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Technology

Rethinking the Virtual Community: Part Four 88

Posted by JonKatz from the -reinventing-cyberville-your-chance dept.
Early visions of the Virtual Community haven't come to pass for a variety of reasons. The idea is powerful and enduring, but is in need of reconception and redesign. VC's of the future may have to draw from the backyard fence, the tavern and town hall, water cooler, and the old-fashioned office. Is the Virtual Community a real possibility? Can it survive the growth, size and commercialization of the Net, as well as flamers, thieves, vandals, fakers and digital anarchy? What ought to be the responsibilities of members? How would you design or redesign it?
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Part Four: Redesigning the Virtual Community More

Part Four: Redesigning the Virtual Community

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  • Plenty of us already have our own communities. They're here. There's no world-wide community on the web just as there isn't one in the real world. You can't manage that many people in one "place."

    LambdaMOO [mud.org], Cybersphere [vv.com] Kingfox has mentioned in every one of the parts of this discussion ;), the small (but personally beloved) Ghostwheel [fazigu.org], the aforementioned FurryMUCK. All have been around for almost ten years!

    We've got our communities. Where've you been?

    --
  • BUT, I'd like to point out that the original NeverWinter Nights community "just happened." In other words, it went in a direction that no-one planned for. And re-creating the environment simply enabled the communicty that "just happened," but had dispersed, to reconvene again.

    I don't mean to say that you can't affect the community that's out there, but I tend to think that changes need to be made in _response_ to what people are doing, not in _anticipation_ to what someone thinks they will do. Jon Katz seems to be suggesting that people need to map out what a community will be before the community gets there, which I think is somewhat silly.

    A planned community is not a community, it's a barracks.

  • Sorry, you can't plan a real community (Score:4)

    by brennanw ( 5761 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @06:08AM (#1406897) Homepage Journal
    You can plan an army. You can plan a cult. You can plan a corporate environment. You can't plan a community.

    A community is the sum of the myriad of individuals, with all their quirks and idiosyncrasies, who interact with each other in the same space, real or virtual. These things happen, they can't be planned, they can't be regulated and remain a community. Communities are not cut and dry things, they just happen. It's messy.

    The reason why communities fall apart is because the people who participate in them stop participating. Perhaps the environment within the community has changed, and the people who add value to it no longer wish to participate. Perhaps they no longer have the time to do so. Who knows? But you can't just go out there and plan a community.
  • many virtual communities, Quake, IRC channels, etc are (in my experience) a collection of people who are hiding behind their computer screens and not acting the way that they would IRL. Many of them are annoying little brats online but are quiet and reserved IRL.

    it actually annoys me when they make comments like "where do you live, I will come kick your ass". I honestly doubt that many of them could or really would. If you are going to make stupid comments, do them elsewhere...

    IRC channel op's also tend to annoy me. Most of them think that they are God. They most likely don't have any power IRL and feel the need to make up for this on the Internet. Please go spend your free time doing something productive outside the "Virtual Community" rather than sitting there kick/banning people b/c they told you what everyone tells you to your face...

    This is not a flamebait or bullshit, this is my personal thoughts on my experiences w/VC's on the Internet...

    If you are one of these idiots please take note and remember that most people could care less that you have an @ or you are an Admin, or whatever. You are no better than the rest of us.

    Just my worthless .02
  • nape. The Internet is not role playing IMHO. You are there for a specific reason (whatever it is) not to be on some power trip. That is my opinion at least.
  • Virtual communities happen when like-minded people get together and care about the community.

    I'm a member of a couple of small, exclusive communities. Mostly email based and the only way to get in is if someone recommends you _and_ nobody has any objections.

    That way, we keep the yammering idiots out and we keep the group small enough to have meaningful conversations.
    _____
  • I've been reading Slashdot for years, but the only personality I know is Jon Katz.

    Have you forgotten Signal 11 already?! ;)

    I take your point. My comment was a bit tongue-in-cheek - I think one reason sites like /. work is that the anonymity doesn't matter, or is an asset, when you're discussing things you're passionate about. You can find people who'll say "yeah, I think that's cool too" or even, "no, dude, that sucks." Either of those responses can be preferable to "that's very interesting" said in baffled or bored tones, which can happen in smaller, more "real" communities, unless they're very interest-centric.

  • Well, Slashdot isn't really a community, per se. [...] There are many different purposes here, and nobody really knows each other. What if I were to post 'hey! I'm about to get married!' (I am)? Would anbody care? No. I'm a member of several REAL online communities where this isn't the case.

    You mean, when one's karma reaches 50 one hasn't attained ultimate perfection as an individual? OMG!

    But you're defining a "REAL" community as one where members care about trivialities in each other's meatspace lives, such as marriage. Heck, I have "real"-life friends with whom I never really discuss such stuff. Babies? Marriage? Death in the family? It's all irrelevant! The question is, how are we going to implement the next cool idea???

    BTW, best wishes for your impending marriage! ;^)

  • If Katz reads our comments, it's only to calculate how best to make his next piece annoy us, so we'll discuss it, so more banners will get loaded. The ad revenue must flow!

    Katz is a Wired-mag reject - frightening thought, but the reality of it doesn't disappoint - who washed up on the shores of Slashdot. Like all "writers" paid to be controversial in newspapers, magazines and on websites, he parades his own half-baked opinions as though they were established facts, the results of years of diligent study. It's a classic technique that still suckers people. It's the very definition of "troll".

    So why am I here? Ah, but I have a mission: to spread the word to those who mistake Katz's drivel as a serious attempt at discourse. Be warned: that way lies madness!!!

    ;^)

  • I think the virtual community that Neal Stephenson illustrated in Snow Crash was pretty cool. Totally off the wall for current technology due to bandwidth and processing power restrictions but was definetly something worth working towards.

    It would take too long to explain exactly what he described. Those who have read the book know what I mean. Those who haven't should get a copy of it
  • Check out the following books:

    Fair warning, I am an Amazon affiliate, and will get a vig if you buy the books after following the links. Feel free to circumvent this if you wish.

    Online Communities: Designing Usability and Supporting Sociability [amazon.com]

    Community Building on the Web : Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities [amazon.com]

    --
  • flamers, thieves, vandals, fakers are problems only as long as they cannot be identified. If they can be identified their careers tend to be short. Of course, universal identification leads to its own problems.

    While no one likes the thought of people keeping tabs on them no one likes to be sabotaged either. So it's a balance. Enough anonimity so that you don't lose your job or access to society for expressing unpopular views. Enough tracability so that if you do damage something or someone you can be tracked down. Kuro5hin comes to mind.

    Well, we don't trust our governments, our corporations or our neighbours. So do we trust anyone to hold the keys to our identities - some would already argue that we've already lost control of that. But with no control anyone can be anyone else. Solutions anyone?

