How Insiders and Seekers Use the Quaker Net

Every once in awhile I get an indi­ca­tion that var­i­ous “weighty” Quak­ers come to my “Quak­er Ranter” site, usu­al­ly because of a group email that some­one sends around or a post on some list­serve. What’s fas­ci­nat­ing is that few of the insid­er Friends ever spend much time look­ing around: they go to the one page that’s been ref­er­enced and then – swoosh, they’re gone, pre­sum­ably back to their email or list­serve. There’s a pro­found lack of curios­i­ty about what else I might be writ­ing about. These insti­tu­tion­al Friends nev­er post com­ments and they rarely even send any feed­back by email.

This con­trasts very sharply with the bulk of traf­fic to my site. Dozens of peo­ple a day come in off a Google search. Unless it’s a bad match, these seek­ers spend time on the site, click­ing all around, fol­low­ing links to oth­er sites, com­ing back, read­ing some more. Not every­one comes in via search engines: some fol­low links from else­where while oth­ers read the RSS Feed or just come in ever few days to see what’s new.

Part of the dif­fer­ence between “insti­tu­tion­al” and “seek­ing” users is in their use of search engines. Many estab­lish­ment Quak­ers don’t know how to use them or don’t think to use them. A web­site mar­ket­ing pro­pos­al of mine was almost nixed recent­ly when a com­mit­tee mem­ber learned that search engines bypass a site’s home­page to return results from inside pages. I just assumed that every­one knew by now how a search engine works. I use Google dozens of times a day; it’s hard for me to imag­ine any­one nav­i­gat­ing the net with­out it. It must almost be like they’re using a sep­a­rate medi­um. Both of us are using the inter­net as trans­mis­sion con­duit, but that’s like say­ing both a news­pa­per and a per­son­al let­ter use paper and ink for tran­si­tion: while this is indis­putably true, it does­n’t begin to speak to the dif­fer­ent use and the depth of audience.

* * *

I won­der if the inter­net divide rep­re­sents an even more sig­nif­i­cant divide between insti­tu­tion­al insid­ers and the rest of us. The insid­ers might be staff, com­mit­tee clerks or just very involved Friends but they share a cer­tain way of under­stand­ing their world. First off, they have their ideas all fig­ured out already. There’s a lack of curios­i­ty here. They aren’t search­ing for new writ­ers or new ideas. They will only con­sid­er some­thing after some oth­er Quak­er insti­tu­tion has rec­og­nized it, a Catch-22 sit­u­a­tion that the mil­i­tary refers to as “inces­tu­ous amplification.” 

Any project out­side of the estab­lished recog­ni­tion zone is invis­i­ble. Even ones that have become dom­i­nant in their field are acknowl­edged only begrudg­ing­ly. In the last ten years, Quak​er​.org has done more for out­reach than just about any institutionally-sponsored pro­gram or com­mit­tee. Yet I know of estab­lish­ment Quak­ers who still think of it as an upstart, and tru­ly believe their put­ter­ing about is more impor­tant, sim­ply because their orga­ni­za­tion has been around longer. In truth, many Quak­er web­sites get so lit­tle traf­fic as to be next to non-existent.

The insid­er’s pri­ma­ry point of ref­er­ence is insti­tu­tions. Pow­er comes from know­ing how ideas, pro­pos­als and deci­sions flow through these orga­ni­za­tions. A good idea is only good if it’s made by the right per­son and vet­ted by the right small group first. Some­times I’ll hear of the gos­sip of some group schem­ing with­in some Quak­er insti­tu­tion and I always have to laugh: like, WHO CARES? It’s a small bunch of peo­ple scram­bling over crumbs while the world ignores them. There’s a whole oth­er world of Friends and seek­ers out there build­ing their own cul­ture and con­nec­tions, or try­ing to.

This Quak­er Ranter site is pri­mar­i­ly for those still curi­ous, for those still inter­est­ing in build­ing some­thing real, for those want­i­ng engag­ing con­ver­sa­tion and sto­ries. I actu­al­ly pre­fer it to be a lit­tle bit “under­ground,” unknown or for­got­ten by insti­tu­tion­al­ists, for I think there’s dis­cus­sions we need to have and the open inter­net is a good place for that.


More

I’ll be edit­ing and adding to this post over time as I see more pat­terns of site use. I’m curi­ous if oth­ers have seen sur­pris­ing pat­terns of inter­net use. Oh, and by the way I should cop to being a Quak­er insid­er myself, though I always try to keep the big pic­ture (i.e., God and the Spir­it’s com­mands) foremost.

13 thoughts on “How Insiders and Seekers Use the Quaker Net

  1. Hi. You have a great blog going here. I am inter­est­ed in Quak­erism, but can­not make it to meet­ings so I’m hap­py to find a good Friend­ly blog to read. 🙂 By the way, I added you to my blogroll, ok?

