Lately, I've been thinking about online communities again.
I've always been more of a lurker in communities. I am either not sure how to contribute, or I feel that my knowledge on a subjects is too inadequate to join the conversation.
There's this one forum I check out all the time. It's almost dead, but every once in a while there will be really interesting discussions among the members that always leave me with a feeling of having learned something new. This feeling has become rare in the modern social media landscape, which makes spaces like this one even more precious to me. I realized that if I don't want to lose it, I will have to get more involved. Because without making your presence known, nobody who remains will see that you're still there. They'll be left with the frustration of dwindling activity until they finally leave that place themselves. And then it'll be too late.
Honestly, I'm growing increasingly sick of social media. The current discussion on said forum has lead me to realize that when I wrote volpeon.ink/notebook/microblogging-misdesign/ , I had stopped short of bringing my analysis to its proper conclusion. Microblogging isn't the only type of platform following the "global town square" model, and there are in fact far worse implications stemming from its lack is context not just in the scope of the platform, but also outside of it. I will write a proper post about this at a later time.
@areon@icy.wyvern.rip