The WELL as a community
Topic 7
By: M Normal (normals) on Sun, Feb 16, '92
177 responses so far
Is the WELL a community? How so? Or, why not?
177 responses total.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 1: M Normal (normals) Sun, Feb 16, '92 (23:15) 4 lines
I think of the WELL as a community, partially because it is as cohesive a
group as residents of a city - they may not share the same opinions of the
place, but nevertheless, they do still live there and they all have a sense
of how it differs from other cities.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 2: avrumele opincar (read) Mon, Feb 17, '92 (14:30) 8 lines
The cohesion you speak of is, I think, largely illusory.
The "amount" of "belief" required of one to think of the WELL as
a kind of "community" is much greater (if one can qualify these
things) than that required of participants in most organized
religions.
I think the more interesting question is why one would feel the
need, in the first place, to think of the WELL as a kind of
community.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 3: Jacques Leslie (jacques) Mon, Feb 17, '92 (22:00) 6 lines
I've just finished a newspaper piece requiring my going on line on half a
dozen networks, and my conclusion is that, compared to the rest of them, the
WELL is indeed a community: people know each other here, if only by the
words they post; there is a certain set of loosely shared values here; and
most important, there is a richness of reported experience and creativity in
describing it that is certainly missing elsewhere.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 4: M Normal (normals) Mon, Feb 17, '92 (22:44) 5 lines
Cohesion is not my criteria for what makes a community. Diversity of
opinion is just as important IMHO. To me it has more to do with the way
people consider the well a society with its own particularity. As others
have pointed out, if the well were that homogenous, it would be completely
dull.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 5: avrumele opincar (read) Tue, Feb 18, '92 (17:33) 6 lines
But the WELL is VERY homgenous. How many poor people have modems?
How many WELL members would vote for, say, Pat Buchanan? The WELL
is about as homogenous as any middle- and upper-middle class white
enclave in a university town.
Again, the question is, why would you need to think of the WELL as
a community? That's an interesting question.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 6: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Tue, Feb 18, '92 (19:43) 7 lines
I think some people have more of a need to *see* it this way than do others.
And sometimes it's hard to separate the f2f relationships that have grown
out of this from the virtual relationships.
It's like anything else in virtual life--each individual has his/her own
perspective on it. If questioned closely, rarely will two people agree on
the degree to which something is/is not "true".
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 7: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Wed, Feb 19, '92 (09:07) 8 lines
It isn't just the WELL. TWICS in Tokyo, CIX in England, to name two
that I've been visiting lately, both have strong contingents who see
their computer conferencing systems as the matrix for strong
communities that wouldn't exist otherwise.
The answer to Avrumele's question seems obvious to me: People have a
need for community, and many find that such needs are not met by the
traditional communities of work, neighborhood, church.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 8: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Wed, Feb 19, '92 (09:50) 1 line
*Some* people have a need for "community".
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 9: Nancy Rhine (nancy) Wed, Feb 19, '92 (10:21) 2 lines
I'd alter that statement one more time and say "Many people have a need for
community".
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 10: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Wed, Feb 19, '92 (12:27) 3 lines
And sometimes people infer "community" where there is none. Workplace
relationships can be a good example of this. Proximity does not equal
"community", IMO.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 11: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Wed, Feb 19, '92 (13:30) 2 lines
In your case, Kathleen, how would you describe the WELLhead poster
arrangement. Is that community-related, or strictly business?
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 12: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Wed, Feb 19, '92 (15:04) 2 lines
That sort of thing is so specific as to merit its own topic, IMO. It
does/does not have "community" aspects.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 13: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Wed, Feb 19, '92 (15:07) 6 lines
By the way, Howard, I don't mean to rain on your "community" parade, but
the topic opener says:
Is the WELL a community? How so? Or, why not?
I think I have a sort of middle-of-the-road fix on it :-).
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 14: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Wed, Feb 19, '92 (15:45) 14 lines
Kathleen, my question is a question, not a challenge. Honest! Go ahead
and open a topic! And yes, this topic is intended to explore all kinds
of perspectives, just like it sez in the topic header. Sorry I was so
terse as to sound ambiguous.
Perhaps we can get into this fruitfully in this topic a little later:
*I* find a community here for myself, and I don't believe that it is
necessary for everybody else to agree for my sense of my community to
be valid. And I do believe that there are many people who use the WELL
as a tool or an amusement and have no interest or belief in the
community aspect.
When I have a little more time, I'll expand about how the community I
find here looks like a community to me.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 15: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Wed, Feb 19, '92 (19:11) 3 lines
Right--the fact that *you* find a community here does not mean that the
WELL itself, alone from your perception, is one. In other words, the
medium stands alone. What people do with it is highly individual.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 16: Matisse Enzer (matisse) Wed, Feb 19, '92 (19:35) 7 lines
I experience The WELL as many things and a Community is most certainly
one of them.
I know alot of people here, many of whom know each other. I live with
people I met here. Much of my social life is with people I know here.
I belong to a few overlapping communites, and some dis-joint ones.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 17: RICKY (blanche) Wed, Feb 19, '92 (22:31) 7 lines
If a community is something to have one's life enriched,
then the WELL is a community.
I do believe, however, that to some degree any community is
much like school, in that you can get out what you work for,
it is not all gifts with no effort.
Enough pontificating - Let's just say learning can be fun!!!
Happy, happy, happy. Joy, joy, joy!!
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 18: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Wed, Feb 19, '92 (23:26) 29 lines
I guess this is getting a bit off the track of the WELL as a
community, but the event is fresh in my mind because I logged onto a
system in England right after I logged off the WELL an hour ago. There
is a group of people there, I guess about 20 of them, within the
larger system of a couple thousand, who seem to have something going.
When I found my way to that system and that group and mentioned that I
was looking for online groups that considered themselves communities,
they really jumped into it. They created a special conference for them
to talk with me about themselves and about virtual communities, and
they have a very touching and earnest way of telling me, of feeling
compelled to tell me about themselves.
Tonight, it was about the event of several months ago that seemed to
be a particularly defining one in terms of their feeling of community
-- the death of one of their members. They created a conference of
reminisences about their friend and printed it up and gave it to the
next of kin. The fellow who told the story said he had tears in his
eyes as he recalled it.
I am convinced that something is happening here. It isn't the same
thing as communities as we know them. But it has something very much
in common with them. I'm an enthusiast. I'm also wary about the
mistakes we make about the parts of online interaction that RESEMBLE
community but differ in less visible but crucially important ways.
For that reason, I'm interested in the skeptical comments from
Abe and Kathleen. I'd hate for you to think that virtual communities
are my hobby horse and I feel compelled to defend the very idea at
every opportunity. Help me see how people delude ourselves.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 19: Fuzzy Logic (phred) Thu, Feb 20, '92 (03:18) 18 lines
What interests me is not only the natural supposition that the Well
constitutes a 'community' (of course the question immediately arises,
what kind?), but the near-immediate chorus of 'oh no it's not' which
seems to arise thereafter.
My anthropological training may be a little bit of a hindrance here,
because community has always been defined broadly there (although there
are the usual scholarly diff--, er, ok, arguments, about the core elements
of 'community').
Also, the word has been appropriated for new kinds of uses; I wince a little
every time I see the phrase "intelligence community," which twists the
meaning of both words quite a bit in my view.
One snap definition of community that works for me, anyway, is 'where you
hang your hat' -- your home address, so to speak. The Well *is* my
'virtual home' and I think that's true for many users, although certainly
not all.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 20: Hoover Chan (hchan) Thu, Feb 20, '92 (13:05) 7 lines
A community member has a sense of belonging somewhere. I consider the
Well as my online "home". The collection of all the people here who
feel the same way can be called a community.
Someone who considers themselves to be a visitor here will probably
not feel like this is a community.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 21: Carrie Lynne Phyliky-Lay (leilani) Thu, Feb 20, '92 (13:09) 8 lines
I have, for a while, felt like the WELL is a community that I am becoming a
part of. Perhaps if he people here weren't so friendly with and supportive
of each other, my feelings would be different. It helps that there are so
many off-line connections with the same on-line folks, too... We share the
WELL, and we share each other's lives and opinions from outside the WELL. If
this doesn't make the WELL a community, I don't know what does. I find the
WELL a much more hospitable place than I ever found usent to be. And the
people here seem to really care about and connect with one another. FWIW...
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 22: M Normal (normals) Thu, Feb 20, '92 (15:36) 4 lines
Hmmm, maybe I was a little unclear before. My view of the WELL is that it
contains many communities, as well as users who don't consider themselves
any part of any community. I think this is an interesting mix. And, yes, I
did mean the question to be an open one... with any number of answers.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 23: M Normal (normals) Thu, Feb 20, '92 (15:42) 1 line
Which is what I was getting at with topic 8...
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 24: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Thu, Feb 20, '92 (18:58) 19 lines
Fred, I think your response is very interesting. Out of all of these
postings, only two people (I think) demonstrate some skepticism, yet you
identify the two of us as being the "near-immediate chorus of 'oh no
it's not'".
One of the reasons I *express* skepticism is because of the large numbers
of people who respond to questions like this as though the WELL were one
non-stop love-in :-). I think each *individual* can answer the question
for him/herself, but I think it's a mistake to generalize to the medium
on the basis of individual experience. It sets off my bullshit detector.
It implies (to me at least) that bad things don't happen here, that
people don't come here to lie, cheat and steal, that people don't get hurt
by reading too much into pseudo-relationships that online life can bring,
etc. None of that is true.
I see "virtual community" like ripples in a pond. There are some people
who are closer to the moment's event and to the people involved than are
others. We each live in our own little ripple, but at varying distances
and at different times from the pebble in the center.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 25: Gail Williams (gail) Thu, Feb 20, '92 (20:52) 15 lines
Oddly enough, the Well seems more like a physical community because of the
things you mention, Kathleen. Like a small town or a highschool where there
are the several people you adore, and there's your crowd, and there's the
other kids who are in some way different, but still part of the community.
