL? They're a bunch of
assholes."  But those who get the richness of the community, and they're
rewarded for their perseverance. (I'm thinking of a couple of users right
now, not to mention names, who went through hell when they arrived but
hung in and have become like fixtures.)

So yeah, this is a nasty place, and it's also a very kind and nurturing
place. All at once, one sloppy package.
  

    
I agree. If you are way too sensitive to such things, you may leave
quickly. I've had people just take a disliking to me and every time I
post, they post nasty comments on my posts. I find the filtering
feature really great for that. But, sometimes, you just have to read
through it, count to 10 and then ignore them. And I have a friend who
LOVES flame wars. Ah, well, to each their own.
  

    
> multiple identities on the WELL

I may have the record for that, although mine have all been sequential
(except for a one-month overlap in one or two cases).

Starting way back in 1988, which still makes me a late-comer, I've been
"jtp", "jtom", "wuwei", "snowmelt", "jtpayne", and now "satyr".

Of those, so far as I'm aware, only "jtom" has also been used by someone
else here.
  

    

I have learned a great deal about how to be a human being from my
experieneces in the WELL.  I am much, much more peacable now than I was when
I arrived here wearing the userid <maddog>.
  

    

(Somebody will have stats on all this stuff, but my sense is that the
WELL
has gained members and energy since it became part of Salon.)

I was thinking more in terms of size between the early years, say up
to 1992 or so and now, Jon.
  

    
To Paul's question about old-timers: I think it's a universal
phenomenon -- people who have been some place for a long time have a
sense of ownership, and a sense that they know best how things ought to
be (it's why god invented the word "curmudgeon" :-), and that can lend
itself to a this-place-is-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket mentality. It
happens quite a bit in the physical world, and it's not at all
surprising that it happens in the virtual world. i find myself acting
that way about things that are very familiar to me, and which i feel
*ought* to be/remain a certain way. it gives me comfort somehow, to
complain as i do that, say, Fat Apple's, which used to be my favorite
restaurant in Berkeley when it was Fat Albert's, just isn't what it
used to be...or that even Seth Thomas can't make a decent metronome
these days etc. etc.
  

    
The WELL style of management, from Matthew McClure through Gail and
her crew, works like the proprietors of a saloon. The style began with
<pegleg> in the Pub and was reflected in the original WELL Office
Parties. Then in the Host Gatherings, the reporting to the population
through the Mitnick affair, the design of the Engaged interface - all
were done, not to "build community," but to provide and maintain an
interesting and informed place for people to meet and initiate their
own activities and relationships. It's not like most communities I find
online where users are constantly being marketed to.

In that respect, the early WELL and the present WELL are very similar.
Having a history is a good thing, I think, as long as it doesn't
freeze innovation and stifle free expression. Not too many online
communities have more than a couple years of history and I rarely find
another example of one that shares memories of its history, much less
has a book written about it.
  

    
I just got the book and am only up to Chapter 3.  I read the wired article
when it came out and thought it was pretty good.  Because I had read the
wired article, i thought i'd be skimming a lot of this, but so far have not
skimmed a bit.  One of the areas in which I think katie has done an
exceptional job is in explaining the technical considerations and how the
technical considerations affected the character of the place.

katie--I know you added to it, but did you rework the original wired article
at all?  Or does the wired article essentially appear in tact here?

I have skipped around a bit and looked ahead at the new chapters at the end.
One thing I was struck by was the strong sense of closure you provide at the
end of the book--you give a strong sense of closure to the well, too!  I can
understand the need to bring closure to the book, especially considering its
narrative focus and the fact that the story that you focus on took place so
long ago.  The era you write about is definitely from the past.  Many of the
people that you focus on have moved on one way or another--some have died,
some have found that the well no longer provides them with any reason to
hang around, etc.  But for many people, myself included, the well is an
important part of our daily life.  I'd bet that the numbers of folks who
actively participate in public well conferences is about the same as it was
in the years when the subscriber base was at its highest.  this is the one
part of the book that has seemed a bit off to me.  I don't have any bright
ideas about how one could simultaneously provide a sense of closure to the
book while conveying the sense of the well as an existing and ongoing
entity, but it definitely ends with the end of the well, even if it is
conjectural (if the well should disappear, once the well is gone we may
remember the itself only dimly or not at all).

I think one of the strenghts of the well, and one of the reasons that it is
still here, is also one of the least sexy or sensational things about it--it
is the dailyness of the well.  The way that what is valuable for so many
people is not the story of techno future yayas or utopian community blather
(the utopian community blather is not something that the well has ever
claimed for itself but frequently seems to be foisted on it from people not
familiar with it)--but it is logging on from the office and keeping a window
open throughout the day to read and post in between work, logging in before
you turn in to see what happned during the day, etc.  To share what you saw
or heard on the bus and read what other people saw or heard.  Gabbing,
gossip, quips--alert the media!

One of the things I was struck with so far in the book, is how different it
is to read a bunch of postings, transcibed exactly, in a book than it is to
participate in an unfolding topic in real time.  It is so vastly different
and the differences are so perplexing.  I think one of the differences is
that the sense of rhythm is lost, there is a sense of rhthym to an unfolding
topic and it is difficult to convey that in a static format.

Anyways, you have mentioned that although you do not particpate much on the
well, that you have lurked.  Have you lurked anywhere lately?  Where?  Where
have you lurked in the past (that wasn't for research for the article or
book)?
  

    
I didn't add that much to the original Wired article. I just added
some parts about the acquisition by Salon etc. 

I've actually participated in a few conferences: parenting, and the
Berkeley conference, both of which are filled with good folks. 

And of course when researching the article/book I read many many many
archives.

I agree with you about the "dailyness" of the Well, and got that
strong impression when working on the article/book.
  

    

But you didn't do the dailyness of it?
  

    

No, I didn't. 
  

    
A non-addictive personality, obviously.  ;-)
  

    

Katie, how do you feel about the reviews out so far?  (I am giving you an
opening to review the reviewers, a very WELLish undertaking..!)

Oh, and is the schedule of readings posted here someplace?  I believe you're
at Stacey's bookstore in SF Monday nite.  Close to the WELL offices, and I
plan to be there.
  

    

gee, Gail, I'm sooo glad you asked about the reviews. a close friend
of mine (and book author) summed it up nicely in the following email:

"How are things with you? Are you surviving book review mode alright?
I always found it an extremely stressful time, even when the reviews
are good. I saw BW reviewed, and the Industry Standard..All the reviews
I've seen have had the basic attitude of this is a good book, but I,
genius reviewer, have found its flaw.  It's an annoying formula, but
almost a requirement of the trade."