I will not be able to answer to all these postings, although I do feel
obliged... The theme of baking temperatures, i.e. the metamorphosis of the
challenging problem of critical thinking in a virtual community setting
will have to wait. So will the multiple facets of invisibly active
participation, and the pressures of time and redundancy.
I'm glad that Nate stepped in with a report of actively reading Vincent's
postings -- this is a general phenomenon I'm convinced. I.e. that newcomers
and infrequent contributors of all kinds are not explicitly responded to,
which is of course easy to read as being ignored. After having invested
your time and care you do not receive the same in return. But as the
reports of general reading habits show, your posting may well have been
read actively by somebody who did not have the resources to respond in
writing.
What Vincent reports about backstage responses also sounds familiar --
we've heard similar reports before, from times of controverse. But I won't
go further into silencings and intimidations here, either.
What I did want to say is that I think us frequent contributors have been
blessed with, or developed a certain insensitivity to the lack of response.
It happens quite a lot, even to "celebrities" -- for example there's been
no takeup of Jay's long posting on the Keller&Keller article. It's just
that when one keeps persistently shipping off postings to the list, at
least some of them will be responded to, and some of those may get a LOT of
responses or start long threads. (What did you say about cultural capital,
Nate? I'm beginning to sound as if one needs to have considerable assets in
order to get an enterprise started: lots of time and self-assurance...).
I also think there are techniques for formulating postings that can stand
without further response, but still be readable as part of the
conversation, by both the sender and multiple recipients. Providing info,
telling a similar story from experience, commenting without posing explicit
new questions... Which may be a form of self-protection, of safe play.
Myself, I have a tendency to get vague, cryptic and Evasive...
ooops, gotta go, my sister's waiting
Eva