My tribe friend Khrysso Heart LeFey Is A Very Silly Curmudgeon asked an interesting question in his blog today. Khrysso's notion:

"Okay, all of us who complain about how sluggish Tribe has become—

Here's the plan:

What would happen if each of us contributed just ONE post a day to ONE of our tribes that isn't already busy? (For example, tribes.tribe.net/rawadvice certainly doesn't lack for activity—I can't even keep up with it any more!)

Maybe we could ignite some conversations by sheer dumb luck or something...

I think it's worth a try. How 'bout we just try it and see what happens? I mean, I go entire days now without trying to log in to Tribe and finding that the server is down (knock wood)... Granted, that's not particularly encouraging continuity by most standards, but for Tribe, hell, that's practically, like, 24-hour drive-thru! Why not exploit it?

(I never said I wasn't an opportunist.)"

Sounds like a great idea to me though I'd note one caveat: if a post is Tweet/Facebook-flavored then it probably does no harm yet if we imbue more authenticity to our posts (whether emotional, intellectual, political, erotic, whatever) then our posts would be more likely to stimulate genuine tribal interest (and so be more likely to engage meaningful interaction) among our fellow tribal folk.

Part of the reason tribe is almost the only online forum in which I participate to any significant extent is, imho, that Tribe is the deeper end of the pool. There is a place for "LOL!" with an emoticon eye-roll as a post, but like a long-term diet of only potato chips and Coke such fragments ultimately fail to nourish and sustain over time for many if not most folks who are no longer in middle school. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and suchlike on are so excessively shallow in large part because the incessant barrage of "LOL!"-emoticon-eye-rolls (and dearth of much else instead) fails to sustain conversations which have much real depth.

Kudos to Khrysso for coming up with a worthy pro-active idea and putting it into action! This is worth embracing and giving a try. How about we popularize the notion among our tribe friends in hopes this spark catches and spreads further as we fan its activity?

In the tribe for those who support Tribe with an automatically-billed $5 monthly donation there is an interesting discussion thread happening on why tribe is worth hanging in there to support and sustain. Here is a link:
tribes.tribe.net/goldstarc...99e9c574f4
If people with the attention span of a gnat in heat cannot endure a momentary lack of immediate gratification in return for building a longer-term solidly excellent result then they can always flit over to Twitter or suchlike to feel at home there among kindred spirits. The tribe format is innately superior so discussion, networking, and so on should thrive via tribe if given half a chance. Myself, I will be however patient is required with waiting through the outages and other minor annoyances while tribe's noble technowonks figure out how to retool the software and purchase the hardware (for which the support of our subscriptions is essential) needed to sustain and allow growth in our community.

Viva tribe! Long live tribe!