I think about how in a small town there's only one doctor, and everyone
knows the sour old guy who runs the Shell station, yet somehow people find
ways of making community. Toleration may be more valuable than intellectual
lust, tho we have our share of ideaphoria from time to time.
Even intentional religious communities have their frictions and their
"difficult people." And every town has some less trustworthy, less mature
people. One of the problems is that it's easy to get infactuated with the
medium, but on second thought it's clear that Wellfolks are a big assorment
of characters, even if the demographics aren't as diverse as could be.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 26: more virtual than thou (jrc) Sat, Feb 22, '92 (12:16) 10 lines
This ultimately gets recursive, because is a lot of people define an
aggregation of humans as a community then it becomes a community, even
if some of the people in the community reject the description. But
my own take, at the moment, is that virtual communities are very
different from other kinds of communities, and that the community
metaphor often disguises those differences.
I would wonder what Abe's answer is to his own question: ie, why *do*
people have a need to consider the Well a community.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 27: Carrie Lynne Phyliky-Lay (leilani) Sat, Feb 22, '92 (12:25) 2 lines
What differences do you perceive between a virtual community and other kinds
of communities, Jon?
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 28: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Sun, Feb 23, '92 (11:58) 8 lines
Re why some (or "many" per nancy :-) people need to see the people on the
WELL as a community is because they have higher affiliation needs than
others. I think two things helped move the idea of "community" along--
the fact that the WELL was almost exclusively regional for a long time and
held parties at the office once a month, and the presence of the Deadheads
who themselves feel that they are their own "community". Quite a lot of
the original online interaction sprang from the fact that many of these
people *did* know each other f2f.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 29: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Sun, Feb 23, '92 (12:20) 4 lines
I think that's a pretty good, succinct, definition, Kathleen. I've
never heard to phrase "affiliation needs" before, but it makes sense.
It sounds to me like a basic human trait, but one with wide variation
from individual to individual.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 30: Lena M. Diethelm (lendie) Sun, Feb 23, '92 (12:27) 8 lines
Will Schutz (remember him?) devised a psychological test called the FIRO-B.
One of the things it looks for is one's degree of affiliation needs...on a
on a continuum of no-affiliation needs to hyper-affiliation needs.
Interestingly, in scoring the test, scores on either extreme are usually an
overcompensation. So, for example, some with no-affiliation needs as a
score on the test is probably *denying* such needs.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 31: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Sun, Feb 23, '92 (13:05) 13 lines
I think you make an argument that in relationship to the WELL, someone who
claims to have no affiliation needs would be the person who logs on, looks
around, declares all of us assholes, and logs off permanently :-).
On the other end of the scale, IMO, are those who declare that this is
one big happy family.
At the risk of some parlor psychology, I think the people who are put off
by what they see as "cliques" (okay, I'll open a topic for it, don't drift
over this here) probably have at least middle to high needs for affiliation
but feel ambivalent about it.
And there are probably other shades of gray here, too.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 32: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Sun, Feb 23, '92 (13:13) 2 lines
Sorry, the first line of the above is "I think you *can* make an
argument...".
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 33: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Sun, Feb 23, '92 (13:56) 3 lines
Good stuff Kathleen. Although I seriously doubt that anyone who has
spent much time on the WELL would claim, especially lately, that there
is one big happy family around here.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 34: more virtual than thou (jrc) Sun, Feb 23, '92 (14:01) 8 lines
Hmmm, and then there are people who log on *all* the time, but
still declare that the Well is a pack of assholes. Perhaps those
are unacknowledged affiliation needs.
If community indicates a group of people to which an individual
feel loyalty and commitment, I think the Well does form a
community, and does so without the f2f interaction.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 35: Lena M. Diethelm (lendie) Sun, Feb 23, '92 (14:11) 12 lines
What Jon says about unacknowledged affiliation is closer to my thinking
although I think the person who fits Kathleen's definition prolly fits in
there, too.
Another part of this to consider is even a severely abused child (both in
childhood *and* adulthood) will feel loyalty and commitment to his/her
family of origin although the loyalty and commitment will not necessarily be
articulated affirmatively.
The "clique" issue speaks more to inclusion/exclusion needs, another one of
the factors of Schutz's FIRO-B assessment instrument.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 36: Carrie Lynne Phyliky-Lay (leilani) Sun, Feb 23, '92 (16:19) 2 lines
What are all the factors assessed in Schutz's FIRO-B etc, etc... Lena?
I'd be interested to hear the full description. Want to see where I fit. :)
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 37: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Sun, Feb 23, '92 (16:56) 8 lines
But my larger point is that the WELL does not constitute community in and
of itself, any more than CompuServe does. The WELL as a conferencing
system is the medium by which affiliations do or do not form.
This sort of monolithic WELL = COMMUNITY drives me nuts. Yes, yes, yes,
you can back up that reasoning with definitions out of the dictionary,
but I don't think that the discussion is served by the imposition of a
literal interpretation. IMO.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 38: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Sun, Feb 23, '92 (17:01) 10 lines
>loyalty and commitment to his/her family of origin
Good call. That explains, I think, the dynamic whereby *every* active
BBS in the universe has at least one person (if not more) who posts
"This is the *coolest* BBS ever!!!!". I'd put a smiley there, but it's
a phenomenon not necessarily worthy of joking around about. It's as
though if I tell you (the greater BBS community) how "cool" you are, you
will love me more, although there might be other equally valid
interpretations of that. In any event, it's something I've seen here,
too.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 39: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Sun, Feb 23, '92 (18:18) 26 lines
I understand that the monolithic well=community drives you nuts,
Kathleen. I don't think that simplistic level of generalization has a
lot of currency, if any, any more. There are several communities here,
a population of people for whom none of it is a community, and a small
number of people who participate obsessively enough to feel that the
WELL itself is a community. I feel that way because I am online a lot,
and because I'm involved in several of the subcommunities. From the
keyhole I see things through, the WELL is very much like a community,
but that is not the same as saying it looks that way to everyone.
However, if you look around at the larger networks and other
conferencing systems, the WELL is much more often regarded by
outsiders as a kind of monolithic community with particular
characteristics -- kinda counter-culture oriented, very "California,"
quite insular, relatively rough-and-tumble, often rude.
People in England have been warning me that "California thinking" can
get people mocked on their system, and I'm trying to explain to them
that even people in California think I'm odd. :-)
Thanks for your insights, Kathleen and Lena. This business about
levels of need for affiliation has been rattling around in my head.
Good food for thought.
Can you say more, Lena, about the Schutz stuff? Sounds pretty
applicable to the discussion.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 40: Lena M. Diethelm (lendie) Sun, Feb 23, '92 (19:06) 4 lines
I need to go find my notes...
then I'll report back. :-)
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 41: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Sun, Feb 23, '92 (20:20) 1 line
Lena, has he published anything accessible?
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 42: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Sun, Feb 23, '92 (20:30) 5 lines
BTW, Howard, I do agree with your assessment that "outsiders" tend to
see the WELL as much more "community" than it is. And I think a lot of
it *can* be attributed to regionalism. If you spend any time on Echo,
you'll see a *system* that's very much the same as the WELL, but is
*vastly* different in flavor.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 43: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Sun, Feb 23, '92 (22:38) 4 lines
I do plan to spend some time on Echo. What is your take on the
community myth or lack of it there, Kathleen?
Eager to see those notes, Lena. Thanks.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 44: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Sun, Feb 23, '92 (22:46) 7 lines
Once you're ready to do it, Howard, you might want to ask stacy to open
a "virtual community" conference there, too.
As kind of the ultimate "inside outsider" on Echo (as we both are), it's
harder to gauge. My impression is, though, that the "group" has become
quite close-knit. It's also much smaller than the WELL. It would be
interesting to see what their reactions are to the same questions.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 45: M Normal (normals) Mon, Feb 24, '92 (00:31) 4 lines
Do you know how many subscribers Echo has?
Today I downloaded some stuff about the sense of community on another BBS.
I'll upload part of it soon.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 46: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Mon, Feb 24, '92 (06:17) 1 line
No, I don't know. Fewer than 300 probably.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 47: Patrizia (pdil) Mon, Feb 24, '92 (08:41) 18 lines
Of course the WELL is a community. But I'm not altogether sure that it
didn't work better, for me at least, __before__ it became a community, when
it was still a nucleus of intriguingly minded souls looking for the
right-sized bottle to fit the message into. When you allow the WELL to
become defined as a community in your mind, you sharply curtail the types of
interactions that can take place using the WELL as their exchange medium.
Communications must become "accountable" something in the way that
communications are accountable in the society at large. I'm not just
talking the bans on rudeness and ad hominems that are discussed at great
length in other conferences. I'm talking more about risk-taking behaviors
that are necessary for communication to evolve. I'm more inclined to take
risks in front of strangers than I am in front of friends. (I realize that
for many if not most people, the opposite is true).
My observations of user lifespan are that most people's truly INTERESTING
postings are done within their first six months on the system. Afterwards
they trickle way down, and what's considered "creative" is the forced banter
or tired pun. At least in the public conferences...
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 48: Carrie Lynne Phyliky-Lay (leilani) Mon, Feb 24, '92 (09:04) 3 lines
Very perceptive posting, Patrizia. I agree with you. I've only been posting
to the WELL since- I think November- and I've noticed I'm starting to watch
what I say more, already...
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 49: Hoover Chan (hchan) Mon, Feb 24, '92 (09:21) 2 lines
I enjoyed the time that I spent on Echo. While I was there, it did feel
like it was more local than the Well.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 50: chimpanzee with a joystick (jstraw) Mon, Feb 24, '92 (09:29) 5 lines
Yes, to me the WELL is a community but what is a community? The word does
not imply to anything so simle as a bunch of co-operative, like minded
people that like one another to pieces. Like most communities, it is home to
some distinct sub-cultures some of which overlap and some of which
positively repel one another.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 51: Richard A. Saunders (saunders) Mon, Feb 24, '92 (12:43) 20 lines
This argument has some similarities to the hand gun debate. Some say the
hand gun is only a tool. It's the intent of the user that is the issue.