    As for General Anarchy; that's not necessarily a bad thing. Not necessarily good either.

    *sigh* IMHO, as per
    J:)
  • ...I'm always hoping my pre-IPO meal ticket's not going to dry up.

    Ba-dump-bump CHING!

  • usually, i see katz spewage, and i need to settle back for a nice, long, deep read, and then ask myself "what the fuck was jon smoking when he wrote this, and he must've given some to rob to let him publish this shit online" ... but this time...

    there isnt even a waste of electrons to complain about... its short... and hey...

    to paraphrase the old guys from the Muppets in the Muppet Christmas Carl:
    It was stupid!
    It was pointless!
    ... it was short ?!??
    We LOVED IT!!!


    tagline

  • i wonder if we could add katzism's to the lameness filter...

    "Too many uses of the word 'luddite' submission denied"

    heh...


    tagline

  • thats it? (Score:3)

    by EnderWiggnz ( 39214 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @05:51AM (#1406910)
    thats all of the katz article?

    BRAVO!!! BEST EVER!!!
    tagline

  • You mean... there are other people on the internet?? I just thought you were all well-written IRC bots.

  • The mechanism by which real communities were historically moulded from raping, pillaging hordes into the polite and modernised societies which many parts of the world is largely that of an internalisation of the power systems - self-discipline to social norms in other words.

    Originally, as noted, there were no rules in society. If you wanted to do something, you did it and didn't care about consequences to anyone else but you. The only way to get anyone to obey was through a range of vicious threats - the medieval times were full of them.

    However, once you persuade a community to self-moderate, (and the meta-moderation here is quite similar), such draconian measures just aren't necessary. Few will even think of significantly stepping out of line. Fewer still will actually do so. And when that self-moderation happens internally within each member, destructive behaviour is very rare indeed.

    Some communities do operate like this - evolt.org [evolt.org] is one of them. Evolt members do enforce community norms without admin intervention - for a community of 3,000 self-opinionated web developers like me, to not to have a flamewar for months at a time is almost unheard of. And the last few times that someone's ripped off our (now former) design, it's been members of the community who have pointed it out and sent private 'cease and desist' notices.

    If you want more of the theory behind this, have a look at Foucault's Discipline and Punish [amazon.co.uk].

    Fair warning - Amazon Associates apply. Circumvent if you feel that way

  • > There've been HOW many comments saying he's wrong?

    Are you suggesting that the number of people saying or doing something imply whether it is more or less right?
    (Hmm, wow, that means macdonalds makes the best food, and Beos is "wrong" because most of my friends tell me windows is better)

    Assuming the answer is yes above, meaning that Katz is "wrong" in "our" view, does that mean he should cease to voice his opinion?

    > They exist, they're hard to find - AND WE LIKE IT THAT WAY

    Can you please explain exactly who "WE" is in the above statement? It sounds like a crowd of bullys to me.

    > Things start to suck when they get crowded.

    Yes, but thats not a problem, it's a symptom of one. And one that I believe you and I and many other are part of. The problem is people's intolerence to other people's different views. You see views you don't like (those of Katz) and you immediately attack them. It's exactly the same when the "morons" you describe see views that they don't like on slashdot, so rather than listen and discuss, they just attack the whole thing in the form of hot grits and goatse.cx links.

    The solution is not for one or more people to shut up. Far from it. The solution is education. Each individual must learn to tolerate and respect the views of other no matter how stringly they disagree. Only then might they begin to believe that they may be afforded the same in return.

  • > Katz should have at LEAST responded to the allegations
    Of course. I think i responded to something slightly different to what you meant.

    I think we seem to agree on what we want actaully. We're probably just heading toward it from different directions.

    I want exactly the same people gone that you do. The question is how best to get rid of them? Is it to remove them somehow (ie, tell them "get out") Or to try to enlighten them (ie, tell them "listen or you won't be listened to - or get out!"

    The thing is though, if you believe the latter is best, as I do, you might find as I have, that it's most effective if you welcome those types of people into the kinds of situations in which you will have the most to learn from each other. Often this can be your "private space"

    I fully appreciate your not wanting to invite ppl info your private space, but I guess I might just be a bit different there. I sometimes find conversation can get dull if everyone agrees too often, but maybe I'm a bit wierd. (well, I'm definitely a bit wierd, but not neccesarily for that reason)
  • Spot on. These sort of people should work on developing their off-line personalities rather than playing games. If anything, this is going to make them even more confused about who they really are and less likely to become a rounded human being. I also think that it's a fairly unhealthy thing to be developing different personas no matter what the circumstances.
  • I think some of the dissapointment related to virtual communities comes from people who thought that they would somehow replace or improve upon real world communities. Its just not going to happen. Communities, whether it be tthe local tavern, your college frat, or a MUD, are still composed of people, with all the frailities, egos'and problems associated with any group of people.

    FWIW, I've been part of a virtual commuity for about 7 years. Its a listserv - plain ole ASCII text, with probably a few hundred subscribers. Many members of the list have been there as long or longer than me, and many of the group have met in person when they were in town on business or vacation, etc.
  • Well, it's not all that different from meatworld communities, i think. It's pretty easy to make a group devoted to some specific purpose, such as, say, the boy scouts, or online, transformers rpgs. Membership to such groups is self selecting- either you've got an interest in it or you don't, so there isnt much in the way of trolls. Communities with more generic aims, such as a town or the 'generic' virtual community, or ones that generate large interest, like /., are just going to have stupid people and trolls and whatnot no matter what you do. The meatworld deals with this with laws and police and ridiculous social structures, which is why meatworld communities tend to be boring as hell.

    conclusion: communities just arent going to become utopias. especially if the only thing you change about them is putting them on the internet.
  • I'm a big fan of some of the things you do Jon, but this just seems like

    Yet Another Long Winded Jon Katz Article

    I know this one wasn't a long one in number of words, but I find myself getting tired just reading the first two sentences. Am I alone in this feeling?
  • One of the funniest Katz-hating posts in a while.
  • Warning, do not click on his link, it will mess up your browser window.
  • I think virtual communities will survive the growth of homosexuality on the internet.
  • You are POSTING to a virtual community right now JonKatz. DUH.

    Another example of MANY successful virtual communities is IRC. There are thousands of channels each with their own specific topic and personality. Regulars are very common in these channels and are accompanied by web sites with more information, and sometimes even file servers.

    MUDs/MUSHs/MUCKs are another good example. Slashdot is an excellent example!

    What JonWhatBSShallIPostTodayKatz and others are probably seeing is Virtual communities crumbling because their members leave when they get bored, annoyed, angry, or whatever. This happens a lot on IRC due to the political nature of being what they call an Op, or channel operator. The fact that they existed for an extended period of time means that they were a success, not a failure!!

