KarenJ opened this issue on Mar 21, 2007 · 1211 posts
kobaltkween posted Wed, 28 March 2007 at 3:04 AM
actually, when it's just this thread and i add everyone, it's a lot less about personalities. someone who i haven't seen post before posts their name, i go look at their work, and i get a notification when they post an image. if i don't favorite them, if i choose not to comment, it's because i've seen their work and the phrase "add me" or "count me in" and made a choice then. when i get mailed a link to their work, it's trivial to look at it. their work is foremost.
forums, on the other hand, are about conversations. someone posts who's not part of the "in" crowd, and some key really active people post and react (assuming the forum is popular enough to retain them). in my experience those are about two or three, maybe up to five people. the mainstream feels no need to react because they see these people do that. and they only mainly react to each other and the forum heads (or thread leaders - see the kmwill fan club threads) . i'd say those are no more than another 10 or 15 people for a really large sub-group. your average person posts, and most don't even look at the thread to see what's going on. only threads with provocative subjects or headliners tend to get lots of action. i've had people be incredibly friendly and very supportive, but not nearly as focused, effective and non-partisan as i've seen those in this group be so far.
this isn't to say we couldn't all act differently. i know people feel very positively about this effort right now. but it would mean consistently behaving in a way i haven't seen people behave in any of the forums or bulletin boards i've ever frequented or observed over the past decade or so.
forums are great fun, highly informative, and a pleasure to be a part of. but i find that unless someone really verbose and popular starts a thread, there's practically no response at all.
i've got a serious backlog on images. please let me know if i should go forward on commenting. if nothing is said, i probably won't comment, since the consensus seems to be for posting to a forum and not post critical or detailed comments to the gallery. here are the artists in my inbox: