[Consim-l] Re: Internet clutter

[John Best]

One of the apparently few remaining wargamers posting here (we happy few, 
not that I post very much), Dave Bieksza responded to Alan Poulter as 
follows:

> On 5 Nov 2006 at 7:10, Alan Poulter wrote:
>
>> Interesting post below of yours. The irony is that, compared to times
>> past, we are drowning in too much wargame chat rather than too little.
>
> That's a very interesting observation, since my (limited) perspective
> is that the exact opposite is true.  CONSIM has had less traffic in
> the last 6 months than any other period I can think of.

...snipping other evidence of low volume on other sites....
>
> So my question to Alan (and anybody else who cares to reply) is,
> where have all the wargaming discussions gone?  Is
> BoardGameGeek (which I rarely check) the hot place?  Have IM's
> and/or Chat Rooms (which I don't bother with) taken over?  Or is it
> simply non-interactive websites pouring out a flood of information?
>
Actually, I had intended to respond to some other posts.  Mostly I had 
intended to respond to Mircea P.'s citing of Brian McCue's wonderful article 
on the value of ziz-zagging as a way of eluding a would-be predator (did 
anybody read that article?  really cool stuff).  But anyway, *with the 
limited time I have available to write anything, anywhere*, I'll choose 
instead to respond to this post.  First, I agree with Dave's point about the 
traffic on consim-l.  I haven't really been keeping track, but my 
impression, for whatever it might be worth is that the last 6 months to a 
year have averaged out to be the lowest overall traffic flow in the last 
10-12 years that I've read consim-l.  But I was also sort of thinking, that 
might not necessarily be bad.  When I go to other sites that were mentioned 
in Dave's post, like Board/GameGeek, or Consim World, it seems to me that 
most of the posts are like most of the stuff on the web: telegraphically 
brief, superficial, "me-too", shotgun types of posts.  Whereas here, there 
is a community of people (well, men I guess) who seem to know each other, 
and who are capable of producing longer, deeper, and more analytic posts 
than seen elsewhere.  In response to Mike's original post that sort of 
kicked off this thread (yes the irony of more posts about posts than posts 
about wargames is not lost on me, but then I love irony in all its forms), I 
don't think we have necessarily "stupidly fractured our hobby" to use his 
memorable phrase.  To me, it's more like there are different venues 
available for different types of contributions. And so, I think Alan is 
right too: There are just so many more places that one can drop into for a 
bit of wargaming info on the web than there were previously.  I know I can't 
possibly keep up with all the sites.  But for most of those sites, the quick 
sort of "I loved Game X", "Well, I hated it" type of exchange might be their 
forte.  I don't know about the rest of you, but here I feel like I can take 
some time to elaborate on my reasons for things, develop an argument, think 
critically, all that sort of stuff.  It's true that there might not be as 
many people reading what we write here as once upon a time, and there may 
not be as many responses as previously.  But I still feel that consim-l is 
still overall the single most knowledgeable audience about hex'n'counter 
wargames, and on that basis, it's a fun group to communicate with, even if 
we are all apparently a little less responsive than we once were.  Finally, 
in response to Dave's explicit question (where has all the discussion 
gone?), I think there are several theoretically-plausible answers, including 
the following:
1.  There isn't very much real discussion going on anywhere.  There might be 
a lot of sites, but what they are doing is mostly churn:  It's not really 
being read by very many people, or used.  The wargamers who had been doing 
the discussion are older, more tired, but nevertheless more time-urgent than 
ever and so, the amount of "deep traffic" is just going to be down in 
general.  Well, that's my hypothesis anyway, could be wrong.  In any case, 
thanks for reading.
John Best
jlbest at advancenet.net
Currently playing: Battles for the Ardennes (having some fun with it, boy is 
it clunky though.  I'll try to write about it ;-)