Um, not to tell people how to post, but just returning to the original topic because it was insightful and I did want to offer hopefully helpful personal insight--
As someone who does a lot of QB stuff (well, I like to think QuizDB is important anyways, with all the bugs I tend to give it, you may correctly disagree), but still really happily considers himself an "outsider" (not on any official boards, not really on Discord that often, most of my IRL QB friends were made after playing with them in school, rather than just through broad QB connections), I did want to mention that it can often feel like there's a lot of...sniping in QB discussion? Like it kind of amazes me how often I hear about people talking
on Discords or FB groups.
Like, I get it, I think that happens in every hobby. But it just kind of throws me off a little, it's part of what makes me happy to stay being an outsider who contributes in the way he does. And not that I'm bringing this up to agree/disagree with the opinions expressed in said "sniping," I probably agree with it more often than not (once the gossip does trickle far enough down the grapevine to me, at least).
(Note that, for some people, the forums themselves hold the same role. I'm really comfortable on the forums, because I've been here a while, but I can see how just public arguments on here [or the occasional logistical :capybara:talking] can really come across as backroom chicanery.)
It's definitely a major factor in feeling like QB is insular though, and I suspect having these very...um, "confident" toned (for lack of a better word) groups can make being who don't feel as confident about where they belong in QB feel--well, even less confident.
Well, it's a hard problem, because I think these networks of communication are important, and inversely to what I'm focusing on here, useful means of expression for people who feel like they are outsiders, but I just wanted to offer my personal opinion.
---
Err--if it's not too arrogant, I did want to share a personal anecdote from school that I thought was relevant to this thread for other stuff.
Back in college, the dorm I lived in had a "HoCo" (housing committee) that's probably analogous to a class council at the HS-level.
At one point, there was this pretty long flame war because a lot of people had started to become unhappy with how HoCo managed several of the dorm events / spirit materials. It started really innocuously, but then a lot of people started expressing, I think, some really long festering issues. On one side, people were upset that HoCo seemed to just be a social clique (again, think class council), that took dorm money and decided what to do with it without consulting the rest of the dorm. If you weren't friends with people on HoCo, there wasn't much point in trying to be involved with HoCo.
On the other side, however, HoCo was really upset that people had this impression in the first place, especially because they felt like HoCo had plenty of avenues for people in the dorm to become involved; but
worse, because no one outside of the dorm had bothered to get off their ass and just try being involved, so it was a really self-centered complaint to say there was no point to being involved.
At the time, I wasn't in HoCo, but I thought both sides had a really good point. HoCo did seem like a pretty insular clique, who had their own in-jokes, and were friends amongst themselves. On the other hand, I think it was also accurate to say that HoCo had plenty of opportunities to become involved, and I'm sure if anyone had really spoken up about wanting to be friends with them, they would have loved to make friends!
To skip past a lot more flaming, what eventually came out of the discussion was that people didn't bother becoming involved in HoCo because it felt like this
mountain of exertion, where you had to really "know" HoCo, and you had to "be" HoCo. Which was wrong! There were plenty of ways to just "casually" be involved. But HoCo hadn't done a good job of advertising these, or if it had, it had poorly emphasized that these methods of involvement were not
commitments, they were just, say, an hour here or there, maybe once every two weeks. In fact, regular HoCo meetings were always open, and you could always show up just because. (Meetings were literally where everyone lived, so there wasn't even a physical barrier.)
If you didn't want to go to meetings for HoCo, you could participate in IMs; you could help set up for dorm parties; you could even just come to "HoCo" parties and come learn about what all these people spent their time on. And in turn, HoCo would try to maintain avenues of openness so that people who contributed by these means, and were interested in HoCo--but were daunted by the apparent "commitment" or "insularity" of HoCo--would have a comfortable, "kiddie pool" means to learning about the community.
I started going to occasional HoCo meetings after this whole discussion, and I really enjoyed it. I was never technically a HoCo member (an elected position), but I helped staff various things, and occasionally I put in more work and organized for IMs. I was really happy at this level of commitment--never feeling like I had to be in HoCo, or had even tried to be in HoCo, but still managing to meet a lot of people in spite of this. I think in the end HoCo even started individually asking people if they wanted to come to meetings, and not that all of them came to every meeting after that, but some did come to a few, and a few even did come to every meeting.
This is sort of what I find most applicable to QB? I think people are well aware of the number of people who staff, but don't really get involved beyond that. (Which is kind of amazing to me, because I think committing an entire day of your life is a pretty onerous thing in its own right.) But I just feel like there are very poor avenues into QB outside of staffing, basically never hearing that there are other opportunities, even social ones.
---
Sorry! That was really long. But it was something I've been thinking about for a while and wanted to get out there before I lost the motivation to write about it; hopefully the point I was trying to make wormed its way out there eventually.
I did really like some of the suggestions upthread about just consistently hanging out socially after/around QB events. I was a little dismayed to hear that it was hard to make those happen, but in fairness, QB is especially tiring, and some people don't want to do exert the effort. I really hope people keep trying, though!
I think a lot of disparate ideas about QB are being expressed in this thread: social aspects (macro and micro), QB organizations as a concept, staffing. I think that's sort of why it's tough to talk about this, because people are actually talking about a gazillion different things, but that's exciting, because that means there's also lots of ways for things to improve!