  2. Hey Mar­tin,
    First, I hope you know but it’s worth repeat­ing that I’m a big fan of yours. I great­ly appre­ci­ate all you do in your day job, and when I stum­ble across reminders of how much else you do with the rest of your time, I’m even more grate­ful. I did not know until just now about quak​erquak​er​.org, and it seems like a great idea. I hope I can find time to spend more time there. (I hope oth­er FGC Advance­ment and Out­reach com­mit­tee mem­bers would like to know about the Out­reach sec­tion. So I hope we will let them know about it. Mmm? A link from the A&O page perhaps?)
    Sec­ond, regard­ing your post about insid­ers vs. seek­ers using the net, you ask some very inter­est­ing ques­tions. And it exem­pli­fies one of the things I appre­ci­ate about your labors so much. Your study of this sort of thing is very valu­able, and the insights you draw from these efforts are very helpful.
    Third, how­ev­er, I find myself stum­bling a bit over your con­clu­sions, which I trust are pre­lim­i­nary. It’s a wor­thy enough the­sis, and you may be right. But there’s a tinge of judg­men­tal­ism there, which by itself is fine in this con­text, but I’m not sure your judg­ments are war­rant­ed. Are there alter­na­tive expla­na­tions? So, let me pose some queries.
    1) Pure­ly out of curios­i­ty… how exact­ly do you decide who is an insid­er and who is a seek­er? by how they find the site? how they use it? in either case, or any oth­er, could­n’t users you put in one group actu­al­ly come from the oth­er? (or do you know who all the insid­ers are and how to iden­ti­fy them, you insid­er you? 😉 )
    2) While you can objec­tive­ly observe how rarely insid­ers stick around on a site, how can you real­ly know *why* they don’t stick around? To say they have a lack of curios­i­ty sounds like a judg­ment to me, being one who high­ly val­ues curios­i­ty. Is it pos­si­ble they have a high lev­el of curios­i­ty, but just very lit­tle time? (That would be me! But am I an insid­er? Mmm. Just in case some­one thinks I am, I just had to post a comment!!)
    3) While I have lit­tle doubt that many Quak­ers don’t use search engines much, can you real­ly con­clude that’s the rea­son for the dif­fer­ence? Is sug­gest­ing a skill defi­cien­cy on their part a put­down? Is it sim­ply pos­si­ble that for the spe­cif­ic pur­pose that brought them to the sites in ques­tion, they did not need a search engine because they knew where to look? And does your way of iden­ti­fy­ing who is an insid­er bias your obser­va­tion of how they use the site, for exam­ple if how they got there has any­thing to do with it?
    4) It is cer­tain­ly pos­si­ble that the insid­ers could think they have every­thing fig­ured out or that they could be more open to new ideas and new writ­ers. And that would be unfor­tu­nate. I very much share your con­cern about insid­ers ver­sus the rest of us (or them, as the case may be). But at the begin­ning of that para­graph, you use the word “might” but by the mid­dle you have switched to affir­ma­tive dec­la­ra­tions of what is. Is that jump­ing to a con­clu­sion? Would it be more effec­tive if left as a query rather than an accusation?
    5) By the end of your piece, has it become a rant rather than the research inquiry it start­ed as? Giv­en the name of your site espe­cial­ly, rant­i­ng is your pre­rog­a­tive. But would it be more truth­ful to make a clear­er dis­tinc­tion between what is objec­tive research and what is rant?
    I total­ly share the con­cerns you raise about insti­tu­tion­al­ism, and I encour­age you to con­tin­ue to raise them. How­ev­er, those con­cerns and con­clu­sions do not fol­low (at least clear­ly and con­vinc­ing­ly) from the analy­sis you have pre­sent­ed on web use. Might both pur­pos­es (ana­lyz­ing how the web is used and rais­ing the con­cern) be bet­ter served by main­tain­ing a clear­er dis­tinc­tion between them? Your analy­sis might be more con­vinc­ing and lead to more prac­ti­cal and effec­tive insights. And your con­cern might have greater weight if ground­ed on a more sol­id foun­da­tion of expe­ri­ence that bet­ter demon­strates the con­cern than a poten­tial­ly shaky web analy­sis in its cur­rent form.
    So, let me offer an alter­na­tive the­sis that might explain the dif­fer­ence you observe. I don’t mean to advo­cate for it but sim­ply illus­trate how the same objec­tive evi­dence could just as eas­i­ly have a dif­fer­ent expla­na­tion. Let your ongo­ing research test this the­sis as well as yours.
    Could it be that the insid­ers using the sites in ques­tion are dri­ven by a very spe­cif­ic pur­pose whle the seek­ers are in fact dri­ven by curios­i­ty? The insid­ers might be under­tak­ing a very spe­cif­ic task relat­ing to their “inside work” like doing com­mit­tee work. They might know quite specif­i­cal­ly what they are look­ing for and when they have found it, they con­tin­ue on with the task at hand. In con­trast, the very pur­pose of a seek­er is to explore.
    This alter­na­tive the­sis does not nec­es­sar­i­ly con­tra­dict your con­cern. It may in fact help make a stronger case for it. In short, do those of us who are busy with insid­er work fix­ate so much on the task at hand that we are not present to the diverse bless­ings that are there for us if we but look? Does this fix­a­tion mold our per­cep­tion of real­i­ty in a way that leaves us out of touch? That’s not real­ly dif­fer­ent from one core piece of your mes­sage, but it’s ground­ed in what you do objec­tive­ly observe. Still, it stops short of ascrib­ing caus­es for their behav­ior, such as a lack of curios­i­ty or inter­net know-how, which I sus­pect you do not know experimentally.
    Well, I real­ly was too busy to stop and share this. I real­ly do have to cut back on the com­mit­tees I’ve signed on to. It does skew my expe­ri­ence of life, and it is not sim­ple. I hope this has been of some use. Sor­ry I can’t stick around and explore your site more!
    Thanks for all you do.
    Ken