Others argue that the very design of the weapon makes it inherently evil
i.e., useful only for killing other people.
So one could argue that the WELL is just a tool for communicating. It is
the intent of the user that is the issue. And of course, there are aspects
of communicating via the WELL or f2f that create a sense of community--you
recognize names, those names assume personalities, you agree with some, you
disagree with others--seems to me you couldn't possibly cut the community
out of the WELL and have it live.
One thing I've been feeling since I joined the WELL, though. Even tho I use
e-mail at my job every day, and am used to it, I know I'm writing to a
particular person which FEELS very different from sending these messages to
the WELL. This feels like I'm throwing messages in bottles out into the ocean
somehow. Maybe it's because I keep feeling like the posted responses are
graffiti left long ago by people long gone (even if I can SEE that they might
have been put there yesterday). Is this because I'm new to this or is this
a characteristic of BBS's which one has to get used to?
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 52: M Normal (normals) Mon, Feb 24, '92 (17:30) 9 lines
Well, in a way you ARE throwing out messages to an uncertain future. Unless
you scribble your old responses they can hang around for quite a while, and
later be read by someone who wasn't even online when you originally posted.
This is what makes me consider my words carefully. I have never scribbled
anything I've posted because I think the record is valuable, even though
some of it might make me groan [or discourage someone from hiring me, etc]
now. I have heard that meeting other users f2f makes a difference in how
people think about this place, but as I first got online when I lived in
Chicago, I found that I knew people pretty well without having to meet them.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 53: DAS! (artcomtv) Mon, Feb 24, '92 (20:40) 2 lines
Uh, ONLINE as community... I meet my friends here, and discover new ones.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 54: Pete Hanson (phanson) Tue, Feb 25, '92 (00:14) 5 lines
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 55: Richard A. Saunders (saunders) Tue, Feb 25, '92 (08:01) 2 lines
Pete, I thought you lived in San Antone. Guess you moved, hunh? How could
you leave the tortilla soup at the Alamo Cafe?
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 56: Carrie Lynne Phyliky-Lay (leilani) Tue, Feb 25, '92 (08:12) 1 line
This is topic drift, but I lived in San Antonio for 7 years...
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 57: Patrizia (pdil) Tue, Feb 25, '92 (08:30) 6 lines
I guess the question of whether the WELL __is__ a community is less
interesting to me than the question of __how__ that community is structured,
or how it __could__ be structured. Right now it seems to want to mirror
real life in terms of a lot of the interpersonal relationships that exist
through this milieu. Strict adherence to biological personae, rules of
politesse that govern person-to-person communication, etc etc.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 58: Cliff Figallo (fig) Tue, Feb 25, '92 (09:44) 24 lines
My definition of "community" evolved during my years on the hippyc'myoon to
become a more ecological idea...that the community is a result of filling a
lot of special-purpose niches to attain a state of equilibrium. Community
does not necessarily mean that everyone is happy together or that everyone
shares the same goal. We deluded ourselves on the Farm into thinking that a
common purpose (Save the World) would temper us into a real community that
would last for generations. After 12 years, the physical community dissolved
in disappointment. I won't get fooled by that idea again.
On the WELL, we do not share a common purpose, although some would like to.
I think that many of us are fascinated with both watching the experiment and
being part of it. Many of us have a love/hate relationship to conflict.
Many of us enjoy the relative insulation that the medium grants us to be
able to change roles or to say things to people that would be difficult or
risky in person. But there are definite niche-fillers who make up the cast
of characters. Heros and villains, nurturers and ripoffs, jokers and
curmudgeons. Management's role has been to not constrict access and hope
that a good balance of types would naturally result. I do not believe that
one has to cop to being a "member of a community" for one to actually be
a member of a community. Being a member does not obligate one to act in
any certain way except to participate in some interaction. One certainly
does not have to give up one's autonomy to be a part of a community any more
than the fern by the pond has to do anything special to be a part of the
pond's ecology.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 59: Patrizia (pdil) Tue, Feb 25, '92 (10:03) 2 lines
Well, I would dispute that. There are certain rules that are externally
imposed. It is not a matter of evolution in a closed system.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 60: Cliff Figallo (fig) Tue, Feb 25, '92 (10:21) 8 lines
If we look at the WELL's history, we see that almost all of the "rules" have
evolved out of discussion within the system. I don't know of any
"externally imposed" rules except those related to billing. Management has
been appropriately backed off from imposing rules by the vocal reactions of
the people who care. Management does exert a relatively strong influence to
try to make the business survive. If this were totally organic and natural,
the system would have to learn to survive on its own through
self-governance.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 61: chimpanzee with a joystick (jstraw) Tue, Feb 25, '92 (10:52) 1 line
no dogma
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 62: Jacques Leslie (jacques) Tue, Feb 25, '92 (11:01) 19 lines
My notion of a community has something to do with the idea that it is freely
and voluntarily formed, and that once a member, one doesn't need to alter
one's behavior much in order to remain a member. That is, the person who
consistently rants is no less a member than the constantly nurturing one:
both contribute a part of themselves to the mixture that becomes the
community. To the extent that rules are imposed (and my own impression,
reinforced by brief excursions to other networks is that the WELL is largely
free of rules), the community loses its vibrancy.
Another point which may or may not be relevant: it seems to me that the WELL
functions as a mirror to each of its users. It's clear that the person whose
postings consist chiefly of flames, for example, looks at the WELL and
denounces something he sees there, but in fact what he sees is his own
projection, and his frequent denunciations chiefly reveal his poor
self-image. Just as, to cite another example, the person who posts only
supportive and nurturing comments may be mainly displaying his own hunger
for nurturing. One thing I like about the WELL is the openness with which
people reveal how they see themselves in the mirror (even if they don't
agree that what they see in the WELL is a mirror).
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 63: Patrizia (pdil) Tue, Feb 25, '92 (12:05) 12 lines
Excellent point, Jacques.
Cliff, perhaps the rules seem externally imposed to me because by the time I
became a user (two years ago), certain ones seemed to have crystalized. The
two that seem most interesting to me was #1, the insistence on one's own
bilogical persona as a passport into the community and #2, an adherence to
certain pro formas derived from f2f communication for the discussions we
have here. These two "rules" meant that the type of community that the WELL
has become very much reflects the coporeal world. I am not saying thatthis
is either a bad or a good thing; just that virtual communities have the
potential, at least, to be structured along more experimental lines. I
would be interested in participating in such an experiment...
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 64: Cliff Figallo (fig) Tue, Feb 25, '92 (12:23) 12 lines
I agree, Patrizia. If I had more time, more resources, I would encourage
new communities to form, less bound by traditions formed in the current one.
I believe that some "memes" are more universal than others. Some are
created or discovered according to the times, some according to the
participants. The current WELL is the product of who founded it, who first
settled it, the events that have taken place during its lifetime, its
location in San Francisco, etc. What would happen if we started a new
"neighborhood" on the WELL that was based more on who showed up via the
Internet? What if we marketed more to college-aged people? What if this
new neighborhood grew without the "advantages" of the WELL's history and,
instead, discovered its own traditions?
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 65: chimpanzee with a joystick (jstraw) Tue, Feb 25, '92 (12:35) 1 line
then it would be something else
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 66: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Tue, Feb 25, '92 (14:26) 1 line
The End of the WELL as We Know It :-).
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 67: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Tue, Feb 25, '92 (14:52) 5 lines
In answer to Cliff's hypothetical in response 64, I think it would be
a great experiment, and I bet people would find their ways over the
wall from WELL1 to WELL2 in both directions. I see "the End of the
WELL as We Know It" as a periodic event, and stages in the development
of a whole ecosystem of communities.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 68: chimpanzee with a joystick (jstraw) Tue, Feb 25, '92 (15:08) 2 lines
wasn't the anonymous conf a small lab test in this field? wasn't it a
disaster?
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 69: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Tue, Feb 25, '92 (16:53) 2 lines
Cliff isn't suggesting anonymity, which is what seemed to be part of
the problem with that experiment.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 70: more virtual than thou (jrc) Tue, Feb 25, '92 (17:38) 18 lines
Patrizia makes some nice points. I can think of other externally
imposed restraints that have a profound effect, like ownership of
a computer or literacy or fluency in English. Those seem obvious,
but we tend to forget them as we draw conclusions about this place
as a microcosm.
Patrizia's point about hoiw the communities have (unnecessarily
restrictive) real-world analogs is, i think, mostly a function of
the youth of the system. As we become more flexible, and as the
communtiy grows to encompass greater geographicl diversity, the
communities will diverge further and further from the real life
analogs.
Already this is true for me. In terms of age and profession, my
affinity group (that is, the people I most commonly exchange
email with) on the Well is much more heterogenous than my
f2f friendship circle.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 71: Alan Leveton (psychal) Tue, Feb 25, '92 (22:33) 9 lines
William C. Schutz
'The Interpersonal Underworld, FIRO," Science and Behavior Books,Palo
Alto,1966
"Joy ,Expanding Human Awareness, "Grove Press, NY 1967.
Lives near Pt. Reyes, neat guy, teaches etc.
Re; community. To a it seems as if there are 16 who participate
with seeming unlimited access time and, if stats are true, 4000+ 'lurkers'.
Can this be so?
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 72: Pete Hanson (phanson) Wed, Feb 26, '92 (01:30) 4 lines
[drifting ... I scribbled 54 immediately after posting it cause it
didn't say what I wanted it to say. Richard -- yes, I did live in
Santone up until last October when I loaded my truck, er.. car and
moved to Tacoma, Washington. Washington State, that is.]
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 73: Cliff Figallo (fig) Wed, Feb 26, '92 (10:07) 9 lines
>> Re; community. To a it seems as if there are 16 who participate
with seeming unlimited access time and, if stats are true, 4000+ 'lurkers'.
Can this be so?
