You raise a good point. The meta community is so varied, one large umbrella might be an impossibility. That's especially true since there are some segments of the meta world that want nothing to do with some other segments. For example, some meta groups on Facebook welcome ads from sellers, EXCEPT they forbid ads for "spirits trapped in jewelry" on pain of banning. Then there's the whole "To BA or not to BA" debate. Some people avoid it like the plague, others pursue it. And I'm sure there are other examples of meta factions whose philosophy is incompatible with one or more other meta factions, meaning that they might reject any umbrella that has "THOSE people" sheltering under it.Caiyros Arlen wrote:Likes2Read gets it very well, but for one thing, best illustrated by a true event in the past
1640s ad _ London - everyone was competing with everyone else, and prices went sky high, there was no order, all hll broke loose, and so a group of Londoners came up with the idea of a Corn Guild, and the mother of a distant cousin wrote a book about it 30 some odd years ago. - They created what was called The Corn Guild - helping each seller, grower, and transporter, and maintaining basic values for delivery and prices. Basically they created LARGE LINKAGES....and all worked well for a couple of centuries.
We don't need nor can afford One Large Umbrella - this is open to imbalances in control, both within each seller's "realm" and across the board. We need linkages in a number of different ways - basically good across the board communications, and working "broad areas".
The castle & cottage system only works at the beginning of things - the enlarged community with a sense of things - not necessarily the same - not necessarily different and with good will works - Lets call it ADVANCED LINKAGE.WITH INTUITIVE ARRANGEMENT.
Again please not I will answer no questions but will comment if I think it would be helpful.I am in touch with others who are working on this, but I will not make any comments on this until it is reasonable for me to do so.
In Friendship
Caiyros Arlen
But what we do need, and I believe this sincerely, is one or more outlets that are run BY meta people, FOR meta people. That way, meta vendors and customers can't have the rug yanked out from under us again, with or without advance warning, by an eBay, an Etsy, etc. I think the customers will follow the vendors to these meta-oriented outlets, once these sites are organized. They found us on eBay, they found us on Etsy, they're finding us on Bonanza (but there's no guarantee that Bonanza won't pull the plug on meta someday), and they'd find us in a meta-only market site once it gets set up.
BOTP already exists, and the seller chatter on FB suggests that there's at least one more meta site that's under construction, along with the work-in-progress that Caiyros is mentioning. I think this is exactly what the online meta community needs in order to thrive -- a stable home where we know we won't be unceremoniously getting the boot simply for who we are or what we do.