  3. Hi Ken,
    You raise good ques­tions. There’s no way to put num­bers on any of this, it’s just the accu­mu­la­tion of a mass of anec­dotes and those rare moments when I have been able to iden­ti­fy par­tic­u­lar peo­ple in the track­ing logs. None of this real­ly has to do with Quak­ers, its just the world I know well enough to make this type of observation.
    The impor­tant thing is not the thinking-out-loud details and debat­able opin­ions of a blog post but the larg­er mes­sage that the decision-makers in any media or out­reach project need to remem­ber that they are sep­a­rat­ed from their tar­get audi­ence by fair­ly sig­nif­i­cant cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences. There’s a nat­ur­al ten­den­cy for peo­ple to design a project that might appeal to them­selves. A con­stant polling and double-checking of assump­tions make it more like­ly our work will reach out further.
    In web design we have the addi­tion­al sit­u­a­tion in which even a very logically-designed web­site might not get used in the way we expect­ed it. One way to ques­tion our­selves is to look to see how sites are actu­al­ly being used and to draw any infer­ences we can from the data.
    I know that there are peo­ple who rarely use search engines – don’t think to – where­as I must run three dozen google search­es a day. That’s going to give one a rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence of the inter­net. The expe­ri­ence is also going to be dif­fer­ent for those who do a lot of Instant Mes­sag­ing; or those whose pri­ma­ry expe­ri­ence is an inten­sive online com­mu­ni­ty like Myspace; or those whose inter­net use is pri­mar­i­ly made up of email or music down­load­ing. I could write more but I have to go catch a train. Thanks for com­ment­ing in.

  4. I have won­dered at var­i­ous times if “Quak­er insti­tu­tion” is (or should be) an oxy­moron. Can Seek­ers of Truth, believ­ers in Con­tin­u­ing Rev­e­la­tion, etc. be con­tent with some­thing that almost by def­i­n­i­tion is intend­ed to main­tain some­thing in place.

    1. There’s noth­ing nec­es­sar­i­ly wrong with main­tain­ing some­thing in place.
      “Con­tin­u­al Rev­e­la­tion” should­n’t be per­mis­sion to just go wher­ev­er we want
      with this Quak­er tra­di­tion. But yes, we need to be con­scious about what
      tools we use to pro­vide that con­ti­nu­ity. Once insti­tu­tion­al­ism sets in, a
      bureau­cra­cy’s mis­sion often becomes it’s own main­te­nance and growth.

      One of the neat­est thing about the web is that a bunch of motivated
      vol­un­teers can orga­nize the kind of com­mu­ni­ca­tion net­work that would have
      required a lot of mon­ey and infra­struc­ture even twen­ty years ago.
      Hour-for-hour and dollar-for-dollar, what I do with Quak­er Ranter and
      Quak­erQuak­er is more effec­tive that any of the work I did as a professional
      Friend.

      1. Mar­tin,
        I com­plete­ly agree with you that Quak­er tra­di­tion should­n’t be blanket
        per­mis­sion. My father was and I have been a pas­tor with­in FUM. I have also
        worked with EFI indi­vid­u­als. My expe­ri­ence is that the “Fun­da­men­tal­ist” side
        of Quak­erism seems to rely too exten­sive­ly on lit­er­al­ism and stuck with a
        very exclu­sive and nar­row view of “Chris­tian­i­ty.” My expe­ri­ence with
        “lib­er­al” Quak­ers (with whom I have come to more close­ly iden­ti­fy with in
        the past few decades) have lost a great deal of the Friends Tra­di­tion. The
        inclu­sive­ness that seems to be an under­ly­ing assump­tion is tak­en to the
        point of not just tol­er­ance but accep­tance of a very wide belief base that
        dilutes the pow­er of “Friends Expe­ri­ence.” (Obvi­ous­ly biased. but I think
        right­ful­ly so, and hope­ful­ly not PRE­judge­men­tal) The cel­e­bra­tion of
        diver­si­ty and tolerance/love of ene­my does not mean agree­ment with their
        beliefs or actions but accep­tance of their worth and val­ue as hav­ing that of
        God with­in them.

