qphox wrote:LikeWater is going to conlude that we ban all african americans from competing.
edit; Sorry, couldn't help myself. I have been reading a lot of dishonest quoting lately (non footbag related) and saw the opportunity.
Regarding the actual topic at hand;
I think it's fantastic that a group of people are being pro-active in trying to address problems they see in footbag discourse and create a positive source of information. Full credit to them for taking this step forward. I somewhat agree with some of the criticisms raised by Nick, especially that the discussion could easily happen on modified instead, but I don't really think it's a big problem that they've chosen this different method. There are pros and cons with either approach, and the real test will be in the information they put out - if it's useful and relevant than the process has been a good thing, with a positive outcome, even if we speculate that the same information could have been achieved using an open discussion on modified or .org.
While it's easy to understand the concerns raised about elitism and exclusion, I really don't think they are relevant. As has been pointed out, this isn't a body of any authority - it's just a group of people who wanted to do something positive for the sport and are trying their best to make that happen. Adam made a good point that LW only has power if you respect it. This is completely true. The rest of us may have been excluded from the group, but they'll all be wasting their time if they can't convince the people not in the group of their relevance. If we don't agree with what they have to say, they'll have failed.
Even if that's what happens and the group dies, at least they made an effort to address a problem they perceived, and I think they deserve a lot of credit for that. Footbag seems to have a lot of people in it who are prepared to criticise people's attempts at making things better without taking any real actions of their own. I'd like to see this change to a culture of action.
For the record I'm not a member (for rather hilarious reasons that I'm not going to go into, but I view as a fairly good indication of character on behalf of some people - although I'm unsure if I would have participated even if I were invited, as I have a different opinion on the issue of discourse and propagating information in the footbag community and generally in society).
edit2; I just wanted to add that in no way am I criticising people who don't have time to take any positive actions for footbag - I know that I have hardly any time to do anywhere near as much as I would like to, and I'm sure many people are in the same position. I'm just saying it's a nice change to see people taking a pro-active step forward, and even if I may have some disagreements with their approach, I'm happy to judge them on their results and wait and see what happens before expressing my concerns.