My creative life is infinitely more interesting because of Yahoo Groups. It’s also more complicated. While I do enjoy participating in group projects or discussions on art with other artists around the world, I don’t much enjoy putting up with personality conflicts and personal agendas. This brings me to the topic of today’s rant: the reality of playing in groups.

Over the course of my career on the Internet, I’ve moderated countless groups, message boards and chat rooms. Some of these were purely for recreation, and some were paying positions for online companies. No matter where I’ve been, or what the topic, I am continually amazed at both the incredible amount of knowledge being passed back and forth, and the incredible stupidity that the Internet seems to facilitate.

I’ve moderated two types of groups on Yahoo. The first is your basic open admission group: anyone who clicks the button is admitted immediately. In general, as long as members abide by a few minimal rules dealing with the subject matter and tone of their posts, they can stay as long as they like.

The other type of group I’ve moderated is not open admission. In several cases, these groups have had big fat notices on the main page saying not to use the Join Group button, because admission to that group is by invitation and reccomendation only. In an invitation only group, I take suggestions from current group members about folks they’ve worked with who are responsible and creative, and if I haven’t heard anything bad about their work habits, I issue an invitation.

Despite the big notices on the group’s main page, I get people clicking the Join Group button for these lists at least once a week. The applicant is automatically sent a message stating the same thing that’s on our front door—that admission to the group is by invitation and reccomendation only. For this, I take a lot of crap.

I started doing private groups for a couple of reasons. First, I like swapping work with like-minded artists. I host a ton of altered book round robins. Sometimes, I post calls for players to the AB list—and with over 5,500 members, it’s a gamble doing that. I might get a group of players who are wonderful, who mail on time, who work well with others, and who do what is expected. I might end up with a bunch of idiots who think that “no rules” in altered books means not having to mail according to a schedule, not having to communicate with other players, and sometimes even keeping every book that’s mailed to them. As a host, that sort of behavior in a player is stressful for me, and miserable for the group as a whole—hence, smaller, by invitation only round robin groups seem to work better for me. For a while, I did this by posting certain RR calls to a list of addresses I’d assembled. At one point, I joined up with a couple of other RR hosts who had the same concerns I did, and I formed a private group so we could pool our lists of great players.

People are weird about groups. They seem to think that either they should all be open to everyone, or that nobody has any right to create a group that excludes them.

The simple fact in this particular case is that there are those of us with round robin experience who prefer to work a certain way, and at a certain pace. Slowly but surely, we identify each other, and gravitate together. It’s that simple. There’s no big altered book snob conspiracy afoot. When the group was running, if you worked with a member in a project, and she thought you were a good egg, she’d probably reccomend you for membership. If she thought you were a dolt, probably not.

Now, in the case of my current private group, ARTdecos, it also has a disclaimer on the front door, saying that for the most part, members are over 25 and out of school, and that if you’re interested in joining, you should not click the Join Group button unless you can immediately provide links to your work. I posted both of those things because I was getting a ton of applications from teenagers with little creative experience who would not fit well into this particular group, and from people who just couldn’t provide a single example of their work—they wanted me to just let them in, sight unseen. This group is clearly labelled as being for established artists—folks who are already working at a certain creative level and who have experience in certain types of artwork. The people we accept as new members are mostly gathered from other types of groups—one of us sees their work, and determines that their style and work habits will fit in well with the rest of the current members, and then I get in touch with them.

This particular group still gets an application per day. Almost all of them are from people who either don’t meet the plainly stated age requirement, or who cannot provide a single example of their work, despite the fact that I tell them not to apply until they can. I usually wait a couple of days, receive no response from the automatic message that’s issued when they click the Join Group button asking them to provide their web site or photo album links, and then remove them from the pending member list, which sends them another message giving information about some open admission groups on the topic, and apologizing for not being able to admit them.

Again, I take a load of crap for even having created this group. Even though the requirements are clearly stated on the group’s main page, I take abuse for not admitting everyone who applies. I get “I’m so sorry I’m not good enough for your snotty group” messages on a regular basis. This really brings me down.

Here’s the deal: people like to play in different ways. Thanks to Yahoo, we all have a variety of options open to us. The key to this whole system is to find the playground that’s right for you. Kicking and screaming about not being admitted to a group won’t change anything—well, actually, it will give you a reputation of being a pain in the neck, which isn’t something that any group moderator wants to deal with.

If you apply to a private art group and aren’t admitted, for whatever reason—find another one. Or start your own. That’s exactly what I’ve done. I couldn’t find a group of artists to play with, and terms I could live with, so I created my own groups. I hunted up people who were already doing interesting artwork, told them about what I was doing, and lo and behold, created groups that I love working with. You can do that, too. It takes time, some work, and a lot of patience, but it can be done.

Instead of stewing about not being allowed to play, build your own playground!