It's not quite that skewed. Probably more like the 80/20 rule, but it
matters what conferences you visit, also. I guess it's not too unlike the
physical world where a smaller and smaller percentage of the people get a
larger and larger share of the stage until you get to George Bush, and,
thankfully, Billy Crystal.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 74: Patrizia (pdil) Wed, Feb 26, '92 (10:39) 1 line
...who are both merely lesser larval stages of the Supreme ELVIS...
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 75: Jim Rutt (jimrutt) Wed, Feb 26, '92 (10:47) 5 lines
I ran some stats a year or so ago that showed 50% of the posting one month
were from 1% of the user base. As I recall 4% of the user base was
responsible for 80% of the postings.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 76: Jim Rutt (jimrutt) Wed, Feb 26, '92 (10:47) 14 lines
Well, amasingly enough I found all those old statistics. In January of 1991
the cumulative posting distribution looked like this:
% of subscribers % of total postings
1 50
4 80
6.5 90
10 95
16 99
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 77: chimpanzee with a joystick (jstraw) Wed, Feb 26, '92 (11:37) 1 line
and now? and how many wellperns does a percentage point make, then and now?
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 78: Cliff Figallo (fig) Wed, Feb 26, '92 (11:49) 15 lines
I wonder how the WELL's stats compare with other systems. Will telecom
set a rule of thumb that 80% of the posting is by 4% of the people? If so,
is that more out of balance than what happens in a democracy in general?
And if 99% of the talk is by only 16% of the people, what does this mean for
the other 84% (of whom about half don't even log in)? Obviously it does not
lend itself gracefully to a Majority Rules situation. Is such virtual
community a democracy or a post-ocracy. I post, therefore I am. And how do
lurkers figure into a VC in any case? They serve as an invisible audience.
Tools could be made to make the audience more visible by showing how many
people actually read the words posted.
I forgot, Jim, but were these stats based on all conferences on the WELL at
that time? Do they represent private conferences where I would think a
higher percentage of people might post?
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 79: Jim Rutt (jimrutt) Wed, Feb 26, '92 (12:44) 4 lines
The stats were for all public conferences, private conferences weren't
considered.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 80: Jim Rutt (jimrutt) Wed, Feb 26, '92 (12:44) 23 lines
Even among relatively active users the style and intensity varies
tremendously. Here's a chart that shows the posting intensity by range
across all users that had posted at least 20 notes in a public conference
during January 1991:
minutes/online people percent Cummulative
per post Percent
1.7-5 13 0.06 0.06
5.01-10 68 0.29 0.34
10.01-15 47 0.20 0.54
15.01-20 41 0.17 0.72
20.01-25 15 0.06 0.78
25.01-30 16 0.07 0.85
30.01-35 15 0.06 0.91
35.01-40 5 0.02 0.94
40.01-45 6 0.03 0.96
45.01-50 4 0.02 0.98
over 50 5 0.02 1.00
---- ----
235 1.00
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 81: chimpanzee with a joystick (jstraw) Wed, Feb 26, '92 (13:18) 1 line
boy, I don't get it at all %-)
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 82: Gail Williams (gail) Wed, Feb 26, '92 (14:39) 4 lines
Those who post at all are likely to post quite a bit, it seems.
I wonder how many of the Well's users only use email. There seem to be
subsets who interact in mail, or who read confs and email the participants,
so that there's a sort of whispered secondary layer of conversation.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 83: Carrie Lynne Phyliky-Lay (leilani) Wed, Feb 26, '92 (15:08) 2 lines
What about the Lurkers who come to WOPs? Where do they fit in the WELL as a
community?
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 84: Alan Leveton (psychal) Thu, Feb 27, '92 (00:21) 4 lines
When 84% of the population expresses 1% of what is visible be wary
of consensus conclusions. I'm going to try something paradoxical
in this conference.Notice new topic down the road.Those in the
silent majority please consider the proposition.............
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 85: Nicholas Brawne (brawne) Fri, Feb 28, '92 (20:22) 6 lines
How about a conference for those of us that dont respond, rarely respond, or
never respond, a browsers only conference that would reduce the WELL to a
well!
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 86: David Kline (kline) Sat, Feb 29, '92 (11:58) 2 lines
The electronic version of the ancient koan? What is the sound of no posters
posting?
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 87: Jennifer White Avian (jen) Sun, Mar 1, '92 (23:01) 35 lines
I just got through reading this topic from start to finish and find it
fascinating. Community has been of great interest to me since I was a
teenager and I've had limited experience with various forms of community
and/or psuedocommunity since then.
There are many definitions of community - some of which have been described
above - but the one _I_ find most meaningful (and, probably, most difficult)
comes from the book "A Different Drum" by M. Scott Peck. He describes
community as a group of people who have _chosen_ to "communicate honestly
with each other, and whose relationships go deeper than their masks of
composure." A group that shares joy and pleasure as well as sorrow and
pain. Community has to be *in*clusive or it is merely a clique - the only
selective characteristic is *self-selection* in that the individuals have
made a commitment to knowledge of themselves and each other.
So. If I apply that definition to the Well as a whole, then it is not a
community. There are many people for whom that kind of interaction is not
desirable - we all come to the Well with different reasons and agendas for
participation and being in community (as defined above - or any other way,
for that matter) isn't necessarily one of them.
I'm not even sure that there are any true, *inclusive* communities on the
Well although I know that many individuals have chosen to behave with
honesty and vulnerability towards each other.
Why is that kind of community important? Or desirable? That's a difficult
question to answer because it is so individual. I know that it is
important and desirable to _me_ because I have direct experience that it is.
I have never fully participated in a long term community - but I've had
several experiences with short term communities and the benefits are
tangible. The most succinct thing I can say about it is that true community
provides a place for knowing myself (and others) and making helpful changes
in my lifestyle/behaviors. Intentional community is not easy but it is very
dynamic and interesting and challenges me in ways that I don't often get
elsewhere.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 88: Jennifer White Avian (jen) Mon, Mar 2, '92 (00:16) 34 lines
Community (the way I was talking about it in the last posting) generally
goes through four stages: pseudocommunity, chaos, emptiness, and community.
(There are, of course, variations in this - rigidity is _not_ one of the
characteristics of community)
Pseudocommunity is where the group tries to become an instant community by
faking it. The members are pleasant and avoid disagreement. They
seemingly share intimacy and vulnerability right away without
difficulty. Differences and conflict are ignored or glossed over.
Chaos is a stage of fighting and struggle - but a *nonproductive* one.
Conflicts and struggles when they lead to greater understanding of the
issues and each other are essential. However, what characterizes the
stage of chaos is that it is uncreative and unconstuctive. People
continually slug away at each other to little or no effect.
Emptiness is the bridge between chaos and community. It's where the group
learns to _listen_ to each other. We start to *really*
acknowledge and support the differences between each other. We're not
trying to "fix" other people or convert them to our way of thinking
or feeling.
It is my observation over six years of being on the Well that _as a whole_
we bounce around from phase to phase - spending an inordinate amount of time
in chaos. And that, _as a whole_, this is not necessarily inappropriate.
There is no agreement among people logging on to the Well to participate in
the kind of community I describe - nor should there be.
However, for those people who might find that kind of work (and it _is_
work) desirable, I think the Well could be an ideal place to do it. It's
already happened spontaneously from time to time in various conferences and
among various individuals and I'd love to see it happen in an overt,
commited way.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 89: Erik E. Fair (fair) Mon, Mar 2, '92 (01:04) 5 lines
In the context of the WELL, the sound of no posters posting is:
"Your honor, we wish to file for bankruptcy."
Erik E. Fair apple!fair fair@apple.com
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 90: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Mon, Mar 2, '92 (07:04) 10 lines
Very illuminating, jen. And I think your analysis of the situation, in
the context you set forth, is right on. In that context, though, I don't
think I've ever seen "community" work over time, probably because no one
ever looked at what it would take to make it happen. Among other things,
it would require the commitment of everyone involved, and the "rules"
would have to stay constant. Too many variables in even a self-selected
"community" over time unless commitment and consistency were enforced
(I'm thinking on a conference level here, not WELL-wide). You could
probably settle the consistency issue, but in a medium--a business which
thrives on new users--like this one, you can't legislate commitment.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 91: Cliff Figallo (fig) Mon, Mar 2, '92 (11:01) 19 lines
Some of us who lived on the Farm (certainly not all) came out of the
experience with the impression that our attempt to create a lasting
intentional community failed because we never defined the boundaries of that
community. There was always an open gate for new people to come in, try it
out, take advantage of the limited resources and, usually, leave. We asked
for commitment from those who stayed, but there is no real way to guarantee
that someone will continue living in a situation if they change their mind.
The WELL is not an intentional community. Many are attracted to us because
we sound more like a community than just about anything else out there, but
those who come seeking the ideal defined community are often disappointed.
The WELL is relatively small, carries much of its history online, has
established jargon and memes, demonstrates a lot of interpersonal
familiarity and relationship, and supports the kinds of gatherings and
discussions that emphasize group identification. It also makes itself open
to anyone wanting to join, as long as they can pay, and it allows anyone to
leave whenever they want. This "churn" works against the kind of stability
that may be necessary to keep the kind of intentional community that Jen is
referring to from surviving.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 92: Jennifer White Avian (jen) Mon, Mar 2, '92 (12:43) 1 line
Exactly - it would be impossible, and, I think, undesirable Well-wide.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 93: Paul Belserene (paulbel) Tue, Mar 3, '92 (00:13) 14 lines
If we're wondering whether the WELL is a community, it might
be interesting to consider what constitutes a community. As far
as I know, there are no regulations or licenses governing
whether something may legitimately be called a community (as
there would be in deciding if something were, say, a marriage,
or an Olympic team, or a dozen).
What this really means is that we have no authority to appeal to.
Communities are things which we have come over time to call
communities. So we tend to define communities with reference
to things which we already agree are communities.