    If you are thinking that a successful community is one that starts up and remains in existance until the end of time, you are wrong. Now in Darwinian terms yes, the community didn't survive so social forces made it collapse and it failed. True, but this and other articles attempts to paint the picture that virtual communities never get off the ground. That could not be further from the truth.

    Virtual Communities are just like real ones. They just happen to be thousands of times more volatile. If you don't like your residential community, you have to sell your house, find a new one, make sure it doesn't affect your job or your kids or your wife. If you don't like a virtual community, you close the window and open a new one! There are no barriers to exit a virtual community other than those imposed by the person themself.

    This means Virtual Communities can rise and fall at the drop of a hat if they don't attract new people. I see this happen all the time. I'm an avid IRC user and half the "virtual communities" I've been a part of have collapsed because others left and no one knew came to fill in those gaps. Many people simply remain in a permanent nomadic state, hopping from channel to channel every few months.

    Now that I've posted that, I'm finally doing what I'm pledging to do, put JonKatz on my freakin ignore list he never knows what he's talking about.
  • Aw, now you made me break out the HTML. DAMMIT! I wanted to be lazy!

    Are you suggesting that the number of people saying or doing something imply whether it is more or less right?

    Nope. I'm saying that Katz should have at LEAST responded to the allegations that he was wrong, just like you are doing to me, and I am doing to you.

    The solution is not for one or more people to shut up. Far from it. The solution is education. Each individual must learn to tolerate and respect the views of other no matter how stringly they disagree. Only then might they begin to believe that they may be afforded the same in return.

    Tolerate, respect - yes.
    Welcome into my private space where I can relax and enjoy the company of people who share my views on things? NO!
    I'm not talking about excluding people whose views differ mine. I'm talking about excluding people who REFUSE to learn the rules. People who refuse to type properly (a specific rule in the commuinty I'm in). People who flame, use allcaps, or just plain act like ignormamsus without any want or desire to change.
    The people I want gone are the people who, instead of reasonably discussing the views that don't like, just post hot grits and Natalie Portman posts. The VERY problem you are talking about.
    A communist who thinks that capaltisism is bad who is willing to talk about it, I can deal with.
    A capaltist who spraypaints "Die COMMIE!" on the wall of the Kremlin I can't.


    Frito - Grouch, elisits and capaltist.

    Poor little no puppy toe!

  • Does he EVEN read our comments? (Score:3)

    by Karen_Frito ( 91720 ) <Frito_KAL&yahoo,com> on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @06:02AM (#1406924) Homepage
    I've been rather faithfully reading all of his "Virtual Community' articles - and I'm getting the distinct impression that Katz isn't even READING the comments.

    There've been HOW many comments saying he's wrong? And how many were actually written intelligently and with proofs to backup what the were saying?

    I wouldnt' change the 'virtual' community at all. Its FINE how it is. They exist, they're hard to find - AND WE LIKE IT THAT WAY!

    Sheesh. Noone wants half a billion teenagers invading their personal space. Things start to suck when they get crowded.

    This is WHY slashdot has to use moderation. ITs WHY we've got Natalie Portman-hot grits-naked AND fearless troll posts.

    Its why the BBS's went down. Its why Usenet sucks sour frog ass. Its why Aol and Compuserve and Prodigy and webTV have caused the downfall of many, many intelligent forums.

    So... actually, I WOULD change something - I'd make the virtual communities even HARDER to find. I don't like crowds, I don't like morons.

    And if it means Katz is more convinced we don't exist -- GOOD. I'm more and more inclined to think he's jus a Perl Script anyway.

    Frito - Grouch, elitist, capitalist. And damn proud of it.

    Poor little no puppy toe!

  • Yes-- not that this effect doesn't happen with RL communities too. The leaders going around behaving as though they think they're God is a cause of both emigrations and revolutions.

    In my experience of VCs (specifically, talkers [dmoz.org]), both the places which underdid leadership (so randoms felt free to log in and abuse the residents, who consequently were always watching their backs) and those which overdid it (so the leaders were always coming down like a ton of bricks on the residents, who consequently were always watching their backs) were, well, causes of dissatisfaction among residents. It's an important (and difficult) balance to get right.

    (shameless plug: IMO there are communities around [snowplains.org] which achieve this balance very well :) )

  • Someone commented on here that Jon Katz is just a well written Perl Script, I tend to agree... Taco must have removed "Post Columbine" from his database. :)

    Seriously though, I'm not even sure where this comes from. I've been reading through these last four articles and it seems to me that Katz is saying that the virtual world of the net is some how superior to the real world. This could not be further from the truth.

    First of all, something that I don't think I've seen mentioned, is that no one on the Internet can ever truely be "known". Its impossible to really know a person unless you see them in real life situations. I don't think that's possible in IRC. Because of this it gives people a different personality online. Little dorky geeks from high school can all act real tough in chat rooms, why? Because there is no consequence for doing so other than being booted out in which case they go elsewhere because they aren't interested in community, they're interested in annoying people.

    Things like coding communities work because the people in it have a common goal, but I think there would be a lot less bickering if people actually knew each other. Even when people don't like each other, when they are face to face they are usually somewhat tactful, and that's not true online.

    I'm not really sure what Jon wants when it comes to a virtual community, I like the net the way it is, but if Jon wants people to be like they are in the real world, I don't think its possible.


    Never knock on Death's door:

  • Responsability requires accountability.

    Accountabiltiy requries some form of non-forgible identity.

    These are lessons al llearned early in the online games industry. Why do you think you need to buy an Everquest box to play everquest? for the revenue? Not particualrly, the box sales rvenue is dwarfed by the monthly recurring revenue from subscription.

    The reason is attach a significant cost (you $50 to $60) to having to create a new identity. Your identity being the key-code shipepd in the box. This makes the threat of ostracism real adn th threat of ostracism is traditionally what keeps communities functioning.

    Okay, I know this reality of life won't be popular with at least one slashdot contingent, so let the flames begin.
  • I happen to be interested in the study of parliamentary procedure (you know, the Robert's Rules stuff). There's a web message board [robertsrules.com] where anyone can post questions, and those who frequently answer have formed a community. I've never met any of them IRL, but I've participated in an expanded email list and other one-to-one exchanges enough that I feel I know some of these folks. If you are really into something you naturally want to seek out others who are also. The net makes specialized communities of interest possible much more than they ever has been before. It helps with the community I mentioned that our transmission media are moderated (and the expanded email list is invitation only). I've tried "chat rooms" and IRC channels, and I found most of them incredibly annoying, because of spam, but also because so few participants had anything interesting to say. But that isn't the whole of virtual communities, I think.

