Oct 2008

Hello everyone, Anthony / murmurists here again. My Reverse Metal posting for last month - my first - generated 31 comments. Those comments, though, were offered only by CJ, Aaron, Ruela, Jaie, Lazare, Fissuresofmen, and myself. So, there remains the issue of how to convene some kind of numerically legitimate common consensus within the general ranks of the Discharge diaspora.

I personally suspect this is an impossible task - as some contributors to this blog clearly do not wish to be involved in anything approaching admin. In one sense, I cannot blame them, I have to say! Too many things in life become tantamount to another job. It's perfectly right and fine to want to blog partly as an attempt to get away from all such mundane organisation. The problem we have, however, is that there seems to be an implicit feeling in the ranks that Discharge itself needs to change and progress in order to continue.

This is a supposition, of course. The natural thing here would be to ask everyone involved is that your personal feeling. I attempted that with my last post and in my comments. Numerically speaking, hardly anyone responded. So, one is left asking such collective questions into a kind of void. The common thing here is that such voids are filled by decision-makers - who take over a given institution, often changing that institution radically.

In my view, looking at the comments which have been made, Discharge is at that point right now. One scenario which might emerge from this is - decisions will be made by those actively involved, and then complaints will be made by those not hitherto offering their ideas. That might end in fracture and upset; and, sadly, it's all too common with collectives in my experience. Let's hope not.

I took on this role because I think there's hope and I think Discharge is very much worth the effort. But, again, we are at a crossroads: (a) totally open forum with wildly-differing levels of input, wider than it is deep, or (b) a tighter-knit community of active contributors, deeper therefore than it is wide. Lazare put it best, I think, when he said: '...the team has expanded numerically but not in terms of contribution...'. This encapsulates my feeling - the lack of engagement and reciprocity being why I decided to scale down my own previously feverish postings of a while back.

Lazare also pointed out an issue with thinking myspace might be the future - in saying that the way one posts blogs on myspace tends to obscure individual authorship. I still think the profundity of Discharge lies in its collective admix, but I completely agree that it is good to know who made what. The lack of such accountability further compounds the issue of differing levels of contribution, also. Why should a limited number of hardworking contributors carry the can for those who post nothing, one might argue? With blogger, it is clear who does what.

Given all this, the question is how long do we all wait to take action? I still think of Discharge as CJ's baby, and would look to him to, if not make the decision between (a) and (b), at least to frame that decision for the rest of us.

How to practically affect this ...? Well, as I see it, the options are limited. In order to properly franchise such change, we could offer a deadline for ideas/views; with the caveat that anyone not bothering to offer their views before that is effectively voting themselves out of the group. From there, once people have registered either their commitment or disinterest, the former can decide upon roles in the way Aaron described: myspace 'editor(s)', blogger(s) 'editor' etc. I'm happy to register my own commitment here, now, and to say I'd be fine with operating Reverse Metal, so long as all those active participants wanted me to.

The larger question here, though, is - in opting to operate Discharge on that more formal footing are we losing something important about what Discharge is? I would suspect - yes, we are, and I'd say that that's inevitable. Not to do anything, however, might be to risk the thing dying a slow death.