User blog:Cerne/Apologetics of the ZBB

When I typed my last entry about the Zompist bboard (before the one on ferromagnetism) I had a lot of bad memories on my mind and I may have come off rather harsh. It is always a mistake to generalize about any online community because there is always that smaller percent of the membership that will be an exception. This is especially true of the ZBB. In fact, most of the members there are pretty agreeable (keep in mind this board has more than 2,000 members) and they can be quite helpful and selfless when you need their advice. That is why I still go there.

That doesn't necessarily mean I am taking everything back, though. A great deal of what I typed still stands.

The problem with the ZBB - especially for newer board members - is that there are a relatively few number of members who make most of the posts. A lot of those members do exhibit the nastiness I mentioned, and they're proud of it. Unfortunately they are some of the most "vocal" and reactive members on the board. Unless you are a complete samaritan devoid of all negative thought one can think of, these members will be the source of any conflict you have there. And even if you are, if certain members see an opportunity to make you or your material look bad, they will take it. "Constructive criticism" is somewhat of a coloured term on the ZBB; some members will criticize objectively with an interest in helping you out, and others will criticize subjectively with an interest in putting you down. Very often it is both, though it is always generally assumed that you are looking for constructive criticism. If you're not looking for constructive criticism and/or you make it seem that way, then it is assumed you probably need it, and this is where a lot of the nastiness comes in. Justification comes from the fact that the ZBB is a public site with many different points of view, but because no one can know exactly how good your conlang and/or conworld really is unless and until you have been active on the board for a certain amount of years, only the more popular members can really avoid the more subjective forms of criticism. And this applies beyond conlang/conworld material well into other forms of site activity.

However, the disproportionate amount of responses from the more vocal regular members does lead to a skewed interpretation of the ZBB. I have seen people leave the board (or almost leave the board) claiming that everyone on it was against them and that the entire site was one big stew of cynicism and nastiness. This is certainly an over-estimation because anyone who has left the board with bad feelings most likely hadn't even interacted with most of the other members, let alone most of the regular members. So a good tip is to avoid making any sorts of generalizations toward the rest of the ZBB community and to not take anything personal unless someone makes it personal. There are still trolls, clowns, and people trying to look smart or make a cool impression.

But, yes, while I still do feel like there is a proverbial Rat Race going on amongst a few of the members of the ZBB, I may have made a hasty generalization based on a bad mood or personal disposition. Quite frankly, this blog was not intended for personal thoughts and rants on personal matters. It was only intended for thoughts and research related to the construction of my conworld. I would like it to stay that way and will try to keepit going in that direction.

I might as well add something else while I am at it. I am getting to another one of those phases of the year (in-between two years, actually) where I may not type very much. I tend to be more occupied with current matters during the winter instead of prolonged research, and while I believe I may have typed in a few entries that I was aiming toward shorter entries to encourage more frequent activity, you may see more of the infrequent conglomeration or compaction of data when it comes to participating in this Wikia. I just thought I would let readers know what may happen later on.

Thanks for reading.