  • Something to live for (Score:3)

    by vivarin ( 106778 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @05:56AM (#1406929) Homepage
    In MUDs, you have something to live for within the community -- even if it's just levels and loot.

    In some MOOs, you can construct an elaborate habitat.

    The thing I've noticed about community is that a shared purpose is required. This is different from a shared interest. A purpose means that there is a reason you are participating in a community at that moment.

    So... if we just toss a few predatory Orcs into the high school chemistry chat room, maybe it will turn into an actual community. ('Cause you can't get your homework graded until you band together to kill the Orcs?)

  • Don't forget Usenet and Yahoo! Clubs, There's a bunch of little sects out and about. There's even a clique of pretentious Web designers [astoundingweb.org].

  • Some people in real life are also forced to contend with acting in an obnoxious manner. If you want to embrace the whole escapism thing, why not do it right? Personally, I see being obnoxious as much of a shortcoming as shyness or ugliness, and it is a disability in its own right.

    If one has no friends, why not embrace the confidence of anonymity to act as someone who deserves respect, and therefore gain popularity. I'm sure most people who don't acheive such in real life still believe that if freed from their shortcomings, they could be as such.

  • This is a first, a discussion without an article... heh
  • In MUDs, you have something to live for within the community -- even if it's just levels and loot.

    In some MOOs, you can construct an elaborate habitat.

    I dunno, I think that IRC has a virtual community... there are people that meet there everyday in the same fasion as a mud and a moo, but without any sense of purpose as stated above.

    I don't think you necessarily have to turn the community into some kind of game before they become a community.

    Could you call /.'ers a community?

  • VCs are likely to be supplanted by Hybrid Communities, IMHO. HCs being a situation where you have a local cluster of people that are living in a compact area that combine their resources both in cyberspace and meatspace.

    I would assume that HCs will crystallize around people with similar interests/goals, etc. The VC aspect of it will be in interconnecting the meatspace communties around the world that have similar interests.

    For those that have read Snow Crash, this may sound like the concept of the FOQNE (Franchise-Owned Quasi-National Entity), and truth be told, it's probably pretty close.

    I don't say this because of any particular loyalty to Neal Stephenson's views, however. It just seems to me that cyberspace, no matter how good it gets, can ever supplant meatspace. People need facetime, plain and simple.

    Does this imply an end to the nation-state, as implied in Snow Crash? Certainly not. What this causes is a recurrence of the in-touch neighborhood, which is something America has been lacking since the 60's. A place where you know, and can trust your neighbors.

    Nation-states are still going to be necessary to regulate commerce, infrastructure (including all those lovely bandwidth-carrying trunks), and manage things like defense and disaster relief.

    Then again, maybe not. Predicting the future is a dicey proposition at best.


    ----------------------------------------
    Yo soy El Fontosaurus Grande!

  • While not wanting to dredge up Stephenson again, I'd have to go with the "franchise model" (for lack of a better term).

    What you'll see is something akin to "user groups", where all of them are in different geographic locations, but united for the same general reason.

    You would probably see an interaction model similar to that of the Greek system in colleges where fraternities will come to the aid of travelling 'brothers' from other geographical areas.

    In fact, given that a majority of the Greek organizations have a solid web presence, but are tied together primarily in meatspace, you could argue that they are rudimentary HCs.

    HCs, like frathouses, benefit by a sharing of resources -- everyone gets a place to live, there's always some food to eat, a supply of labor for whatever project comes up, etc. In college, situations like these develop from a lack of resources (money, intelligence, whatever) -- and what the individual frat members couldn't do before (think, make friends, party, study, cheat) on their own, they can now do, thanks to a grouping of resources. What I think you'll see happening is as the resources of various geographic locales become more and more scarce, you'll see a turn toward HCs -- where small clusters of people with similar ideologies pool their limited resources to a.) survive and b.) advance those ideologies.

    Nation-states, such as the United States, will inevitably be unable to stay united due to the large number of people with differing ideologies. (Then again, I could be wrong...it's worked for 225 years so far.) It just seems to me that the ideal human social group numbers between 15 to 25. Beyond that, what's the point? You'll have major dissidents.

    Ugh. Sociology. And me on a caffeine-bonk and not thinking clearly.


    ----------------------------------------
    Yo soy El Fontosaurus Grande!

  • Re:Something to live for (Score:3)

    by Kingfox ( 149377 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @06:30AM (#1406936) Homepage Journal
    Could you call /.'ers a community?

    I'd go so far as to call /.'ers a group of communities. The clever trolls, the simple goatse.cxers and spammers, the Linux zealots, the corporate sysadmins sitting bored in their office /.'ing all day, etc. A series of communities, with their own forums for discussion, clashing or joining every so often in an article or secret SID that spans a few of their interests at once.

    Regarding MOOs, I think one of the best examples is a MOO that has some of the MUD-drawing aspects as well as the building aspects of a MOO and the roleplaying aspects of a MUSH. CyberSphere [vv.com], a MOO I've worked on and played for years, combines all of these quite well. All of the dangers that Katz has mentioned in his intro paragraph have come and gone. From flamers to thieves [sindome.org] and beyond, and it's still going well after seven years.

    The members are quite close, many people have moved across the country or made their college choice through CyberSphere. A few admins on the game got job offers from other admin and players, after seeing that they could code on the game. Recently a few losers (myself included) drove a thousand miles from all over the country to have a party IRL. While there everything from drug deals to job offers went down. Though after the long return trip home, the group of us are still a community in many ways, in almost every sense of the word.
  • Is the Virtual Community a real possibility? Can it survive the growth, size and commercialization of the Net ...?

    I think "virtual communities" are indeed a possibility -- many, in fact, currently thrive amidst the "commercialization of the Net."

    First, I believe it's a fallacy to speak of the "Virtual Community" with a capital V and C, as if it was a single, monolithic entity. Not that Jon Katz was making such an assertion, of course.

    Take, for instance, Slashdot's favorite topic -- Linux. LUG's (Linux User Groups) are a decent example of regional-based congregations (forgive me for using that word) that discuss current, topical issues both online and in person. No LUG that I've witnessed seems to functions as an insular, exclusive body. Rather, they localize concerns and themes important to the broader Linux community.

    Sincerely,
    Vergil
    Vergil Bushnell

  • My vision of a VC is a way to enhance a real-space community, wether it be a neighborhood, workplace, a club, or just your family. Using a VC to keep in touch and share things with people who missed the last get together is the only way I can really see to maintain a real sense of community online.

    This is not to say that a VC can't grow out of the Internet - I've seen many VCs come out of BBSs, newsgroups, weblogs, homepages, etc. but the one thing the lasting ones have in common is that the members actually get together, share air, and basically become a real-space community.