There are lots of things common to "real" communities and the
WELL.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 94: Paul Belserene (paulbel) Tue, Mar 3, '92 (00:14) 16 lines
By the same token, if we're looking to prove that the WELL is
not a community, we have to be careful about what constitutes
proof of the negation. The simple fact that WELLbeings are
asking the question is evidence that the WELL is a candidate
(the existence of the term "WELLbeing" is also evidence)
Where is the burden of proof? My hunch is community exists
with a consensus of WELLbeings. The burden of proof is on the
naysayer. And proving the negative is going to be very tough.
I live in Vancouver. I live in a community. There are people in
this community. I know some of them. I don't know, have never
even met, most of them. People in my community come
together (not all at once) for our common good. People in my
community often behave, singly and in groups, to the detriment
of the common good.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 95: Paul Belserene (paulbel) Tue, Mar 3, '92 (00:15) 10 lines
Lots of people in my community go through life without
contributing much, actively, to the community. Many, too many,
feel that they are not part of the community. But my community
includes these apathetic and alienated people.
So it isn't good enough to say "The WELL is not a community
because I (or even "because lots of us") don't treat it as one" or
because It isn't one for me, or because I don't want it to be one.
You can be included in a community against your will.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 96: Paul Belserene (paulbel) Tue, Mar 3, '92 (00:16) 10 lines
My community includes other communities, intersects with
other communities and is included by yet other communities.
The gay community, the sports community, The Native
American Urban community, the academic community, the
telecom community. My neighbors, East Vancouverites, British
Columbians, Canadians, Global villagers. Few of us have
contact with most, not to mention all possible communities, and
no one belongs to none. Membership in one community does
not preclude membership in any others.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 97: Paul Belserene (paulbel) Tue, Mar 3, '92 (00:17) 19 lines
My community includes many businesses. Most of them are
here, not to be part of the community, but to make profits.
Some, however, have a concept of "good corporate citizenship".
Others have no feelings at all for the community, and would
uproot or shut down at the drop of a quarterly report. Many
individuals are part of my community because their business is
located here. Others have found work here because this is
where they want to live.
Certainly, the fact that the WELL includes people and
businesses that are "only here to do business", does not argue
against the WELL being a community. The WELL can be a
business service *and* a community. Just the way your office
can be a business and a community. A prostitute offers a
business service, for that matter, and also participates in other
human relationships.
My community embraces prostitutes, even if not all of us within
the community do.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 98: Paul Belserene (paulbel) Tue, Mar 3, '92 (00:18) 15 lines
It is a characteristic of my community that from time to time
someone does something that helps us cement our feelings of
community. Ben Johnson's victory in Seoul brought us all
together in pride for Canada. His subsequent disqualification
for steroid use also brought us together, in disgrace. Terry Fox
brought us all together in the fight against cancer.
Blair Newman's death brought WELLbeings together in grief,
or, perhaps, in the diverse responses to his suicide and to
losing his presence. Kathleen Creighton brought people
together with her WELLhead poster program for the benefit of
her operation. Not all of us were part of those events. But not
having felt oneself a part of these events does not negate their
community-enhancing effect.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
# 99: Paul Belserene (paulbel) Tue, Mar 3, '92 (00:20) 11 lines
t is also a characteristic of my community that from time to
time someone will do something that seems directly to
challenge community values. This is often felt as shocking or
outrageous or threatening. Nixon threatened the American
community by undermining the Presidency. People actually feel
that his actions "strengthened democracy" by testing its
response mechanisms. Sacco Vanzetti. The Rosenbergs. The
Scopes Trial. Roe vs Wade. Much of American community has
been forged by attacks on it (Some of those attacks were
successful, too). Jeffrey Dahmer, Mike Tyson, Clarence
Thomas, William Kennedy Smith.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#100: Paul Belserene (paulbel) Tue, Mar 3, '92 (00:21) 22 lines
What tends to happen is that the community reacts to threats to
the society in ways that tend to reinforce the community.
Controversy gets us talking and talking is part of community-
making. One might say that flames are a kind of vitamin for the
WELL community.
Not long ago a person who called himself Abe Opincar was the
center of a great deal of controversy. Much of the talk was of
how actions were tearing at the fundamental trust and values
that characterize the WELL. Not only did that talk help people
think about what the fabric of this community is, but now, a
year or so later, those discussions have spawned a variety of
catch phases ("I have touched your women") that are part of the
shared language of the WELL, one of the ways we can signal to
each other that we share some history.
Albert Lee Mitchell rants about religion. People respond.
Later, people get tired of responding to similar rants and let
newcomers join the battle. Both responses become part of
community activity. Thaisa Frank points out that every village
has someone ranting in a corner of the city square.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#101: Paul Belserene (paulbel) Tue, Mar 3, '92 (00:24) 7 lines
From wise elders to rebels to fools. From officials to criminals
to celebrities. From the activist to the alienated to the silent
majority. From the enigmatic lurker to the droning bore who
composes interminable posts offline, (like this post)
We seem to be a well stocked community.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#102: Lena M. Diethelm (lendie) Tue, Mar 3, '92 (08:20) 3 lines
Great posts, Paul!!!
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#103: Carrie Lynne Phyliky-Lay (leilani) Tue, Mar 3, '92 (09:08) 1 line
Yeah. Some nice postinge there, Paul. :)
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#104: Matisse Enzer (matisse) Thu, Mar 5, '92 (17:52) 9 lines
The idea of The WELL fostering the growth of additional
'neighborhoods', and of The WELL connecting to other existing
'neighborhoods' is one that intrigues me.
What are the 'neighborhoods' already on the WELL?
If you had top divide all the WELL's conferences (200+) into 3 groups
ushc that the fewest number of people read stuff in different groups,
what would those 3 neighborhoods look like?
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#105: chimpanzee with a joystick (jstraw) Thu, Mar 5, '92 (21:30) 1 line
huh?
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#106: M Normal (normals) Fri, Mar 6, '92 (09:05) 5 lines
well a pretty clear division would be between techie and non-techie areas...
but having little to no overlap is the kicker in that question! I think the
sense of community can be very strong in some of the techie confs...
particularly when people are working out some kind of problem together.
Interesting question, matisse.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#107: Matisse Enzer (matisse) Fri, Mar 6, '92 (18:00) 10 lines
Just to re-phrase so more folks can get the idea (M's got it):
Are there 3 (or 4 or 10) groups of conferences on the WELL that are
the primary hang-out of reasonably seperate groups of people (always
some overlap)
If you had to divide the WELL into say, 3 groups of conferences in
such a way that mopst people would have almost their whgole .cflist
within one of the groups, what then would those groups be?
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#108: Lena M. Diethelm (lendie) Fri, Mar 6, '92 (18:10) 2 lines
no.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#109: Carrie Lynne Phyliky-Lay (leilani) Fri, Mar 6, '92 (18:34) 3 lines
I'm curious but I haven't a clue on this one. Are there really only 3 (or 4
or 10) cliques on the WELL? Aren't the boundaries of these groups pretty
fluid?
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#110: chimpanzee with a joystick (jstraw) Fri, Mar 6, '92 (20:23) 2 lines
as one of the WELL's deadheads, I am amazed at how many of the
non-dead-related confs that I read are NOT frequented by any other deadheads
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#111: Gail Williams (gail) Fri, Mar 6, '92 (23:25) 2 lines
A lot of deadheads don't "go over the wall" and explore the other
neighborhoods.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#112: chimpanzee with a joystick (jstraw) Sat, Mar 7, '92 (09:27) 2 lines
FWIW I read about 40 confs (some with little activity) of which, what, seven
or so are dead-related.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#113: David Kline (kline) Sat, Mar 7, '92 (10:07) 5 lines
"Over the wall" is exactly the phrase I've seen used in the private
conference that first brought me to the well. And, yes, there are
definitely theose who NEVER go over the wall...
I have about 5-6 confs on my list, but I try to change them around. I
always feel like I'm living on the tip of the iceberg.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#114: Matisse Enzer (matisse) Sat, Mar 7, '92 (11:11) 13 lines
There are certainly far more than 3 or 4 'neighborhoods'... the
Grateful Dead Neighborhood is one - there are others like the GBN
confs (all private) are another. There are a few private conferences
here in which most of the members read only that conference.
Not sure what lena's "no" meant above...
The idea behind my question is to understand more about how people
tend to create their own sub-communities wherever we can... a healthy
community or neighborhood needs to have BOUNDARIES, but thos
eboundaries should not be totally sealed - some neighborhoods have
fairly loose boundaries opthers are tighter, but all have some overlap
and exchaneg with others.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#115: demontiki (jdevoto) Sat, Mar 7, '92 (11:43) 3 lines
I don't think the WELL has neighborhoods in the sense you mean (with the
exception of the dead-related group of conferences). There's enough overlap
that no division makes sense as a way of partitioning the group of WELL users.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#116: Lena M. Diethelm (lendie) Sat, Mar 7, '92 (22:56) 2 lines
My no basically meant what Jeanne just said above.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#117: Matisse Enzer (matisse) Sun, Mar 8, '92 (18:51) 12 lines
First ral chance I get, I'll do some kind of real analysis - like
listing every .cflist on the WELL and running some comparisions.
Somehow I bet that we would find that peopl who visit, say the ACEN
conference are much less likely to visit the Poltics conference than
say, Mucho.
There are definite patterns of use on The WELL - it explains why
there are many fairly active usrers who have never run accross each
others' postings.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#118: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Sun, Mar 8, '92 (18:57) 2 lines
Excuse me? I assume you're going to ask for permission to retrieve folks'
.cflists.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#119: Nicholas Brawne (brawne) Sun, Mar 8, '92 (19:35) 47 lines
I could not tell you how many communities or neighborhoods exist on the
WELL,
but it is really beginning to have the feel of a small city to me, in which
like
London or Tokyo you can round a corner and find yourself in a place with a
very
different character to the place you were just in. Each neighborhood has a
distinctly different character, yet all are closely related to the whole,
and it
is these parts or differing yet similar characteristics which make up the
overall character or feel of the whole. The WELL does not (thank god) feel
like
compuserve, or AOL, or any other on-line service, it has a character which
is
uniquely its own, in much the same way that we can compare cities in terms
of
urban characteristics; which many share as defining characteristics of
cities
[in the European sense of the term] - what makes a city, and what makes each
city different from the other.
