More thoughts on closed/friends-only

artinnudity floated a proposal to go friends-only. This is what I posted... Two days after they'd already decided not to, because I caught the post proposing, but not the one disposing. Typical of me. :)

But it elaborates what I have in mind. So:

---

I've been online since 1982. My LJ number is 5 digits long. Neither of those are the very bleeding edge of first adoption... but still, pretty darned early. :)

My point isn't to impress, but to say: I've seen this before. Many times.

And I tell you in all honesty: A "closed community" is a contradiction in terms. Whether in real life or virtually.

What you're trying to do is regulate the kinds of interactions that take place here. The trouble is, when you go down that road, what happens the overwhelming majority of the times I've seen is that you'll get a smaller, more facile, more stable population... That then gets stale, and very much same-old, same-old. Then the core begins to fade away through attrition, and you're not able to get any new members because no one is willing or able to just "browse", and see if this is the kind of community they'd like to try.

Not only is this lack of renewal anti-community, it's anti-art. I'm not saying one has to be offensive, or "challenging", or whatever, in order to create art -- that's a cliche (and a trap) of a different sort. Rather, the possibility has to exist. It's like Karl Popper's observation about democracies -- if you don't allow for the possibility of people to choose tryanny, you have to impose more and more tyrannical measures to prevent them.

Or, try this: One of the things that makes communities happen is that people choose to join them of their own will. Once you make it "members only", you're suppressing the choices of non-members, as well as restricting what members are allowed to both see and say.

You're the moderators. You're going to make whatever choices you choose. And there are some mistakes people have to make on their own before they can really know they're mistakes.

Just be aware that if you go members only, this community will be unrecognizable very quickly.