  • huh? (Score:1)

    by kawlyn ( 154590 )
    I thought this was a "Virtual Community". Having said that I personally would not call this a "Virtual Community", to me the term has little meaning. I mean really aren't all communities, strictly speaking virtual.
  • where you meet and know people ONLY on the internet is unhealthy at best and dangerous at worst.

    Now random KOOKS from all over the world, who used to be KOOKY in isolation can now find each other.

    I feel we are building a new Tower of Babel (not a New Jerusalem) and we'll have the same disasterous results.

  • Katz also takes every available opportunity to uphold and reiterate the belief that the posters who flame him are 15 year old teenage boys.

    It is in his best interest to ignore viewpoints that disagree with his agenda of being a PIED PIPER for all of the lonely, alienated, misunderstood geeks out there. He's positioned himself to be a saviour of the geeks and he won't allow a little reason get in the way.

  • It is claimed that when sex ratio is closer to 50/50 the community tends to function better and be less aggressive. I have no evidence for this, but maybe it's worth trying when possible.

    This does not mean that I am against all-male geek communities per se.
  • No he does not. You are deadon right with this though the whole idea is that we geeks have what we want. With a combo of ICQ, one IRC channel that I shall not mention here, and /. I have everything I want and need out of a virtual community. And Katz is right it does exclude alot of people but these are the people who I ignore (or wish I could ignore) in meatspace in any case. I do not want them in my community this is the one place in the world where I can communicate with others like me. Also it allows relationships that due to meatspace concerns are no longer able to happen in the real world to continue. I for one agree with Sartre (sp?) when he said "Hell is other people". All I want is a place where I can communicate with people who are on the same level I am. BTW you're wrong Perl is too good for Katz he was written in VB.
  • To me its like saying "why isn't the town forming little hamlets on its own?"

    There is one humanity, and due to geographical divisions, several societies. The Internet affects them, but isn't one of them in the traditional sense. Jon Katz, you are asking a new thing to be just like an old thing. But it can't be that which you or anyone else envisions. It is self-deterministic. Don't tell the Internet what it should be.

    It's like saying "why doesn't my car take a dump on the road like my horse did? They both do the same thing for me (provide transportation)". But your car isn't a horse, and the Internet isn't Real Life. It's a part of it.

    And you are right, people. I hate to say it because there are many out there who simply go off on Jon and it sounds like jealousy and sour grapes sometimes, but Katz doesn't seem to read and respond to even the most thoughtful of posts.

    He does not open himself up to this 'community', so why should he expect other 'communities' to behave like the 'experts' tell him they should? Sorry, guy, but you really do ask for it.

  • Common interests, common purpose, common vision ... it still sounds like Walden to me.

    A community is a heterogeneous collection of individuals. Human nature intrudes too much to create the idealistic VC. I would even go so far as to say that if your VC is working, then you have a narrow and selective subset of humanity -- a balkanization of our civilization, if you will.

    Now this hybrid idea is interesting - a new dimension to an existing physical community. It has possibilities when members travel. How do you anticipate this dimension would be employed, given the bulk of interaction will be physical?

  • I believe that while it might not be possible to plan a brand new community of indefinite size in indefinite settings, it is certainly possible to plan and predict based on settings and size of the environment such as in MUDs and other online games.

    Take the original NeverWinter Nights. No one at AOL, SSI or TSR could have predicted that a simple bug in the game would turn the whole game into something new, and give the players a shared purpose that forms one of the best and earliest online communities ever. They couldn't have predicted it then because it was new. But it would be possible to recreate the same type of community by inviting the same people and same types of people back into the same environment and giving them the same things they had.

    Instead of trying to create whole new meshes of people, throw them into an online environment, call it a community and pray that it works, you need to take something that works, or has worked, and recreate it in an online setting.

    :)
  • The main problem is that their are too many online communities, their's so many to choose from. A lot of people find themselves being part of dozens of communities, suddenly they don't have much time to participate in all of them and they start dividing their time between all those VC's. You can't possibly develop a friendship or even have an interesting conversation when you barely have 5 free minutes of free time, this is also true in real life.
    When I first got on the internet, I visited a lot of porn sites, then after a week I lost interest. Their's just so many things to do online, it's crazy and the fact that most websites are free doesn't make things easier. This may sound crazy to many of you but If each VC site charged a fee, participants would be more interesting and interested in participating in online discussions. But since they're almost all free, it's just too easy and so the value of a VC decreases.
  • As a founder of my own online community [boardhost.com], I have dealt with many of the advantages and disadvantages of online communities. The world wide web is a great tool for reaching out to people. What better way to reach out to the lost than through chat rooms?

    I have made great use of "CYBER TRACTS [angelfire.com]" and have met with a pretty good deal of success with them. Many people from around the world have visited my various online ministries and I know this internet can indeed be a blessing.

    However, there ARE plenty of disadvatages. It seems there are a lot of trouble makers online who make it their goal to merely deface anything they can get their virtual claws on. People seem to be much more comfortable with baseless insults than they are in face to face relations and losing sites can be a thorn in one's side. I myself have lost over three ministries due to persecution and hatred. This makes it difficult for visitors to keep up with all the new locations!

    All the more reason to still emphasize the real thing, real church communities! Get to them online, by all means... but be sure to get them in a real, brick and mortar church by the time you are through with them. That's what I say.

    Even if you're not called to 'the ministry', you can still make a difference for Christ by just being you. We all have our gifts-- Use them to God's glory! You may be able to reach out to certain people that professional ministers may not be able to 'connect' with.

  • was bankrupt. [fuckedcompany.com]
  • I do think they can and do work. If you have a community of people who have some common interest, the old favorite online tools (/. and related web community systems, listserv, usenet, IM, etc.) are a great way to bring people together. There are many people I've met through thoughtful online discussion, and I don't see any serious reason why this can't continue in the future. I moderate several discussion groups and think they work just fine.

    Commercialization of the net doesn't really make a difference here, except that applications vulnerable to spam can lose utility. Features such as /. distributed moderation are useful to prevent this. Otherwise, I don't really see the threat.


  • Katz asks "Is the Virtual Community a real possibility?" I say "yes", but no thanks.

    Communities are formed when a group of people become so afraid of some outside force that they overcome their fear of their neighbors long enough to seek protection among them. It's a temporary thing that evaporates when the outside threat is reduced or the inside threat exceeds certain limits.

    People gather for other reasons at markets or political rallies or ball games. They seek like minded souls on the internet and elsewhere. But communities as I understand them invariably fit the above description.
  • >What ought to be the
    >responsibilities of members?
    Well, they have to be educative to each other.
    RThey have to support the newbies and to protect them from eventual abuses...
    Like in real life.
    Eachof them should be an example for one another.
    --
  • The "community" behaviour - a hardwired instinct in humans as in most higher vertebrates - has been degenerating fast for at least half a century, due to things like the industrial revolution (read Marx on the worker being estranged from the product), Government social systems, and a general misinterpretation of "freedom of the individual" as meaning "freedom of the ego".

