Perfectly Kim...

[Charles Zwicky <cazwicky@earthlink.net>]

Dear Violet, and everyone else...

We have all gained much from knowing Kim through Loopers-Delight.. 
I've been here since the mid 1990s and have experienced some great 
conversations.

Here is an example of how great Kim was, his ideas about forming 
community are wonderful.  I was moved by his words  in this post (see 
below) from 2006 so I saved it...

Chuck Zwicky

>At 08:06 AM 4/24/2006, Matthew.Quinn@sunlife.com wrote:
>
>>Just wondering- is there any reason why there is no LD Message Board?
>
>Yes, there is a reason. It has nothing to do with personal 
>preferences. Neither mine, nor yours, nor anybody else's. It also 
>has nothing to do with technology.
>
>It has everything to do with community. How communities form, how 
>people interact with each other, how communities sustain or fade out.
>
>I started using online networked environments in the 80's. I was 
>fascinated by the possibilities they offered to allow new 
>communities to form, and the possibilities for new methods of 
>communication.
>
>Over many years of using these environments, I observed that the 
>interface and method for the communication had a huge effect on how 
>people interacted, and the type of communities they did or did not 
>form. Bulletin boards, group chat, instant messaging, mailing lists, 
>video conferencing, newsgroups, etc., all turn out differently. Even 
>subtle things can have a significant impact. With mailing lists, for 
>example, factors like bounce/digest, moderation, posting rules, even 
>whether the "reply-to" field is set to the list address or the 
>poster's address, all affect the way people communicate in different 
>ways. Some formats turn out ugly, and result if a lot of flaming, or 
>trolls, or whatever. But some turn out wonderfully, when applied the 
>right way.
>
>So, the reason for choosing one interface or another should really 
>depend on the application and the type of communication desired. Is 
>the goal more of a friendly community, where people are a little 
>chatty and get to know each other over a long time? Is it just for 
>posting announcements or ads? Technical question and answers with a 
>minimum of nonsense? Customer support? A good place to chat people 
>up and try to get a date? A different format will work better in 
>each case. Choosing the wrong format usually results in failure.
>
>When I wanted to start a community around looping, my goal was to 
>form a community. I hoped people would spend extended time there, 
>and get to know one another. I wanted people to share information 
>and collaborate on projects together. I wanted people to spend time 
>to teach one another about looping. I wanted people to have serious, 
>thoughtful, and respectful discussions. I wanted it to last. I 
>wanted a community of interested people to build the whole idea of 
>looping into something much bigger than it was.
>
>I had long observed that mailing lists work very well in forming 
>strong communities, and that is what I wanted to do.
>
>So the fundamental format I chose for this nascent looping community 
>is the mailing list. I set up LD as a bounce list, with the reply-to 
>set to the list address. There is no moderation, but you can't post 
>unless you are a subscriber. There are no explicit rules about what 
>can be posted. There is a web archive that saves all discussion, and 
>makes it freely available to the world. (there is also a digest, 
>which I wasn't too thrilled to create and still think was a somewhat 
>bad idea.)
>
>All of these choices were made with a lot of thought. Mailing lists 
>have continuity. People mostly don't drop in and disappear, they 
>usually stick around for a while. Email lists appeal to people's 
>natural inertia. If people do nothing, the messages still go to 
>them. So people get to know one another. Email encourages more 
>thoughtful discussion. Bounce lists are more active. Lack of 
>moderation encourages more individual sense of ownership and 
>responsibility for the community. Reply-to set to the list makes 
>things a little more chatty and fun. None of these choices were 
>accidents, or made without purpose. I thought about each one and 
>made the choice in order to form the kind of community I envisioned.
>
>And so in 1996 I started Looper's Delight, and a whole bunch of 
>interested people showed up and started communicating in a new way, 
>and we all built this remarkable community. Looper's Delight is 
>almost 10 years old. We've made good friends, we've had numerous 
>great festivals, we've recorded many amazing albums, we shared a lot 
>of knowledge, we shared a lot of music, we've gone to see one 
>another perform, we guided manufacturers to make products for us, we 
>created a huge archive of knowledge, sometimes we've argued and 
>disagreed, mostly we've supported each other in all manner of ways, 
>and most important, we've developed looping far beyond what any of 
>us ever thought it could be.
>
>I'm really proud of all that. And I'm really convinced, now more 
>than ever, that the choices I made in forming this community were 
>correct. In my world, there is no better proof than success.
>
>So no, I'm not at all interested in converting LD into a message 
>board. I think that idea is destructive to our community. I also 
>think it is hurtful to the group when people try to create some 
>separate forum. It always feels like an attempt to split our 
>community up. That's why the reactions from so many people in the 
>community to these ideas are usually so hostile. People like the 
>community we have here. The don't want to see it broken up or 
>damaged.
>
>And by the way, the idea that message boards are somehow more 
>"modern" is laughably wrong. As someone else noted, even in the 80's 
>bulletin board systems following that approach were very 
>sophisticated. Email was relatively primitive at that time, and was 
>little better than a command line or unix shell interface. There is 
>not really anything new about message boards today other than 
>slicker graphics and php code. Most of them seem to be actually 
>worse in user interface than the average BBS you could have joined 
>15-20 years ago.
>
>kim
>
>
>______________________________________________________________________
>Kim Flint                     | Looper's Delight
>kflint@loopers-delight.com    | http://www.loopers-delight.com


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