Monday, September 7, 2020

The task of welcoming people to FI

There's an interesting discussion happening on curi blog about the task of welcoming people to FI.

curi wrote #17878:

I'm not very good at welcoming most people and getting them into the community. There are reasons and no one has been able to suggest any viable improvements. No one else is doing it better for FI despite my many requests. There are other people who are more conventional than me and could maybe get along with new people better and try to introduce them, but they won't do it much.

Anonymous wrote #17905:

Welcoming people is something I’m interested in. I’ve tried to do it some in the past. Reasons why I’ve stopped:

1) I have a memory of saying something like “hello and welcome” to new Discord people for a while and being asked to stop doing that because it was too pressuring. But maybe I’m mistaken and it was people saying more than that who were asked to stop. I want to look for where that was said but I think it was in a channel that no longer exists or that I no longer have access to.

2) I understand more now about the distinction between objective reality and social reality. I think you (curi) want FI to be a place where people focus on objective reality and not on social reality. Welcoming and friendliness and trying to help people feel comfortable are social reality things, so I think you don’t want them to happen at FI, or if you do want them to happen, your vision of what they’d be like is different from mine. This seems like a complicated topic. (I’m not super sure about anything I said in this paragraph.)

3) I myself don’t feel as welcome at FI or as much a part of the FI community as I used to. I can’t help new people succeed at something I can’t succeed at. If someone takes on the project of welcoming new people, maybe I’d benefit from it.


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some brainstorming:
  • i think that when you take on a task (like welcoming people to FI) and then stop, you should say why you stopped.
    • if this was a business context and an employee took on a task and then stopped without saying anything, that'd be considered a mistake because he didn't alert anyone when he could have. that's a stuck point that deserved attention from other people. the situation should have been escalated. the task didn't deserve to be aborted and instead it deserved more attention.
  • point #2 has a weird sentence in it. FI encourages people to study (focus on) social dynamics.
  • point #2 also has another weird thing. Anonymous says that he thinks elliot doesn't want welcoming and friendliness at FI, but the last discussion reply from elliot says he wants new people welcomed.
  • point #2 has another weird thing. yes elliot's vision of what it would be like to welcome people to FI is not the same as yours. so what? lots of things are like that. do you mean they aren't even close or something like that?
    • you should care about any incompatibilities. you seem to be thinking that all welcoming is social dynamics. i don't see why that would be the case. i think some welcoming is just plain truth telling. just like some praise is truth telling. 
  • point #2 has another weird thing. complicated topic? it doesn't seem complicated to me. here's what i envision. you continue welcoming people to FI. and when elliot or others give feedback on your process, analyze and adjust (according to your judgement, meaning you're fully happy with the change). 

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