Why a network and not a directory

Every few years somebody builds a list of the diaspora. They all die the same way.

Every few years somebody builds a directory of the Lebanese diaspora. A list of names, cities and professions. They all die, and they die for the same reason.

A directory answers who is out there. Nobody actually needs that answered. What people need answered is who will pick up.

Those are entirely different problems. The first is a database. The second is a standard, maintained by somebody, about who gets in and what is expected once they are.

So this is not going to be a directory with ten thousand names in it. It is going to be smaller than that and slower to join, because the only thing that makes a network worth anything is a member’s confidence that a stranger inside it will answer them.

That confidence is destroyed by exactly one thing: letting in people who will not. Which is why membership here is read rather than automatic, and why it will stay that way when it is inconvenient.