(First, say quick clique 3 times fast 
)
A few days ago I ranted about the 'clique' accusations that go on...and something else occurred to me: the smaller the forum, the cliquey-er the clique. Large successful boards like The TMF or Shadow Lane get accused of being 'cliquey' because of all the inside jokes and fellowship amongst the people who've taken the time to get to know one another extremely well. That closeness can upset people who feel lost in a sea of thousands and thousands of members. Meanwhile on forums that have only a fraction of the member count here, and where only a handful of those members are in any way active, I've noticed that they have the exact same types of in-jokes and friendship, but since there's only 12 of them in the first place no one feels left out. ( And if they do they'll be damned if they're going to say anything, it's not a good idea to cross those folks
) I understand the mentality of wanting to be a Big Fish in a small pond, rather than just being happy to swim with your fellow fish, so I'm definitely in favor of the other ponds and support them. Yet I admit to being fascinated with the future of the anti-clique cliques, because either their forums will grow, and they'll have the same issues with inclusiveness that any popular and successful forum ultimately has, OR they'll remain sparsely populated and become so comfortable and familiar with one another that they'll be SuperCliques, Excluding As No Group Has Excluded Before and still griping 10 yrs from now about how they can't get more than 6 people at their 'real' parties. Time will tell 
)A few days ago I ranted about the 'clique' accusations that go on...and something else occurred to me: the smaller the forum, the cliquey-er the clique. Large successful boards like The TMF or Shadow Lane get accused of being 'cliquey' because of all the inside jokes and fellowship amongst the people who've taken the time to get to know one another extremely well. That closeness can upset people who feel lost in a sea of thousands and thousands of members. Meanwhile on forums that have only a fraction of the member count here, and where only a handful of those members are in any way active, I've noticed that they have the exact same types of in-jokes and friendship, but since there's only 12 of them in the first place no one feels left out. ( And if they do they'll be damned if they're going to say anything, it's not a good idea to cross those folks
) I understand the mentality of wanting to be a Big Fish in a small pond, rather than just being happy to swim with your fellow fish, so I'm definitely in favor of the other ponds and support them. Yet I admit to being fascinated with the future of the anti-clique cliques, because either their forums will grow, and they'll have the same issues with inclusiveness that any popular and successful forum ultimately has, OR they'll remain sparsely populated and become so comfortable and familiar with one another that they'll be SuperCliques, Excluding As No Group Has Excluded Before and still griping 10 yrs from now about how they can't get more than 6 people at their 'real' parties. Time will tell 