    This trend has been (not necessarily on purpose) enhanced by modern free market economy, since you can sell more stuff (a TV in every room rather than one for the whole family).

    It is utopic to expect people who couldn't socialize their way out of a wet paper bag in real life to be any better in the virtual arena.

    How do you teach monkeys? With bananas and electric shocks, or equivalent carrots and sticks.
  • i'm personally a member of multiple virtual communities. the buzzcocks mailing list is now in it's third year with the same core of ~30 active posters and many many other lurkers .. we have all become close friends, occasionally meeting in the R.W. .. also, a DCPUNK messageboard where i have made and maintained many friendships .. and what are we here on slashdot, if not a virtual community? we've got our good citizens and our vandals, our neighborhood watch and people of power.

    it's pretty clear by now (what with all the failed attempts) it's hard to form a community around something purely done for profit. a shoe company is not going to form a "virtual community". but we'll go where the action is. just because companies are having trouble making a quick buck on us doesn't mean we're not here.

  • You cannot design an on-line community. You can write software and move buttons around. But the part that makes it an actual community is under no single person or group's control.

    Cultures change in the same way that languages do. They regulate themselves. "Ain't" may not be officially a word, but if you know what it means, then it certainly is.

    Talk to a member of the Academie Francaise. As representatives of the French government, they want to decide what is and what is not propper for the language- and here's the kicker- they back it up with laws to that effect. It is not legal, for example, to inject an Americanised French word in an official document. Germany's recent foray into spelling reform is another example.

    intellectual conversations... [ridiculopathy.com]

  • i think this is a somewhat silly question on the part of Katz - VC's suffer the same sort of entropy that actual real-life communities do. people move in, say a place is wonderful; hang out there for a while. then people start moving in, it becomes busier, with more commercialism and/or more idiots. then the people who originally established the community get disillusioned, get the "it's not like it was in the old days" attitude, and disperse to other areas.

    there are a few communities (both RL and VC) that manage to hang on and withstand the changes by either growing in new directions or being very flexible about their attitudes but strict about the rules. but there is one thing those communities all have which is hard to find everywhere: people who are dedicated to the *other people involved.* the idea and/or the purpose of an existing community will end up being either outdated or abused after a while - it's dedication to the *people* that keeps it going.

  • Howard Rhinegold's virtual community.

    It's on thinkgeek as we speak.
  • Frankly, I'd run like heck from any online community that expected me to run videophones or other video-streaming technology from my home as a key to participating in community. I prefer to be judged simply on my words and actions. If I have to go back and explain away an inadvertantly offensive comment, I learn to be more careful in the future.

    In addition, I don't sit down in a soundproofed cubicle to post to my favorite message boards or log into IRC; I do these while in the midst of cooking dinner, spelling new words for my five year old and listening to music. Life sends me AFK for a few more often than I'd like, but it does the same for my buddies. Want to sit staring at a bunch of empty chairs or cut video connections? Not me! Timeshifting, multitasking and conforming to the other needs of members' lives are things that virtual communities can and should continue to do. Otherwise we might as well all go down to the local pub.

    So let's not run to hastily into the streaming video era. F2F is fine for some things in life but hardly critical to build a sense of community. Successful online communities have and can build compelling member images in other ways(avatars, sig files, profiles, websites).
  • Karma be damned, I have something to say on this.

    Early visions of the Virtual Community haven't come to pass for a variety of reasons.

    This clearly demonstrates you have no idea what you are talking about. AOL, the enemy of geeks everywhere, is FILLED with hundreds of not THOUSANDS of Virtual Communities. All built and maintained by its users. Unfortunatly AOL gets greedy and once the VC is popular, they take control over it and run it into the ground. The point still stands. I know of an other VC over at that other site that I won't mention [kuro5hin.org] that is maintained by its users. This is all not even mentioning IRC chatrooms, MUD's, webrings, Instant Messaging, et al.

    Just because you don't like the very popular and available options does not mean they didn't/don't work out or exist.

  • Well, Slashdot isn't really a community, per se. Most users (even registered ones) are fairly anonymous due to the sheer size of the user base. On top of that, there are people from all different backgrounds who have all different purposes for being here. I'm a professional programmer who likes to see what's going on in the geek community (which is usually totally unrelated to real life). There are many college kids here who are promoting 'free' everything. There are many different purposes here, and nobody really knows each other. What if I were to post 'hey! I'm about to get married!' (I am)? Would anbody care? No. I'm a member of several REAL online communities where this isn't the case.

  • Thanks for the congrats... But I think that my example is more important in the sense that a community requires that the individual participants actually know each other, either personlly or professionally. I've been reading Slashdot for years, but the only personality I know is Jon Katz. Size is important. It's impossible to know other people, in any sense, in what is essentially a giant, constantly milling crowd of people.

  • The problem with considering virtual communities now is its unavoidably exclusive nature. If you think about the suburban communities, which have been historically exclusionary in terms of race and class and are becoming in many cases like mini-compounds with gates, security, and private parks and recreational facilities, they don't really look like such a great model to work from. Many feel that virtual communities erase those differences, but you have to remember not many people in most of the world will have access to the virtual communities of today. Perhaps the first principle, so to speak, should be a real-world advocacy of changes to increase access to the Internet, to computers, and education that facilitates participation on the web. Otherwise, these virtual communities will simply be one more elite club of like-minded individuals of the same class and origins, just like the suburbs.
  • So, I'm not really sure what Katz is getting at.

    This isn't surprising. Katz, who I guess has good intentions, seriously seem to be using completely different paradigms, here, and ones I think are mostly inoperable. Katz has posts and writing that try to "get" the Internet and understand "geeks", but the way he envisions the virtual communities he's participating in already at /. consistently shows he doesn't. Sometimes, he appears to think of the web as some type of utopia and/or carnival, and "geeks" as mostly enlightened citizens who want to talk about themselves because no one else cared in high school or whatever, but he never realizes that talking about "geeks" simply assumes everyone feels like a freak, which is off-putting. Katz's writing and vocabulary reeks of stupid optimism, the worst of media journalism, which examines its subject with an uncritical and hopelessly irrelevant methodology. He seems to think that virtual communities are some great thing marred by a few corporate abuses, and that vc's can somehow be a replacement for real life. Unfortunately, while he's pondering how to police the virtual community, he neglects to see how most people have no access to vc's because of real world economic inequities and social injustice. Before you start kicking those bratty pivileged kids out of your supposed community, you need to learn how to help others in.

