The "Community"

[Josh S.]

I never could find enough time to think of new ways of conserving it, or, at least, utilizing it to the fullest. If it were just easier to determine what is useful and what simply will not be acceptable in the process of task management, I wouldn't have enough sense after my personal struggle with responsibility, to reason out for what all this creativity is here to do.
A great writer or artist is able to document an abstract idea or even ideal both through and during the process of enjoying his/her respective craft. The expediency by which someone might do this also adds to or builds on it's overall appearance and even intonation or tenor.
It is the most frustrating reality that the influences a writer encounters on a daily basis may or may not directly affect his/her art and presentation. These influences include the online community here or even other, less desirable ones.
There are social networking sites that ruin my week.
I still remember why I don't have an account with certain freelancing communities.
MP3 download giveaways have touched my inner toddler in ways I care not to describe.
Have these web sites inundated our collective unconsciousness with an overabundance of stimulus or options?
I hope that, like the advent of television, of course, the whole thing will one day become tame and easy to manage.
Have the greater majority of online communities or forums become a place to pick up extra baggage?
What is the remedy?

[David Eide]

You've hit on something that plagues all people, not just writers. Writers are in the forefront because they are dealing and selecting and managing vast amounts of information all the time. Personally I think the internet has replicated the proliferation of everything else in new forms, the danger of which is addiction to something that takes a person out of their hard-won assumptions and pumps them up with a lot of adrenaline until they are simply hitting off of it for the sheer rush. It was interesting to me that when I got online I went from being a writer to being an editor because the internet was this huge slushpile of good, bad, and ugly material. My suggestion to young people who feel overwhelmed by this is to focus on what they value off line, develop that and then use the internet strictly as a tool to enhance the values you discover. Make the internet work for you rather than the other way around!

Anyway, a "community" like this is primarily to help people in their professional lives by expressing the members experience in the market, job or freelance, or form groups where a certain practice or genre is reinforced and critiqued. A "community" is what it makes itself to be. It usually fragments into a lot of little communities and so be it. Groups is an effective way to limit the discussion and keep the volume of information at a tolerable level.

[Mary Anne Hahn]

I also think, as we get to know each other better, there can be opportunities to work together on joint ventures or, at the minimum, share resources that will help the others in the community expand their writing careers and clientele.

[Josh S.]

Collaborating with someone, not to be the devil's advocate, can be difficult without an initial screening process.
I like to ask a few questions when meeting someone online and these answers usually only need exist if the relationship is to work.
When a prospective client or even friend skirts around an issue, that presents to me a red flag.
For example, if I were to ask a simple, non-personal question and this person happens to avoid answering in a straightforward or forthcoming nature, I suspect that (s)he is hiding something or has a hidden agenda.
It sounds paranoid, but not so very off base from reality. Why would someone avoid replying about how their day went or how last night treated them?
Personally, if there isn't some personal connect with a partner or friend, online or otherwise, the relationship does not and should not go any further, no matter the juicy details of how easy it is to get rich quickly or become independently wealthy.

[David Eide]

I agree with you Josh and that's why some of the blogs have been personal and people are introducing themselves in very interesting ways. A "community" is simply a group of people who have something(s) in common. It doesn't mean you trust everyone or love everyone in it. Like you I don't trust people who try to sell me bogus claims so I don't do business with them. But then there are people in a community who do. A community, as I understand the term, is a very complex entity with many cross purposes and resources. The best thing to do is just let the "community" be itself, let it manifest as it will, and then discriminate on behalf on your own interests and connect as you feel the need to connect. It's good, too, to differentiate between a personal relationship and a business relationship because they require different things and are approached differently.

I've been on this for over ten years, been in many groups, have had so many discussions with people who I would never have met. The first online "thing" I had was with a professor of literature at the University of Buenas Aires. She wrote children's books and sent them to me and we had a grand old time of it. Now, I ask myself, would it be possible to connect with a person like that, from a foreign country? It's not likely and when you add the hundreds of other significant connections one makes it is really an astonishing medium to experience.

If you set a criterion that you won't do business with anyone without that personal touch then do so and don't do any business unless they do offer up some personal stuff. It's that simple. You have every level of experience on this medium and some people are very paranoid of it and close up. Others are liberated by it and open up. Just play with it!

[Josh S.]

If only there were more folks like yourself who give great advice. I know that, if given a few moments to thrive in a situation comprising more than a few of my closest strangers, I would feel at home. I usually do feel at home in most situations, even those where I suspect there is either a good deal of opposition to my interests or difficultly in establishing a certain level of respect.
It only takes a measure of perceptive observations, decisive explanation of who and what you, as a person, represent and an attitude appropriate to the situation at hand.
I appreciate your advice and feel it more than applicable to anyone reading this discussion, even if your object is to offer me, directly, a smidgen of constructive critique.
It is easier, I think, to establish a modicum of info about a community or even individual, in the same way I mentioned above, before commenting on topics or otherwise; I never quite seem to go to that length.
Perhaps I am foolhardy or a bit reactive.
Good advice!