Wrong use completely for one of these tags

[mrissa]

Fourth Street was a Fourth Street! Yay Fourth Street! I seem to have gotten only homeopathic quantities of some wonderful people I like, but Fourth Street is so full of wonderful people I like (and not, alas, full of infinite energy sources for me) that it's very hard to avoid this outcome. And it was still a very good Fourth Street full of wonderful people I like.

And now I am home and resting and have sold a novelette, "The Radioactive Etiquette Book," to Analog. So yay go that! It's a madcap interplanetary comedy of diplomacy, complete with aliens and wayyyy too many moving parts, so I'm glad I got all the moving parts sorted out to editorial satisfaction. Hurrah!

Comments

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I see this a lot in established communities (and I've never even been to Fourth Street). I think it's not entirely avoidable. From a newcomers' POV, trying to understand can help, but only to an extent: you want others to have a good time and see their beloved friends, but you also want to have a good experience yourself. You can try to be outgoing, introduce themselves and try to join conversations, but you don't want to do that to the point of annoying people.

On the other hand, old-timers are likely to want to meet new people as well as old friends, so you feel like you're being very open and friendly, and it gets annoying to hear complaints that people feel left out.

I've been on both sides of this in various places and still don't have any perfect solutions. One thing that can help a lot is structuring participation - so people who run the community can arrange mixers targeted at new people, for instance, or new people can volunteer for a bit so that they have an established place and role as well as more chances to meet people.