    To return to my original point, you don't get Katz cause Katz doesn't get it. He's in his own world, populated by "geeks", in which Katz is always on the cutting edge of irrelevance.
  • Yes, Katz-bashing is a big activity here. And yes, he does bring up important or provacative issues. But, my god, can't they find someone who does that but better? Anyway, the Katz-bashing is bad because most of it is wildly off-topic or ill-considered. It needs to better, too.
  • Regardless of some limits, of course you can plan a community. In fact, a cult, an army, and the corporation are all examples of planned communities. In addition, you can put communes, suburbs, and nations on that list. They are all products of some level of community planning, whether it's due to local government, state and corporate funding of various social engineering projects, or other possibilities.

    I'm not quite sure what you mean by "you can't plan a community." If you look at communities, most are solidified by proximity, shared interests and experiences, which are often the result of years of planning and social engineering. Even the family itself and how it is a community is carefully planned by parents.
  • Is virtual community's destiny to replace real life? I don't think so. But virtual communities can supplant the real world, if they can survive. I believe the ultimate failure of virtual communitites stem from two problems: the failure to get members to 'stick', and the inherant dangers of rampant liberty. The first, mobility of members, is something that has successfully been overcome by some communities with common interest (like a users group) and by others with content, commonality, and ease of use (like AOL). The problem of liberty however, is best demonstrated by the chaos of an unmoderated chat room. Another problem with liberty is that the powerful - and in a technilogical realm I believe power is directly related to ability - are able to impose their will upon the less powerful. Now, not all power is bad - the open source movement is a premier example of benevolant power - but there are those who seek to utilize their power to the detriment of the weak. That is the the reason for the need for some governance - to protect the weak from the wicked. Community rulership, in whatever for it takes, must have the power of banishment and exile - the virtual equivalent of death - as a method for dealing with the worst offences, things like cracking, fraud, activity that is related to capital crimes like cyber-stalking, information theft and offences of that nature which are wholly in opposition to the values of the community. Lesser offenses might include flaming, libel or slander, the results of stupidity or negligence such as security gaffs. These could be dealt with through a ranking and demerit system which has real consequences in terms of acccess, cost, benefits. In a virtual community, the desire of the members is to be included, by leveraging this desire into the 'criminal code' the community members are faced with the choice of inclusion or lawlessness. Once the ranking system is in place, part of the acent in power is the responsibility to govern within the community - observing and doing nothing when an offence takes place, such as a flame in a chatroom, could have a higher penalty than the flaming itself. The growth of the polity creates the need for bodies of rule and appeal, and these should be members who are held accountable for their own actions as well as how they govern.
  • Interest-centric communities are exactly the kind that the web facilitates best. If you have moderately unusual interests where better to meet up with the few other people who take part in those than online. Many of the real life communities I belong to largely keep in touch online since we all stopped being at university together and spread out around the country.

    Perhaps part of the point of web communities is that because you have a larger catchment area they are more interest-centric.
  • Apparently his problem with VCs is that they are not virtual communism... Without strict guidelines, strict enforcment of guidelines (complete with your super secret moderators who nuke your relevence if you deviate from the norm), and willingness to sacrifice personality you cannot have a VC by his definition.

    I say the we already have VCs, and have had them for some time. They have existed since the earliest BBS systems, and continue on today in form of "message forums", conglomerates like AOL, and MMORPG games.

    They don't fit your definition in regards to existing without people who disagree with each other. However the do adhere to our current civilization, which is many people with similar intrest, but at the same time not all the same intrests.

    So Jon, VCs already exist, quit harping on the fact they don't exist based upon your narrow perspective.

  • Of course. However, I try to avoid Katz-bashing for its own sake: more tiresome than his stories is the number of people who slag the man off purely because it's deemed fashionable and cool to do so. And, to be fair, his stories do invariably get people talking, even if it's only to contradict everything he says. Somebody needs to come up with the stuff he comes up with -- while it's generally the kind of issue most of us find pretty obvious, it's only when we start discussing the issues that we begin to question our own assumptions and just maybe come up with something new.

    Just IMHO, of course.

  • My point isn't that people necessarily should act in an obnoxious manner, nor that it'll be in their best interests to do so: more that if people should be able to do so if they so desire. More specifically, though, I think that feeling as though one can speak frankly -- even at the risk of seeming rude -- can often be a good thing, and it's something that is less common "IRL" because of the social taboos that have been adopted. I have more respect for people who say what they mean, even if it's controversial, than for people who are simply nice to one another all of the time. On IRC, I find it very tiresome when people spend all of their time forging supposed relationships with people and *cuddling* and *kissing* and all of that crap; far better to try to get a rise out of people in the hope that they'll retort with something intelligent, humourous, or whathaveyou.

    I think people should have the freedom to act in precisely whatever manner they require -- I'm no great believer in social constraints, nor in the need to avoid offending people if one disagrees with what they're saying. Other people are, of course, free to find you offensive and to stop talking to you if they don't like the way in which you're acting -- that's fine. But if an online persona provides the means for experimenting with one's personality, trying new ideas, entertaining oneself, or whatever, then I'm all for it. Just ask the people in efnet's #gothik ..

  • Er, Undernet's #gothik, rather... as though anybody cared.
  • In many respects, the virtual community has come to pass: we're sitting here reading and discussing this, aren't we? People shop online, read news online, chat online, rob, cheat and steal online. The fact that not everybody is a part of this community as yet is hardly surprising; however, the community continues to grow at an incredible, sometimes frightening, rate. That there are technophobes and critics within this community is also no contradiction: in every society there exist those who would change it, destroy it, or deny it, and in some respects these components are essential for the success of any community.

    So, I'm not really sure what Katz is getting at. Of course the "community" needs to change and will change -- however, I find it difficult to believe that this will happen as a result of a considered, planned process. Like other communities, this "virtual" one will continue to morph with the whims of its members -- and to ask whether it will "survive the growth, size and commercialization of the Net [etc]" is to miss the point. Commercialization is an essential requisite of a truly successful online community, just as trade is an essential element of any "real life" community. Over time, as the problem of scarcity becomes less of an issue, this may of course change -- but, rest assured, there will always be a "dark side" to this community as with any other. And, far from being a problem, it will be what continues to provide this society with much of its zest and many of its successes.

    What we might do is embrace these disparate elements of our new community, and avoid making the same mistakes we've made elsewhere: waging pointless "wars" on what we consider the less desirable elements of society; alienating the most useful differences by embracing conformity; running scared from change in a desire to maintain the status quo. Whether we'll succeed in this is to be seen: I'm hoping.