This is not to say that you will not find some of the same people inhabiting
more than one neighborhood, city or conference, you will, just as you bump
into
your friends and neighbors in the strangest of places sometimes. (I have
bumped
into friends unexpectedly half way around the world)
Do we ever really know who are neighbors are?
We might well get to know them, but unless they become our lovers and we all
become one 'happy nuclear family' ( ugh ) will we ever know what the
boundaries
of our community are.
So.
Yes, we live in communities, but the boundaries of those communities are
becoming ever fuzzier, and have been since technology gave us the means to
travel freely, first in body, and then through letters, the telephone and
now
the 'virtual communities' that inhabit these spaces.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#120: Paul Belserene (paulbel) Sun, Mar 8, '92 (21:59) 15 lines
I'm with Nicholas. I think.
The clearest kind of neighborhood on the WELL is the individual conference
(excepting the dead ghetto and private conferences)
Looking for aggregations of conferences to call neighborhoods just throuws
you up into the question of how much togetherness constitutes a
neighborhood.
For me, it might be jsut the one conference, but for others they might share
whole .conflists.
I'm not sure neighborhoods are *places* even in physical space. I think they
are habits, or relationships. Cliques and ghettos are something a little
different from neighborhoods.
ghettos are bounded. Neighborhoods are openended and have semi-permeable
membranes.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#121: Marc A. Smith (msmith) Mon, Mar 9, '92 (21:09) 66 lines
I would like to quote at length (not TOO long) the entry for "community" in
Raymond William's wonderful book _Keywords_. The book is a collection of
terms common to the social sciences and humanities and the etymologies:
COMMUNITY
Community has been in the language since C14, from fw (immediate forerunner)
*comunete*, oF (old French) *communitatem*, L (latin) meaning community of
relations or feelings, from the rw (root word) *communis*, L meaning
*common*. It became established in English in a range of senses: (i) the
commons or common people, as distinguished from those of rank (C14-C17);
(ii) a state or organized society, in its later uses relatively small
(C14-); (iii) the people of a district (C18-); (iv) the quality of holding
something in common, as in *community of interests*, *community of goods*
(C16-); (v) a sense of common identity and characteristics (C16-).
It will be seen that senses (i) to (iii) indicate actual social groups;
senses (iv) and (v) a particular quality of relationship (as in communitas).
From C17 there are signs of the distinction which became especially
important from C19, in which community was felt to be more immediate than
*society*, although it must be remembered that *society* itself had this
more immediate sense until C18, and *civil society* was like *society* and
*community* in these uses, originally an attempt to distinguish the body of
direct relationships from the organized establishment of *realm* or *state*.
From C19 the sense of immediacy or locality was strongly developed in the
context of larger and more complex industrial societies. *Community* was
the word normally chosen for experiments in an alternative kind of
group-living. It is still so used and has been joined, in a more limited
sense, by *commune* (the French *commune* - the smallest administrative
division - and the German *Gemeinde* - a civil and ecclesiastical division -
had interacted with each other and with *community*, and also passed into
socialist thought (especially *commune*) and into sociology (especially
*Gemeinde*) to express particular kinds of social relations).
The contrast, increasingly expressed in C19, between the more direct, more
total and therefore more significant relationships of community and the more
formal, more abstract and more instrumental relationships of *state*, or of
*society* in its modern sense, was influentially formalized by Tonnies
(1887) as a contrast between *Gemeinshaft* and Gesellschaft*, and these
terms are now sometimes used, untranslated, in other languages.
A comparable distinction is evident in mC20 uses of community. In some uses
this has been given a polemical edge, as in community politics, which is
distinct not only from *national politics* but from formal *local politics*
and normally involves various kinds of direct action and direct local
organization, "working directly with people", as which it is distinct from
"service to the community", which has an older sense of voluntary work
supplementary to official provision or paid service.
The complexity of *community* thus relates to the difficult interaction
between the tendencies originally distinguished in the historical
development: on the one hand the sense of direct common concern; on the
other hand the materialization of various forms of common organization,
which may or may not adequately express this. Community can be a warmly
persuasive word to describe an existing set of relationships, or the warmly
persuasive word to describe an alternative set of relationships. What is
most important, perhaps, is that unlike all other terms of social
organization (state, nation, society, etc) it seems never to be used
unfavourably, and never to be given any positive opposing or distinguishing
term.
---------------------------
Sorry if this was too long, but I thought that any discussion is well served
by a clear definition of the terms in use.
Marc
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#122: Cliff Figallo (fig) Tue, Mar 10, '92 (13:27) 12 lines
It's true that there is not a "positive opposing or distinguishing term".
What is the dark side of a community? If it is not a community, it may
be any one of or combination of other things. A random meeting of
indivuduals. A forum. A communications hub for people.
I sometimes think that the WELL displays concurrent evidence of being
a community in development and a community in decay, showing net
growth as a result. There are members of the population actively
trying to make it be a community, and there are members actively trying
to keep it from being a community. Depending on your point of view,
you might see the either the positivists or negativists as being
hopelessly naive.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#123: Escape character is '^]'. (axon) Wed, Mar 11, '92 (18:49) 11 lines
casey, i think your concern is misplaced. .cflists have to be public
access for pico to eat them, and i think matisse's proposed project is
legitimate marketing research. that said, if you are genuinely
concerned that no one read your .cflist, you can protect it by copying
it to foo, chmodding foo to 600, then running a script when you log in
that a) copies foo to .cflist, b) chmods it to 644 and c) deletes
.cflist when you are finished. inelegant, yes, but private. it is
not reasonable to expect publicly readable files to be unread.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#124: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Fri, Mar 13, '92 (13:00) 5 lines
I'll have more to say about this later, but I will note now that I
found groups in remote regions of Japan, and in Tokyo, who have been
wrestling the very same definitions, the same concerns, and the same
arguments, concerning their own virtual communities. Almost word for
word.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#125: Robert Anderson (bazooka) Mon, Mar 16, '92 (04:03) 18 lines
Well being that I feel like a very new person in town here, maybe some of my thots on this will add something to this discussion. This
is the 2nd topic I have read through here, so I definately still feel like a
vistor to what seems a very loose knit
group of people with many common interests.
That most of the members of the Well are from around the Bay area, surely
has something to do with how you all interact. I am originally from Los
Angeles and that enviornment seems more intent on separating people. I
had a get together for users of my bbs last night.... they are members of my
little virtual community, most have very varied interests, but all it goes
without saying have access to some kind of terminal. Some are well of, and
one just this month got it together enough to have their phone turned back
on.
I hope I can find some kind of communion with the people here, I guess time
will tell.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#126: Hoover Chan (hchan) Mon, Mar 16, '92 (08:52) 2 lines
I don't know how common it is in the BBS communities, but I found the
face-to-face gatherings a nice part of being online.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#127: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Mon, Mar 16, '92 (08:59) 6 lines
I went to two ftf gatherings of virtual communities in Japan, and
found them to be very WOP-like. People like to dress up funny,
entertain themselves, eat, drink, and talk for 5-8 hours. The feelings
people have toward each other seemed similar -- people from very
different backgrounds, who seemed to know each other well, but had not
been ftf for a while and had a lot to talk about.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#128: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Mon, Mar 16, '92 (21:10) 6 lines
I think it's fairly common (yet another reason WELL smugness about itself
bugs me). I know that both Wetware and SFNet have monthly get-togethers.
I love reading about Echo get-togethers, of course. They always have
these really neat-sounding meeting places and it all seems so
sophisticated :-). When I was in NYC, we met in the garden of St. John
the Divine.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#129: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Tue, Mar 17, '92 (11:15) 23 lines
>WELL smugness about itself.
I have mixed feelings about that. I agree that the insularity can
get thick at times, as well as the self-congratulations. From my
still-somewhat-limited exploration of other communities, it seems that
many of them suffer from lack of knowledge about how similar other
communities elsewhere seem to be in several key aspects. So the WELL
is not alone in that feeling of having invented something special.
OTOH, the WELL does have a great reputation in lots of corners of the
world, and does get a lot of respect from people in other communities.
I think we have something special here, but I now know that it is far
from being the only place that has something special happening.
I did encounter one system that is definitely NOT a community, has
no ftf meetings, and has been going on for years. The sysop is a
strange and interesting fellow, an expat living in Kyoto, and the
whole system appears to be a scheme for providing access to email and
Usenet and Bitnet for enough users to support the system, which
enables the sysop to communicate with a community of his own
construction, consisting of several dozen people around the world who
participate in special newsgroups and mailing lists. One strange thing
about this fellow is that he has lived in Japan for 9 years, teaches
English, and refuses to learn Japanese. When he walks out his door, he
doesn't want to have to communicate!
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#130: Paul Belserene (paulbel) Tue, Mar 17, '92 (14:38) 9 lines
Can you go a little farther, Howard, in explaining how this system is *not*
a community?
As to smugness, I think it's probably a characteristic of most communities
that they (we) think that what we have is special, if not unique. And that
what people outside of our community think of us will have little actual
connection to what we think of ourselves, though the two could easily
coincide.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#131: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Tue, Mar 17, '92 (17:36) 8 lines
Most of the individuals on Aegis, the system in Kyoto, use it to
participate in Usenet and Bitnet discussions and to send email to one
another but mostly to others around the world. The BBS part of the
system is not as active as the individual networks of the users. This
is a two-way window onto the world, and more communication by users
seems to be directed outward than inward, especially compared to other
communities in Japan, where the online public discussions are the
center, and ftf gatherings happen often.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#132: Carrie Lynne Phyliky-Lay (leilani) Wed, Mar 18, '92 (10:41) 15 lines
When I was on the net, I found that it wasn't really a community in the
sense of having a feeling of unity and mutual support. Netnews has its big
gatherings and there are some dominant posters, but they don't seem to feel
they are a separate community. I've also hung out within the army community
and the Deaf community. From what I've seen, the WELL has a lot in common
with these groups. I guess some back-patting is part of it, and concern for
the others in the group, and a certain unarticulated set of behavioural
rules. There's something a community has in common that sets it apart from
those outside of it. Some of that just comes from a circumscribed number of
people who have frequent access to each other in one way or another. In the
case of the WELL, we all use our computers as a method of communication and
connecting with each other. It may not be inclusive or even exclusive. The
boundaries may be fluid. But that happens in other communities, also. I like
the WELL. I like the people here. I like to see the WELL as a community,
albeit a virtual one...
