Hi Culpeper,

Quote Originally Posted by Culpeper View Post
As with the topic of the insurgencies throughout the book, as the SWC grows in membership, it will or already has fallen victim to Robb's axiom. It is beginning to give the appearance of the same things we find fault with on topics such as COIN and the war on terror. Too much bureaucracy with sets and subsets. A think tank that has grown into a group think tank.
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Instead, the SWC has gone from a think tank to another online forum with the life expectancy of effectiveness no different than any other online group as Robb describes.
I hate to say this, but it certainly isn't a new observation. This used to be called "Magic Numbers Theory" in social psychology and parts of sociology back in the 50's and 60's (although they based it on powers of 12) and, if you want to go further back, try re-reading Common Sense by Thos. Paine - he notes the same phenomenon.

You are right that there is certainly a potential for the SWC to grow into a group think tank (I like that phrase!), but I don't think it has happened yet. I do see some increase in the social boundary maintenance stuff going on - I'll admit that . I have a gut feeling, alright based on 20+ years of working with and looking at online communities, that what is happening is an attempt to redefine the code of sociability (the ROE). This does not, of necessity, require the SWC to adopt group think at the level of specifics - it can be done at the level of process (i.e. how we talk not what we say).

Marc