  • You're touching upon a key element of the current state of the "virtual community", though: people are more free to be whoever they want to be, rather than whoever they've always been. In real life, people are forced to contend with being shy, being ugly, being disabled, or whatever; online, these things are (currently) less of an issue. In many cases, of course, this does lead to people acting in an obnoxious manner -- I do it myself, fairly often, in an ironic fashion. What we need to decide, though, is whether there's anything intrinsically more "real" about "real life" -- after all, the characters that people show face-to-face are not necessarily either a) a representation of how they see themselves, or b) the way they would be were it not for the various sociological pressures that're placed upon them. Many people can be heard better online; they can circumvent their shyness, or their physical difficulties, or whathaveyou.

    If someone wants to be an annoying little brat rather than quiet and reserved, shouldn't that be their prerogative? If someone wants to live out a power fantasy, or to use the mask of relative anonymity to say something that might be considered taboo in real life, is that necessarily a bad thing? It's really the same argument as that about AC's; on the one hand, you do wind up with a lot more noise and bitching and trolling -- on the other, people are more free to do as they will, and (occasionally, admittedly) to speak out with insight that might otherwise not have come to light.

    So: yes, so-called virtual communities may lead to a change in the way in which we see ourselves and others (on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog) -- but that's not necessarily a bad thing, is it?

  • I don't think I'm going to bother reading Jon Katz anymore.
    His "stories" are in actual fact just visions of various sci-fi films all spliced together and pushed out of his mouth like some mad four legged sheep-goat trying to turn lead into people.

    Jon, stop talking excitable bollocks and grow up, for christ's sake.

  • And that's why I like it.

    Although Linux does get a hell of a lot of coverage here, it doesn't mean that this place is soley for Torvalds Worship. What about Beos? The funny stuff? The MS ripping? The Amiga Vapourware? The space stories?

    Slash is News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters. What matters to many here is Linux. But that doesn't mean this site exists just to promote Linux.

    Slashdot is bigger than that.
  • What is going on here? Doesn't everyone know the Sims online version is going to be sold soon. I can have my friends over and I won't have to worry about them farting in front of my wife!

    I can hardly wait, I'll be able to work on my promotions, relationships, cooking skills and all kinds of other stuff without leaving my chair. I can visit with friends, or send them home if they get too crazy. Of course there is still the question of what I'm going to do with all my real world relationships, jobs, etc... Maybe I can see if my boss will let me build the business on my computer and just run it from there! I can be assured of record profits in simoleons!!

    News Flash: This just in! Scientists discover an entire virtual community already in place with billions of users. They have created a new word for this strange and exotic place where almost anything goes. They call it..... EARTH!

    =-=-=-=-=
    "Do you hear the Slashdotters sing,

  • Jezus, John, if you're going to continue down this lonely road, you aught to at least give me some material to work with. A couple of paragraphs?

    First you sucked, now you're just lazy.

    --

  • Okay, I know this reality of life won't be popular with at least one slashdot contingent, so let the flames begin.

    Alright. You're a pathetic idiot. Do you honestly believe that an on-line game is some measure of responsibility and accountability? Is that the most you've ever been responsible for, or accountable for? Are you realy that vaccuous and shallow?

    The point JohnKatz and the rest of the geeks keep missing with regards to "virtual communities." is this. They are not real communities. Thats why we preface the term with the word "virtual." Real communities are made of real people, interdependent on each other. Communities watch each others kids, send christmas cards, and fuck.

    If all you've ever had was virtual sex, you're still a virgin.

    --

  • This whole "virtual" community thing seems a little over the top, even for our esteemed Mr. Katz.

    Seriously, there is a reality that you can have a virtualized (not a virtual) community in any online forum or chat room or message board or BBS or etc. But, that community is not stronger, no better, no weaker, or no more real than any "meat space" community. And it seems throughout this series of articles that is the one theme that Mr. Katz has failed to truly touch upon.

    When talking about the Virtual Community &#169 Jon has placed more promise, hope, and reality into the world "virtual" than into the word "community". Doesn't he understand that no matter how virtualized any place of meeting may be it is still just a community made up of real people (even the ones pretending to not be real people are still backed by real people. It isn't just a made up fantasy land). The problem is that in the early days of fantasizing about how great the virtual community could be, no one stopped to think that it is just as easy, maybe even easier, for the idiots, morons, mental midgits and freaks of the real world to interfere with the virtual world. Nobody stopped to think that through in the early days, because it wasn't so easy to jump online. But, now we are faced with the reality of that statement. People are coming online at an increasing rate, and acting as idiotic as any drunken brawler. And the virtualized community that was supposed to be this great utopia was not.

    Simply looking at the development of real community through the ages will allow you to understand that there is a huge parallel between meat space and virtualized space. How many generations of "communities" were made up of ravaging, raping, pillaging barbarians? It took time to develop our communities into the realitively polite and modernized society we have today in meat space (where all of the rape, ravage, pillaging, stealing and other garbage happens behind closed doors where we aren't supposed to look). In time, the online communities that survive whatever shakeout will come will find a way to deal with the miscreants just as the real world has learned to deal with criminals. The idea of a virtual jail is appealing for the humor value alone, but not so unrealistic. Perhaps, if tracking is made more sophisticated (as it is bound to be), creating an area that miscreants and rebels are "locked" into is a very real possibility. A frightening one, as many people that are not really a threat to anyone but the powers-that-be would be thrown into these virtual jails, but a possibility none-the-less.

    In time, we will see what really happens. But it isn't as bleak as some people seem to think, and it isn't as cheery as the original framers of the "virtual community" idea wanted to believe. Reality, as usual, lies somewhere in between.

  • I especially like your comment about aol, comp, etc. causing the downfall of intelligent forums. I though I was the only one who couldn't stand those "It's like, in your face, pow" commercials referring to 'surfing the web'. You don't like crowds, you don't like morons, I agree. :)
  • Hi. I sorry, but I think I disagree with you! Here at Slashdot, it is obvious that the purpose is to further Linux in every way, something that everybody here is very passionate about. Doesn't this promote all the trolls and flamers that Katz was worrying about though? If everybody has a purpose that they are passionate about, it is much easier for people to throw a spanner in the works and annoy people. Aren't the most successful communities very varied, with no real shared 'purpose' at all? Like, a medieval village wouldn't have had such a clear cut overall goal for its inhabitants. I have noticed that Kuro5hin doesn't seem to either. This means that there is a lot of varied discourse and it is difficult for trolls and flamers to survive, because every position they take is a valid one, to some, unlike here on Slashdot where there is a definate 'established' set of opinions and beliefs for trolls and flamers to exploit.

    So the best way to have a varied, interesting and peaceful community is to avoid having a common goal altogether, I would say. :o)

  • Responsability requires accountability.

    And lack of the same is what is destroying 'real' (meatspace) communities as well as virtual ones.

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