On the Design Community

[webmaren]

www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/04/08/opinion-column-the-sad-state-of-the-web-design-community/

Consider this article a development of a discussion that has been going on quietly in forums less prominent than the one you are reading now. I would argue that becoming a part of the Web design community is more difficult for newcomers now than it was 10 to 12 years ago. The community is slowly collapsing upon itself.

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I have felt this way for a while about the design community. I was a member of the design community on ProBoards starting back in 2005, and I saw the halcyon days there. The giants were still with us. Now, they have mostly vanished.

I use RSS to check up on design blogs that I read. Every time I go at it, I find myself deleting half to two-thirds of the posts without even reading them because they are list posts or freebie posts. I don't read to see those; I read to learn about designing.

The community is imploding; I really do believe this. There are dozens of forums now that are essentially invite-only. They test people before letting them join, cherry-pick only the cream of the crop.

Does this create a community of talented people? Undoubtedly. But it doesn't help to grow that community. The greatest communities of yesteryear were not great because they meticulously pruned away members who were not rock star designers. They were great because they had a core of rock stars who were dedicated to making other people rock stars.

My Internet presence came of age in these communities. I don't know that it could have in the communities we have now. We have plenty of rock stars now. We don't need them so much. What we need are teachers, people who are good at what they do but, more importantly, want to make other people good at it too.

Shout out to California, VanillaOrchids, Soumak, Tygrtat, CD and LynardSkynard of SoCal. You guys were rock stars. And you were teachers.

[Renegade]

This is a comment from that article, and sums up almost the entire reason I disagree with it:

I’m 14 years old and I (try to) do webdesign for about half a year now, but I can’t seem te find some sort of ‘Webdesign Community’. What exactly is this ‘Webdesign Community’ everyone is talking about? I’de love to join it, because I really want to learn to be a great webdesigner and -developer, but how and where?

The idea of the webdesign community being some sort of tangible thing is where so many people get confused. There never was this community thing. People didn't worry about that... you made something cool, linked your friends, and then made something else. There was *never* a time when GDD (or any design forum) was constantly full of long detailed critique posts for every piece posted. But nobody cared, because nobody expected that to be the case.

I'm going to keep using the word community for the sake of ease of explanation of the rest of my post, however. in this context I'm using to simply mean a like minded group.

Now, instead of spending an hour working on something from a tutorial & posting it to show their friends what they've learnt, they post it and expect 5 billion replies with long critiques. If that doesn't happen, then they decide the community is dying / dead. This isn't a community problem, its more like an expectation to be famous without doing any work. Its like when this forum outlawed short comments & praise on the basis that it wasn't helpful.... if anything is killing the community its the pointlessly high demands placed on casual members and beginners.

The other half of the problem is that plenty of people will show up to comment about how they think the community is dying - but barely contribute to it outside of that. Members like VO aren't considered great because they rant about how nobody else matches up to their standards, they're considered great because they just take part in things and build their reputation.

Back when PB was considered to have a great design community usually seems to mean whenever the person ranting joined. the "golden age" Of GDD gets listed for so many different times that its clear that its not too clear cut an argument as your post suggests. I've even seen members say GDD was at its greatest at time when the board didn't even exist.

The third half (yes) of the problem is more to do with the net in its entiretly. It doesn't relate to design directly, hence being an additional. I could write a lot about this, but I'll try to keep it short. Basically, 10 years ago:
- social networking didn't exist; neither did YouTube. Broadband was new, most internet speeds were very limited. Even Bejeweled took time to load. So, forums took a much bigger role in social interaction online. this means both that communities were stronger, but also that without constant FB update, Twitter posts, YouTube vids to watch, etc, people spent more time just making stuff.
- there was no history, and nothing to look back on. everything was what it was, it couldn't be "better back when...." because there was no back when.
- most regulars to most site were the same demographic: white, upper middle class teens. Lots of free time, no worries past social acceptance. Friendships form easily like that. Now, there's a bigger range of people around, and so its harder to find your place in any site.
- People change. people leave. the ones left tend to find it hard to accept newer members as being anywhere near the standard of their original friends. then they decide the community must be dead. This is rarely the case.