I’ve thought about this question for two days, and in the end I feel sure that “hardcore” and “softcore” are not the terms we want, but not sure about whether using category words for EAs is helpful or not.
People seem to self-sort pretty well even without the words. In any in-person group, even when all the people have the same official title (“member,” “parishioner,” etc), everybody knows who just shows up sometimes and who writes the newsletter, serves on all the committees, etc. Because so much of EA happens outside of face-to-face communities, perhaps we struggle more to figure out who is who.
I’ve thought about this question for two days, and in the end I feel sure that “hardcore” and “softcore” are not the terms we want, but not sure about whether using category words for EAs is helpful or not.
People seem to self-sort pretty well even without the words. In any in-person group, even when all the people have the same official title (“member,” “parishioner,” etc), everybody knows who just shows up sometimes and who writes the newsletter, serves on all the committees, etc. Because so much of EA happens outside of face-to-face communities, perhaps we struggle more to figure out who is who.