Posted by pseudoname on January 4, 2006, at 20:12:22
In reply to Re: numbers » pseudoname, posted by alexandra_k on January 4, 2006, at 18:05:06
> > The openness helps ME,
>
> how does it help you?•They read me•
As I posted on Monday, part of what I'm doing at Babble is trying to help others. That's a significant objective for me here, since I have pretty slim opportunities to do anything like that (in mental health, especially) elsewhere in my life.I post hoping that at least some of my peculiar experience and obscure, hard-won information may be just what someone, perhaps years down the road, can really use. I construct many of my posts with just that outcome in mind: thorough references, summarizations of preceeding discussions, links to other threads, invitations to contact me even if years have gone by, etc.
Very, very few people will ever seek the particular information I can share, and their motivation to see what my anonymous dork-self has to say is hardly guaranteed to be intense enough to carry them through a seven-step registration process. A registration which will, of couse, compromise THEIR computer privacy.
If an outsider to Babble can't read my posts freely, the likelihood that the post'll ever have much effect is reduced. I'd say greatly reduced. Maybe some outsiders will join on the basis of a sentence fragment by me in Google. But I'm dealing with a very small consumer base to begin with. I can't afford to lose very many.
Some other contributors here, it's pretty clear to me, also get a lot from the idea of helping others. If the site is restricted, I expect their interest in posting here will be reduced, too, and THAT will hurt me.
•Care•
I'm often (not always) conscious that my posts will be available to the whole world for a long time. That thought in the back of my mind makes me more careful in what I post: I don't want to mislead people through careless wording or serious error, and I rush to correct my mistakes ASAP in the thread. AND I correct harmful errors in other people's threads that are YEARS old. I wouldn't feel much urge to do that if the archives weren't publicly available.This pressure to take care benefits me a little, since there's not much else where I feel any need to challenge myself intellectually at the moment. But it would probably benefit someone (if she exist) relying on one of my posts more.
•I like surfers•
Google searches are not the only way new people come to Babble. They come here by idly surfing links to the boards' index-pages, too. The meds board's index-page is the SECOND LINK in Alexa.com's mental health directory. That's #2 in all the web! I've seen links to Babble at personal homepages (like mine), Yahoo and other directories, articles, sites like John McWhorter's, and so on.Those static links bring surfers who already spend a lot of time online AND have general interest in mental health issues. They're EXACTLY the kind of people who end up contributing tons all over the Babble boards. Obviously, those people help me all the time, even if I never actually have an exchange with them at all.
•Open-ended•
I'm not saying those are the only benefits I get out of the openness, but they're the ones that are apparent to me tonight.Thanks for asking. :-)
poster:pseudoname
thread:593798
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20051205/msgs/595315.html