WOW!
Color me a big fat "DUH", but I'm confused. Is this not the Community Board? In a "Community" would one not expect to find many people of varying backgrounds who may or may not meet each other with varying degrees of frequency?
I know in my community, I'll visit the bank thread and run into a couple of people I know and several I don't. Same with the grocery store thread. And don't even get me started on the gas station thread!
There are people I know, who, every Friday night at 5:30, are at the BINGO thread! I choose not to participate in that particular thread because the cigarette smoke is just way too thick!
On the 4th, my community had a Frog Jumping Contest Thread for young and old! My sister went with her kids, but I tend to forget about that thread every year. They expect us to get up and be dressed with frogs in hand at 10:00am! On our day off!
Every weekday, I, along with a couple thousand other people, visit the go to work at the hospital thread. There are a lot of us, and we do share some things in common, and even an inside joke or two. Does that make us a "clique"?
In my community, I've been known to have a short conversation with someone over a topic that would probably be of little interest to more than 4 or 5 other people, but I'll invite other people to that conversation, because I'm not sure which 4 or 5 other people are the specific people who will be interested. Other times, it turns out that far, far more than 4 or 5 people are interested, and they're all still welcome to participate. But I wouldn't have known that, had I not put the topic out there for discussion. And then sometimes, I just throw out something silly on a boring day to see if anyone else is as bored as I am. But none of this is generally enough to have me "banned" from my community. Or to even have that thought enter anyone's head.
And before I paint my community as too idyllic, let me just say there are a few members of my community of whom I'm not terribly fond. Nor are they terribly fond of me. When I run into those people, say, in the church thread, or the elementary school PTA thread, we share civilities and go about our own business with grace and decorum. We do not lower ourselves to petty rudeness.
C'mon folks.... shouldn't the community board be the place where we CAN have games and clubs and exchanges and general fluff? All the other "topics" seem to have their own boards. Once you get rid of the games/clubs/exchanges/fluff, what's LEFT (for the record, I'm not seeing much at this moment)? What sort of "Community" has nothing?