Looking back at the focus group archives I can see there were some good discussions in teh past. The focus debates are easier to follow because a question is posted on the website and you at least know what it�s supposeed to be about. At least that�s a starting point, dead basic I know, but in MD you haven�t even got that. In the MD forum it�s hard to know where a debate begins and ends. Sometimes a clear question is posed but usually there�s no ending at all it just wanders off onto something else within a couple of responses, often I have no idea what point the debaters are even trying to resolve. It�s near impossible for anyone who doesn�t have time to read it every day to follow. The focus group does seem to offer a viable alternative. So what happened? I think it�s largely down to MOMENTUM. Nobody posts because nobody posts. The last question on the website was in June, I was surprised to find that the forum was even active. When you write a post there�s a certain investment in time and brainpower and you want to feel that you�ll get some return on that in terms of people reading and responding to you. In the focus group that isn�t the case, although it does seem that at some point in the past it was more active. I think you just need one or more people to say, okay we�re going to make an effort to post at least one response to every question. It�ll only take a couple of posts to break the cycle of silence and get things moving. In fact that�s just what�s happening this month. Silence for a couple of weeks then one guy breaks it with a provocative post and then another one joins in, and another� once the momentum gets going you could have a real exciting topic going. I think it�s clear that you do need someone or a group in the driving seat. This business of setting questions and focussing on them is by nature slightly unnatural. It needs to be organized and the system has to be understood by all participants, which means explaining it to newbies all the time. Some of the systems that have been sugg! ested thi omplicated, even the people who suggested them don't seem too enthused about their own ideas. You need a couple of people to be responsible for making it happen, in terms of igniting the debate and in terms of keeping it on focus. But what do I know? I�m probably proving my lack of dynamic quality by daring to post in the "static" forum, but frankly I don�t find MD particularly dynamic for the most part, no offence buddies, but for this lurker it's just a lot of noise � hugely repetitive, wasteful, predictable and dareIsayit� boring. IMHO dynamic is about beauty and progress, not just disorder and chaos. Oh shit, gimme an eggnog someone.
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