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#133: Cliff Figallo (fig) Mon, Mar 23, '92 (10:34) 18 lines
From what I heard from various folks at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy
conference, the WELL is best known for being an open forum. We are known
for not censoring on the basis of language, for trying to provide tools that
our users ask for, for hosting discussions that involve cutting edge and
controversal issues, for inviting known computer crackers online to
participate in discussions with cops, and for having management that
participates in ongoing dialog with its customers. In the overall
scheme of things, this looks like "community" compared to the larger
scale of the Net. It is an example. Not THE example, but AN example.
All of our warts are also discussed...the technical shortcomings, the
nasty interchanges, the dominance by a vocal minority....but nobody
expects any Utopian dreams to come true. We are just trying to develop
ways for more and more people to interact so that problems can be solved
on a global scale before the shit really hits the fan.
Complaining about the smugness of the WELL is part of the smugness of
the WELL.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#134: David Kline (kline) Mon, Mar 23, '92 (14:59) 1 line
I resemble that remark :-)
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#135: Paul Belserene (paulbel) Sun, Mar 29, '92 (21:44) 10 lines
Howard, the way people use Aegis sounds like the way I use wimsey
(van-bc.wimsey.bc.ca)
my internet node in Vancouver. I mostly use it to access Usenet, mail and the
Well via telnet. The intensity of this community is different, much less,
than the intensity of my community feeling on the Well, yet I do interact
with people on this node, much as I might with strangers who were neighbors in
a high rise apartment building.
Z.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#136: Cassandra (mcdee) Sun, Apr 19, '92 (16:13) 13 lines
The WELL is certainly at least the place I hang one of my hats, and thus
a virtual. This is true even though I'm a long-distance user.
I actually think one of the key definitions of community is a mutual (if
unspoken) agreement to put up with people you don't particularly like
because they are part of the group. So the fact that annoying things
happen on the WELL seems more like evidence of it being a community than
evidence of it not being one.
The 84% lurker figure makes me think that perhaps we're a small virtual
community surrounded by a large group of people watching us. Yikes!
Maybe the WELL is actually performance art...
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#137: The Technical Skeptocrat (sonia) Sun, Apr 19, '92 (16:57) 2 lines
I said this a long time ago, and I'll say it again--it's a great big vanity
press.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#138: Matisse Enzer (matisse) Sun, Apr 19, '92 (23:34) 2 lines
A really swerll Vanity Press, where many of the people involved have
gotten to know one another and have formed a community of sorts.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#139: The Technical Skeptocrat (sonia) Mon, Apr 20, '92 (13:25) 2 lines
Sure! I actually don't think the WELL is *just* a vanity press. But that's
an important component of its overall identity, I think.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#140: Virtually your neighbor (boggs) Mon, Apr 20, '92 (21:06) 1 line
Indeed. It works for me.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#141: Patrizia (pdil) Tue, Apr 21, '92 (06:14) 2 lines
A vanity press where people occasionally read each other's published work if
it's not more than 19 lines long...
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#142: David Gans (tnf) Tue, Apr 21, '92 (08:59) 1 line
:^)
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#143: Ankh (hank) Wed, Apr 29, '92 (19:13) 16 lines
Jen in #88 lists three stages that lead to community
(pseudocommunity, 'faking it' / chaos, 'struggle' / and emptiness, 'listening')
and those match up very well with the stages Will Shutz listed in the FIRO
book that (psychal) cited just a bit earlier. He said groups go through
stages of "inclusion, then control, and finally affection" in forming.
And that, every time a significant member joins or leaves, the group has to
go back at least briefly and work through from the beginning.
Cliff commented that the WELL always feels like something forming and
coming apart, at the same time, which rings the same bell. As Jen
finished that #88 by commenting, rigidity is not characteristic of community.
But when 'the same old stuff' and '_that_ kind of topic' come 'round again,
recalling those stages keep me willing to keep reading.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#144: Cliff Figallo (fig) Thu, Apr 30, '92 (09:23) 2 lines
The WELL is not over til it's over. Can you imagine the WELL shrinking
until there's just you, Hank, and Mandel online?
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#145: Ankh (hank) Thu, Apr 30, '92 (19:50) 1 line
Sure, 4am, several times a month :-)
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#146: chimpanzee with a joystick (jstraw) Thu, May 28, '92 (15:40) 2 lines
The WELL is feeling like a community today, one of my neighbors, one of my
friends is moving away and it feels like shit.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#147: Carrie Lynne Phyliky-Lay (leilani) Thu, May 28, '92 (16:38) 1 line
I feel bad about it, too, jstraw...
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#148: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Thu, May 28, '92 (18:30) 2 lines
Me too. That's the frustrating part--you can't do anything about things
that people don't want you to do anything about.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#149: Not His Real Name (rbr) Fri, May 29, '92 (08:18) 1 line
Just like real life.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#150: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Fri, May 29, '92 (10:37) 4 lines
That's true in the way it's always true that you can't control the behavior
of others, but I'd like to think that I have some influence with my friends
that I don't necessarily (and in fact probably do not) have with my
online associates.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#151: The Technical Skeptocrat (sonia) Fri, May 29, '92 (17:10) 3 lines
It's easier for online people to avoid you, so it's harder to push them if
they don't want to be pushed.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#152: Cliff Figallo (fig) Fri, May 29, '92 (18:56) 4 lines
If you don't visit News, Hosts or Policy, are you being a good citizen?
Can you be a good citizen within the rest of the WELL and actually do more
good for the place than if you participate in the public debates over the
meta-issues of the system?
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#153: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Fri, May 29, '92 (19:04) 5 lines
I think it's inclusive rather than exclusive. You can be a good
citizen in a lot of ways that have nothing to do with how the system
policies are debated. But if you consider yourself a serious citizen,
it does behoove you to pay some attention to the "community"
conferences.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#154: The Technical Skeptocrat (sonia) Sat, May 30, '92 (10:33) 9 lines
I don't visit any of those three conferences. I do read topics of special
interest when I hear about them, but I find too much of the energy in News
and Policy to be destructive, and I don't think it's appropriate to
contribute to it. (Which, given my drive to yak, I certainly would.)
I also think I'm a pretty good WELL citizen. I put a lot of work into
behaving decently and responsibly, and once in awhile I get some feedback
that that has been helpful in some way.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#155: MicroTimes (microx) Sat, May 30, '92 (11:42) 24 lines
I read news and try not to post in it too much for all the reasons
sonia mentions.
When I was co-host of GD, I read policy and hosts as a matter of
obligation. The conferences I host now (one public for the magazine,
one private) do not, as far as I can tell, require much in the way
of policy-sensitivity, and I'd rather deal with things as they
arise there than waste precious energy in the endless and mostly
counterproductive thrash (the sacred "process") that goes on there.
So I don't read them.
My views of good citizenship here are similar to Sonia's. If you
can answer somebody's question, do it. If you can point them to a job,
do it. If you have the opportunity to slime someone, refrain from doing
it. If they have wishes, respect them.
Kinda like real-life good citizenship, I think. Not a function of
going to city council meetings.
ME
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#156: Cliff Figallo (fig) Sat, May 30, '92 (18:31) 8 lines
If it didn't come across in my posting above, I support those who
make the WELL feel like home outside of the central community forums.
I appreciate those who show up in those conferences to do the pick and
shovel work of working out policy, especially those who are frustrated
by management's refusal to go along with their ideas. But for the majority
of WELLbeings, there is little enough time to find enjoyable or enlightening
conferences and relax a while.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#157: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Fri, Jun 12, '92 (18:58) 7 lines
Over four years ago, I wrote an article for Whole Earth Review,
"Virtual Communities." The document still exists as
/uh/72/hlr/virtual_communities88. But I took a look at it recently and
realized that times had changed, my perspective and knowledge-base had
changed, and the WELL had changed. So I rewrote it. The newer, longer
version is available now as /uh/72/hlr/virtual_communities92. Let me
know what you think.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#158: Paul Belserene (paulbel) Sat, Jun 13, '92 (09:07) 13 lines
Great stuff, Howard. It would be a good thing if everyone coming onto this
system had the opportunity to read such a loving and experienced take on
what it can mean to be here.
> I have to decide for myself whether this is a new way to make genuine
> committments to other human beings, or a silicon-induced illusion of
> community.
I think you've already decided. I know I have. If this is an illusion of a
community, then the nature of the illusion is like Maya. This is a
community because it behaves like one, for good or ill. It is *not* a
delusion.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#159: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Sat, Jun 13, '92 (09:08) 3 lines
Thanks, Paul. You're the first person to read my first stumbling take
on what will probably grow into my new book. I regard it as a
fortuitous omen.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#160: Matisse Enzer (matisse) Sun, Jun 14, '92 (19:57) 35 lines
I like it so far Howard.
Here are some specific notes:
> Will it promote alienation or enable conviviality?
Perhaps there is more of a spectrum here - so we might ask instead:
"In what ways will it promote alienation, and in what ways
conviviality?"
> I found this place the way most people find such places -- I
> was lonely, hungry for the intellectual and emotional
> companionship of a group of respected peers, although
> I didn't know it.
There is something very important here about the needs that are filled
the WELL - the need for community and connection and companionship is
a major driving force that influences the path of the WELL.
> net gain of several hundred a month.
Not at this time, roughly, the net-gain is around 100+ a month.
> 65% men, 35% women.
