Hello, everyone! I'd come by to say hi on another thread -- and congrats on keeping this community going for two decades.
Jasper mentioned there was an existential debate going on here, and invited me to offer my opinion as ex-officio 'Imperatrix' and founder... having missed all the intervening growth, drama and events since 2007 when I 'retired.'
Standalone forums like this will always serve a purpose that Facebook and other feed-driven, timeline-based social media never will -- and never could.
Here, what we do "echoes in eternity" -- or at least as long as Jasper and our colleagues see fit to pay for its hosting and keep it a well-tended garden, still growing -- even if at a slower rate than at inception (in the heady days of 2000's 'Gladiator' film, when hundreds if not thousands were inspired to join RAT to learn more about the 'lost world' of Rome).
In the beginning, I had only envisioned RAT as having interest to academics, to scholars looking to compare notes over archaeological or textual evidence. I wanted to find a way to bridge the gap between the amateur Roman scholar (which I was) and the professional, degreed, tenured Roman scholar, because I saw that if the field was ever to grow it would need to stay relevant -- and if possible, to be global.
At the time (2000) I was lucky enough to live in Europe and see with my own eyes what was left of Rome, but I knew that Roman enthusiasts were all over the world and I remembered how frustrated I had felt to know that an ocean divided me so thoroughly from them, from their remains and their museums and the universities where I might study them.
So RomanArmyTalk, in its earliest incarnation, was simply an effort to bring people together to study and share what they knew about Rome, outside of the academic 'ivory tower' that not everyone who wished could enter. I never imagined RAT would be popular, nor influential, let alone become a generational inspiration to undertake formal Classics studies.
The reenactors recruited in 2000 by Ridley Scott ;-) were responsible for most of RAT's phenomenal growth -- and I was quite unsure about it initially, as the sheer 'fanboyism' might be a turnoff to the kind of Serious Academics
I was trying to attract.
I needn't have worried so much, but there was definitely a bit of a culture-clash between those of us who considered ourselves 'academic' Romanists and those who wanted to BE Romans. I tried to welcome everyone under a big tent philosophy, because I believed there was a place for reenactment -- I felt that practical, experimental archaeology (a la Marcus Junkelmann et al) had its own inherent value, and reenactors would be an important part of that.
Also, it seemed important to steer new reenactors toward the most accurate equipment, so providing a space for that knowledge-transfer to happen (mainly from veteran European reenactors to fresh, enthusiastic North American reenactors) quickly became co-equal to making a *dedicated* specialist space for theoretical, academic discussion.
But RAT was not a recreational reenactment forum at heart, but a specialized, thematically-sorted and searchable resource, one assembled collectively for study and research of the Roman world, with special focus on res militares.
And so it remains, and so (I think) it should remain. Because RAT was never founded to be popular, let alone viral -- but to be useful, and to be enduring.
I was not a fan of creating a Facebook version of RAT, and although it wasn't my call at the time, I wouldn't have done it. Because as we've since learned, Facebook can destroy whatever is created on its servers: without warning, without cause, without recourse.
We don't own anything we post on Facebook -- and just as it was on Ezboard, we exist on FB only at the whim of the platform provider. We cannot preserve, nor protect, what we put on third-party social media. But as a standalone self-hosted forum, we can do that -- and more.
But RAT cannot be all things to all people. To retain its value as a research resource and a topical discussion space, RAT must be centered on Rome, with a corollary inclusion of those cultures intrinsically relevant to the Roman era. Trying to find Rome in a 'Historical Army Talk' would be too much work, a needle in a haystack of miles and millenia.
Besides, who wants to start all over again? I haven't the passion for military history generally that I do for Rome, and I wouldn't imagine a generalist ethos is what motivates the admins or mod staff, either.
So I would suggest that we keep our content and philosophy very much as they have ever been -- thematic and well-moderated -- and if RAT's pure popularity has diminished somewhat against the competition of instant 'social' gratification, so be it! That was not why RAT was founded, nor why it has retained its relevance, nor what will keep it alive for years to come.
There are now 20 years of scholarship recorded in these pages -- much of it amateur, but all of it inspirational. If we want Roman Military Studies to survive in a world where Postmodern academic trends now threaten a wholescale abandonment of traditional Classics, RAT must continue its foundational purpose -- to be first a collection point of specialist knowledge to discuss and secondly a place for its knowledge-keepers to find community with the like-minded.
I hope this helps. If we were to reform anything, I'd start with Facebook RAT -- which needs IMO to point here and only here. Standalone RAT needs no competition with lookalikes. To that end, it may ultimately be necessary to inactivate RAT on Facebook, since it does outcompete the 'real RAT' on Google.
BTW, Jasper, Tapatalk posts do sometimes pop up in my old email account, so let's talk about pulling that legacy archictecture down in PM. Not sure how to go about it, but it needs doing if Google search results for RAT are to be improved.
~Jenny
P.S. I would also add that I'm very touched by the comment that an entire generation of young Classics scholars have been inspired to enter academia because of RomanArmyTalk. Thank you. The creative effort was always worth it, but never more so than to know that what we've done here has changed lives.
I also appreciate the apt comparison with a medieval monastery -- our mission also being the growth of knowledge and the preservation of human heritage.
So very proud of you all!
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