Direction, Part 1

So, my basic observation is this: The 'global community' idea early internet scholars were impressed by succeeded only to a limited degree. Restricted by socioeconomic factors, only certain demographics were truly impacted by the unveiling of the web as a public tool for connectivity. That said, access restrictions were not the only reason for the limited success of a global village.

There are currently two forms of online community. Topic-based communities, which are capable of bridging users together across the world, and local communities such as those promoted through the rise of Web 2.0 social webapps.

Topically based communities carry the 'global community-building' torch, providing one model of community.

This model is now effectively at war with the 'Hyperlocal Web' model. Seeking to recreate pre-existing personal relationships on the web rather than forging new relationships at great distance, Local communities are emerging as a serious contender for user attention, and apps such as Facebook and Flickr are encouraging users to stay 'close to home'

This is not necessarily a 'bad thing' at all. The internet is incredibly open and modifiable by its users, and this trend toward Local Communities may not signal a trend away from Topical Communities. But can Local Communities really be called 'communities' of their own?

I want to examine the functions of these communities, drawing mostly from two sources. One is the Natural Selection modding community (www.natural-selection.org) which I participated in from 2001-2004 and the other is Facebook, which I've been a member of since 2004.

So here are some preliminary thoughts on the direction I want to take this in.

I'm concerned with the transforming nature of online communities. Early internet scholars (you know, a long, long time ago) saw the internet and the web as an unprecedented tool for linking individuals together and fostering greater inter-cultural understanding around the country and around the world. This was a great idea, even though technological and economic limitations kept the 'global village' pretty first-world for a long time. But how well did it really work out?

Communities form around issues or around topics. I'm basing that only on my own possibly foolish assumptions, and that's why I'll be researching community theory a bit (enough to understand when and why my foot is in my mouth). But - assuming I'm at least mostly correct in this - one big prerequisite for any online community is a shared value, belief, profession, or hobby. There are virtually no limits to what communities can be based around (please, don't visit this link), but there are limits to how large an online community can grow, and these limits are set through a number of factors:

(this is completely my own idea and thus as full of holes as a slice of swiss cheese)
1. Exclusivity vs. Accessibility

Establishing the proper balance of exclusivity and accessibility is critical for online communities today, though this was not always the case. In the early days of the net, accessibility was key - getting your site out to as many people as possible was about the most important thing you had to do. When the internet was 'new', it imposed enough of an accessibility barrier that every site, no matter how open, already felt exclusive. Access was limited to college campuses, and later to the early adopters of dialup. (this part is a little rough - i think the idea would hold, but i have nothing supporting this right now. I'm thinking of doing more research on America Online as the 'equalizer' of the internet. What was that event called, the Eternal September?)

I've gotten a little off track. Anyway, in the early days accessibility was king. You wanted everyone to be able to get to your newsgroup or forum to read and contribute. Now, exclusivity is nearly as important as accessibility, at least for online communities. Here's a few reasons:

An open community:

1. lots of spam
2. an undifferentiated userbase
3. anonymity destroys community

A closed community:

1. A dedicated user-base - make it harder to join and they'll want to join more
2. Users who have to work to join a community are better contributors, spend more time there
3. While closed communities can be smaller, they are often more productive and result in better personal relationships than open communities where anyone can join.

There are different levels of 'security' that allow community builders to negotiate access. Invite-only communities, registration-required communities (and these vary widely in the information required to register), and more. My general observation is that the more exclusive a community, the stronger it is. The difficulty is in reaching critical mass, or attracting enough users to get the community started before cutting off accessibility and raising the gates.


2. Specificity vs. Generality

The intuitive jump here may be to assume that more specific topics will have fewer communities, and less active ones. Conversely, more general groups will have larger, more active communities. This is frequently not the case, however. In my observation, while a more general group is often larger, the more specific group is often much more active. Large forum-based online communities can take advantage of this idea by establishing subforums to encourage more specialized subcommunities to develop, thus preventing users from escaping to other topic-directed sites. (SA provides a great example of this, but pretty much every forum buys into this idea on one level or another. Specific forums - such as VW Vortex - also often include Off-topic sections, to allow for general, non-topical conversations. )

Specific = Smaller = More Active = Stronger Community (define strength, what is strong community?)

General = Larger = Less Active (unless with subforums) = Weaker Community

How to define community strength? This is critical to my thesis so i have to make sure I understand and explain this very well. Indicators and causes?

One indicator of community strength is longevity. The more active the community, the longer it lasts. When the spirit leaves, the body frequently dies. There are some 'zombie communities' out there that exist only practically as archives with no more contributing members, but due to the costs of server maintenance, abandoned forums and message boards usually go offline eventually. Of course, the content is often preserved - whether in massive web archival projects of individual users' archives - but the community itself is dead.

One cause of community strength is depth - the volume of posts, the rate of replies, the level of private-messaging and extra-site activity. Basically, the deeper a community, the stronger it is and the longer it will last. Deep communities form a barrier to accessibility, since there can often be a steep learning curve and disdain for 'newbies'.

Another cause is, as mentioned, exclusivity. Instill your users with pride to be a member and they will be better members for it.

3. Format (Newsgroup / BBS / Message Board / Forum / Profile Pages?)

Certain formats are more conducive to community building, in my opinion, than in others. From email-based newsgroups and mailing lists to linearly structured message boards, to multi-level forums with greater depth and operating costs, to the most recent development of networked profile pages, methods of displaying / producing community are consistently evolving. But in the web, no method ever truly dies - so we can observe any of these forms of 'community' today with a quick web search.


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Local Web communities suck users away from Topical communities.