This kind of gate-keeping is discouraging to those of us who are on the introverted side of personalities. Instead of being an open place where smart people can learn and teach, it becomes a clique of those who know someone.
I know you mean well, but this attitude makes it harder for people to contribute.
I like to think that we can do both at once, both learning and teaching, and hanging out with friends. And sometimes, meeting new friends who like hanging out, learning, and teaching.
I wholeheartedly agree. I really don’t quite get what @Pleonast meant by “Instead of being an open place where smart people can learn and teach, it becomes a clique of those who know someone.” That’s never been my impression of the SDMB. The worst I can say about it is that the pile-ons in the Pit against disfavoured members can sometimes be excessive.
I’ve been here for 25 years and seen accusations of that tossed around probably every year.
Every organization develops an inner clique. It would be astonishing if the SDMB didn’t.
Why this is relevant to AI use is beyond me. Oh, right. Community hijacks communities. /s
If I may politely disagree - I have a join date of 2020. While I had a -lot- of familiarity with this place prior to that, being a fan of the OG column and reading a lot of the “threadspotting” highlights from when the original column was being updated, I didn’t have an account, so not-even lurker status.
And while there may have been a few subtle hints from various posters that they worried about me being a sock (I only noticed two, and even then, months later), I didn’t feel excluded or questioned except when I created some ill-considered threads due to some panic in the darkest days of 2020.
But, your point isn’t wrong either. For those more introverted than I, then yes, any community with a long history and in-jokes is less welcoming. But I don’t think it’s any worse here than any other 20+ year old community, and if anything, much more welcoming than most.
Sorry to be so late in replying; I was offline much of yesterday. A few folks have already commented, so I’m trying to avoid a pile on. But I did want to comment.
None of what you wrote is relevant to anything I meant. And I’m sorry if you felt excluded by what I said.
My point in the “friends yakking” metaphor was twofold: a friend who only participated by quoted a handy encyclopedia because they knew nothing else would be not very beneficial to the whole. Might even be kind of a drag.
The larger point is I look forward to what my various imaginary friends will say about topic X. I care what @Pleonast knows or thinks as @Pleonast; I don’t (nearly) as much care what they can search up.
One of the nice things about a messageboard, unlike a gaggle at, say, a conference, is that nobody can be excluded. If 3 loud salesman types are yakking, I generally fail to get a word in, and pretty quickly wander away feeling rejected and excluded from a convo I might have been good in. And justifiably so IMO. That’s gatekeeping as you put it.
But here: The only person stopping you (generic you) from clicking [Reply] is you (generic you). Somebody will benefit from your words, whatever they are. Unlike IRL, the conversation expands to hold as many as choose to participate.
IRL I’m what I call a shy middle-vert. In a group of strangers I definitely feel the introvert pressure of “Nobody wants to talk to me and I’m scared to talk to them”. Conversely, if I know most of the people in the crowd that self-defeating self-talk disappears and I’m adequate at socializing. No star player, but I can get along just fine. Now, well into my 60s I’m slowly outgrowing that crippling shyness.
And maybe, just maybe, having spent 23 years here “meeting” and conversing long term with a couple thousand people and slowly learning about their lives and views has helped me in that journey.
Nowadays, I get suspicious whenever I see an answer formatted as a bullet point-style list with key phrases in bold.