        My per­son­al belief is that the “2” sides have con­tin­ued to push each other
        fur­ther apart and thus fur­ther from the Cen­ter. (You know that to get 3
        opin­ions you need ask only 2 Quakers.)

        Thanks for your thought­ful response.

        In Peace and Friendship,

        Tom Smith

  5. well, I’m a Cana­di­an Quak­er. I just post­ed for the first time to Quak­er Dhar­ma, and look for 2009 post­ings there but see none. Quak­er out­reach seems to be dying, as are so many of our Meet­ings here. Old­er and old­er we get, with lit­tle to encour­age Seek­ers, includ­ing that we don’t par­tic­i­pate in pub­lic forums any more, may march in the occa­sion­al protest, and gen­er­al­ly go to Meet­ings, go home, do noth­ing to seek Seek­ers. What a shame! And what a betray­al of the val­ues and prac­tices so long prac­tised by Quak­ers since Fox et al. 

    I’m dead keen on out­reach, and see that reju­ve­na­tion comes with Seek­ers being encour­aged to come, to stay, to active­ly join with us so that Meetins are enlivened, lives are enriched, and pos­i­tive change is encouraged. 

    I see you have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Quak­er Dhar­ma site. What’s hap­pened to it, do you know? Diana in Vic­to­ria BC

    1. Hi Diana: Quak­er Dhar­ma has nev­er been a very active blog. It’s author Bar­ry Cross­no is now devel­op­ment direc­tor at the Pen­dle Hill Cen­ter near Philadel­phia. I’d guess that out­reach is still a keen con­cern of his, but he’s not pur­su­ing it online.

      If you fol­low the links on this site you’ll see I’ve been blog­ging about out­reach for years and so have many oth­ers. It’s inter­est­ing for me to reread this post from 2004. At that point I was an pro­fes­sion­al Friend (web­mas­ter for Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence) with a blog on the side. A year lat­er I was pro­mot­ed to Advance­ment and Out­reach Coor­di­na­tor for FGC and a year lat­er let go for rea­sons that are long-winded and not real­ly the “real rea­sons” any­way. Since then a lot of mon­ey has been spent on out­reach but it’s hard to see what’s come of it.

      A lot of us are work­ing on this over at http://​www​.quak​erquak​er​.org. Please come join. It’s unof­fi­cial, unfund­ed, all-volunteer self-organized out­reach. There’s an “Out­reach and Media” group for talk­ing about out­reach, but the whole site is real­ly about shar­ing the Good News Friends have with the world. 

      There are a lot of cool out­reach efforts. Quak​er​in​fo​.org is won­der­ful. I’ve been work­ing with FWC​CAmer​i​c​as​.org over the last few months to put togeth­er a great inter­ac­tive map of Friends in the US and Cana­da which we launched just yes­ter­day. Evan­gel­i­cal Friends at Bar​clay​press​.com are doing good work. There is real inter­est out there, not as wide­spread as it should be and some­times more fund-driven that real­ly outreach-driven. But let’s see what we can do!

  6. I’m not sure about the insid­ers vs seek­ers dichotomy…Because I’m an active mem­ber of a Friends meet­ing and I’m will­ing to put up with some­times annoy­ing Friends and try to build our in-person com­mu­ni­ty often against dif­fi­cult odds and in spite of very stress­ful job duties, does that make me an “insid­er”?

    You know, it’s hap­pened that I’ve respond­ed to ques­tions on Quak­erQuak­er and the dia­log has end­ed there. I final­ly came to the con­clu­sion that I was­n’t an online insider 🙂 

    BTW, although I can’t do the exten­sive online stuff you do, I think I know how to use search engines …I teach online research to col­lege students.
    –Bar­bara

    1. Hi Barb: this post is over five years old. I was think­ing of the Friends who had been weighty com­mit­tee Friends for decades and seemed to spend much of their time with those who had also been weighty com­mit­tee Friends for decades. Some of the dynam­ics of online use have shift­ed since then. For one thing we have a half-generation that has come in through the internet. 

      I know you cer­tain­ly know how to use search engines! The inter­nal dis­cus­sion at Quak­erQuak­er are always a lit­tle fun­ny. I often don’t get much out of them myself. My main con­cern is still the main blog feed – the edi­tor’s picks.

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