The main strategy is/was to maintain an ongoing conversation across the journals to connect people at different stages. The biggest problem in that regard is if this conversation dies out because a) journals no longer get updated; b) journals get deleted (there's still value for people reading the archives); or c) journals turn into summaries of discussion that has concluded elsewhere.
Add: Also, a historical problem has been that many kind of fade away from the forums once they hit FI. Maintaining journals post-FIRE also helps.
Support strategies to that effect was to maintain separate discussions that would keep the "old forumites" who have already gone through the process coming back and occasionally commenting on the journals. This used to be done via the political forum, but ultimately the polarization became too destructive when each political spat would cause 1-2 people to stop journaling and leave the forum. ERE2 and the fixit type logs kinda substitute in for that now but they don't attract as many old forumites as the politics used to do.
"Theory without practice is empty; practice without theory is blind."
The active process is to try to maintain some kind of coexistence between those who are interested in theory and those who are interested in practice. A lot of those who are interested in the theory have already gone through all the practice. For example, I have personally little interest in the journals that mainly cover technical details like budgets and savings rates. Been there done that. If that was all the forum did, I'd stop going here. Same reason I don't hang out on reddit on the MMM forums. I come here for the other stuff. Basically, the opposite of Scott2's comments.
There has been a lot of talk about subjective and intersubjective/cultural understanding on the forum over the past few years. It doesn't really relate to the objective individual journey towards ERE which is mostly about learning varies techniques and tools. The "inner work" is important for what to do after FIRE or simply how to be at peace with oneself and the world in general. Previously many people we reach FIRE or ERE and proceed to not really know what to do with their lives. They'd spend a year in Europe only to return to their old career because that's the only life script they ever knew or ever could create. In terms of life scripts, the majority is still just Copying or Comparing from their parents, family, or maybe college/career. In that regard, it is also important for society's collective journey towards ERE... insofar the FIRE movement ever breaks beyond 0.5% of the population. Right now it appeals mostly to the culture of STEM professionals. It would be nice if we could figure out how to appeal to other people and not just software engineers.jennypenny wrote: ↑Sat Nov 26, 2022 7:08 amThe past couple of years though, the forum is using a lot of shorthand that IMO doesn't directly relate to the ERE journey and it makes it really difficult to follow conversations. I am familiar with my own MBTI but not other types, or the car metaphor (I have read about them but not committed them to memory). Same with all the SD color-coding ... read about them but that's the extent of my interest. The shorthand is useful during discussions specifically of those topics, but now it's used all the time in other threads that have nothing to do with them. It's really pervasive and I have no interest in learning them or posting an SD color chart over my desk just to be able to understand ERE threads.
All the typing vernacular is just learning new tools to map out this understanding or search. So learning SD colors is no different than learning the names and rudimentary cultures of different countries or parties when discussing politics. I find it useful because I prefer to take the 50000 feet. I know, from my maps, that those who lean more towards feelings and postmodernism would rather have a human2human conversation and connect on an emotional level. I'm basically using it to try to understand where other people are coming from and where they might go in the context of ERE. This is a fairly specialized objective ... many will only be interested in understanding themselves yet many will not find that all that relevant either ("Why do I need to psychoanalyze myself?!") or simply disagree with the methods.