I wish it were true. Closer to 82% men, 18% women
Also, perhaps the last third will bear some tightening up?
I really like teh mxture of teh abstract and the anecdotal - for me, anecdote is
a very powerful part of effective communication and I'm glad you are using it.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#161: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Sun, Jun 14, '92 (20:28) 2 lines
Thanks. Valuable feedback. I will take another cut at this within a
week, I think.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#162: Paul Belserene (paulbel) Tue, Jun 16, '92 (21:41) 3 lines
Undoubtedly fortuitous, Howard. And I'm willing to concede on "omen"
;-)
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#163: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Thu, Jun 18, '92 (22:44) 4 lines
I couldn't help rewriting it and rewriting it. The latest version is
855 lines long -- about 30 double-spaced pages. I promise not to mess
with it for a while. The filename is the same as before:
/uh/72/hlr/virtual_communities92.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#164: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Sat, Jul 4, '92 (13:14) 28 lines
This passage struck me, while I was thinking about the heinous
savageries of online warfare and the real warmth and healing of events
like the Figtex testimonials.
"Communities...have a history -- in an important sense they are
constituted by their past -- and for this reason we can speak of a real
community as a 'community of memory,' one that does not forget its past. In
order not to forget that past, a community is involved in retelling its story,
its constitutive narrative, and in so doing, it offers examples of men and
women who have embodied and exemplified the meaning of the community. These
stories of collective history and exemplary individuals are an important part
of the tradition that is so central to a community of memory.
"The stories that make up a tradition contain conceptions of
character, of what a good person is like, and of the virtues that define such
character. But the stories are not all exemplary, not all about successes and
achievements. A genuine community of memory will also tell painful stories of
shared suffering that sometimes creates deeper identities than success....And
if the community is completely honest, it will remember stories not only of
suffering received but of suffering inflicted -- dangerous memories, for they
call the community to alter ancient evils. The communities of memory that tie
us to the past also turn us toward the future as communities of hope. They
carry a context of meaning that can allow us to connect our aspirations for
ourselves and those closest to us with the aspirations of a larger whole and
see our own efforts as being, in part, contributions to a common good."
Robert N. Bellah, et al, "Habits of the Heart: Individualism and
Commitment in American Life," 1985
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#165: MicroTimes (microx) Sat, Jul 4, '92 (13:46) 5 lines
Yeah.
A lot of food for thought at that party, which was pretty wonderful
ME
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#166: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Sat, Jul 4, '92 (13:49) 4 lines
I guess a historical pointer is in order here: The stuff about the
Figfest testimonial dinner that happened last night is now in a News
conference topic, will soon be linked to archives and killed in news.
Look for figfest in the header.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#167: Jeffrey Shapard (jefu) Fri, Jul 31, '92 (21:02) 67 lines
When Howard came to Japan last winter, he spent some time
on our system TWICS and we had a members meeting where we
talked about some of these issues in our own context. One
thing that struck me then, as it strikes he here and every
time I have seen this recurring discussion of are we or
are we not a community is that the very term "COMMUNITY"
is subject to a wide range of personal interpretations.
Just what does it mean when it means so many different
things to so many different people?
I tend to take a real loose interpretation of it which is
based on such perceptions: if people perceive a community,
then a community of some sort exists. Underlying this
are some generalities, mainly shared relationships and
shared space, virtual or physical. Whether the community
is based on some common ground where you live or hang
out, or on more abstract common ground such as shared
interests and needs, these are just qualifications for
describing different kinds of communities.
Some online systems host communities, and others do not
except in the very vague technical sense that there is
some kind of shared space, and even that gets pretty
abstract if you start to look at distributed networks
based on asynchronous dial-up links, like much of the
USENET hinterlands. Likewise, some suburban areas have
evolved into tight little communities while others are
just places to park your car and sleep at night.
I would like to say that some sort of cohesion plays
a role, but M emphasizes that diversity is just as
important, and that strikes a chord. Take a small
town, where there are various factions battling each
other and fighting and snooping into each other's
business and so on, where there may be very little
cohesion in contrast to the next town down the
road where folks pretty much smile and help each
other out all the time. But is one less of a
community than the other? The individuals and factions
of the first town may not be getting along, but they
continue to share the same common ground, the space
in which they live (and fight), and there are
certainly complex relationships involved. You have
to get pretty intimate to fight seriously.
Now, just as someone may be a member of several groups
at once, such as a member of some company, a member of
a few different social groups, and a member of some
professional organization, they can also be a member of
more than one community. If we are taking, say, a very
traditional approach of defining community in terms of
where you live and have neighbors based on physical
space, that can be kind of hard, unless you live in
more than one place. (And some certainly do.) But with
the abstractness of virtual space it becomes easier.
You can live physically in Sausalito or El Cerrito or
Pocatello or Tokyo and from there also live virtually
on/through some community server like TWICS or The
WELL or a USENET newsgroup. (I see that in a later
item here the issue of USENET comes up.)
I would like to see more discussion of the facets of
community, to see if we can come up with some very
common basic criteria that is shared by all perceptions
of just what this vague term means.
--jefu
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#168: Jeffrey Shapard (jefu) Fri, Jul 31, '92 (21:02) 14 lines
Is a community a community if nobody perceives it as one?
Hmm... Interesting question, that one. Reminds me of my days
back in theoretical linguistics, where we played with the
question of whether or not language exists without the
human cognitive context. If all the people no longer
existed, would language still exist? Some say no, and others
say yes, as language is an abstract system, like math,
which exists in and of itself.
If the people of the divided small town I talked about
earlier say they have no community because they have no
cohesion or shared beliefs, yet they continue to live
and fight in their common space, are they or are they not
a community? Interesting question.
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#169: Jeffrey Shapard (jefu) Fri, Jul 31, '92 (21:02) 14 lines
Phred's (vc.7.19) reference to the so-called 'intelligence
community' illustrates another case of why this term is
so vague. If people within a given profession occupation
or persuasion consider that their shared interests and
needs are their abstract common ground, then are they
or are they not a community. Likewise with the Mac user
community, the banking community, the gay community, and
so on and so forth. How abstract can the notion of
common space or sense of 'belonging/participating' be?
And is community based on common profession occupation or
persuasion any less abstract than that based on using
common data space?
--jefu
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#170: Jeffrey Shapard (jefu) Fri, Jul 31, '92 (21:02) 19 lines
I like Hoover Chan's (vc.7.20) comments about the sense
of 'belonging', or about the perceptions of member versus
visitor. It reminds me of the evolution of groups as new
people come in, and as some claim membership and things
change there can be friction between the old-timers and
the newcomers, especially when the newcomers have a
different sense of what is being shared. Sometimes there
is a serious filtering process to keep newcomers out who
are too different from the old-timers and sometimes
there is a socialization process to get the newcomers to
act and think like the old-timers, or at least to behave
in a manner that remains compatible. But in small towns
offline or community servers like TWICS and The WELL,
the filtering and socialization processes are not always
a part of the basic culture and the changes can be jarring.
Sound familiar?
--jefu
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#171: Jeffrey Shapard (jefu) Fri, Jul 31, '92 (21:03) 60 lines
Where did this notion come from of a community as one big happy
group of people, living together in peace and harmony with no
conflict and lots of nurturing for everyone and tolerance for
diversity and everyone having equal participation? Seems to
me to be...
The Myth of the Ideal Utopian Community
Show me a place like this and I am on my way. No, cancel that.
It sounds stifling boring, though it might be a nice place
to go for a vacation someday.
Jen's notes (vc.7.87-88) through me for a loop, as it seemed
that unless all members choose the community, then it cannot
exist, but paulbel's excellent portrait of his Vancouver
community (vc.7.93-101) put the smile back on my face as I
saw the parallels between the physical plane and the virtual
plane re-emerge. While jen seems to be referring to conscious
choice intentionial communities, paulbel describes what I would
call the most typical kinds of communities, those that arise
out of a bunch of people sharing some sort of common ground.
Cliff states that The WELL is _not_ an intentional community.
The WELL itself is not a community, but the people who hang
out here are. The people are the community, not the commercial
service that provides the space. The people who share the
space are the community, not the space itself.
Gee, it sounds like I replied to the question I asked a couple
notes back. If nobody lives in a town, then how can it be
a community. The streets and buildings and local honky-tonk
are not the community.
So some people want to claim closer affiliation than others.
And so some people participate more actively than others,
as Jim Rutt's stats demonstrate. Well, so what? Why is that
unusual, or even a criteria on which to base this issue.
Back to the small town or paulbel's Vancouver, what percentage
of those people are involved in setting community policy
or public speaking or whatever? Most are just going about
their own business, talking to those closest to them or
just hanging out, YET they are still all sharing the same
space, hearing some of the same songs on the radio, shopping
at the same stores, living within the bounds of the same
local economy, suffering or enjoying the same weather, and
being neighbors, good or otherwise, whether they like it
or not.
I really like mcdee's concise note (vc.7.136) about the mutual
agreement to put up with people you do not necessarily like.
Now, the social structure of the small town will change
drastically if and when the town becomes a big city, and
the issues of boundaries, mentioned by cliff and matisse,
are something else we might want to explore. I would also
suggest that we take a look at the issue of size, such as
when does a town become a city, and whether that is more
a matter of size or attitude or regional function.
--jefu
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#172: Jeffrey Shapard (jefu) Fri, Jul 31, '92 (21:03) 9 lines
Thanks for posting that printed definition of 'community',
msmith (vc.7.121). Interesting. And glad to see that the
gemeinschaft and gesellschaft concepts are included. They
would be worthy of further exploration, too.
(Howard, I wonder if Jan Walls would be willing to let his
GAN paper on this out before publication?)
--jefu
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#173: Jeffrey Shapard (jefu) Fri, Jul 31, '92 (21:04) 105 lines
I agree with Howard (vc.7.124) in that people all over cyberspace
have, are, or will be wrestling with these same definitions,
concerns, and arguments, practically word for word. I have seen
it and continue to see it. It happens at different times for
different places, and then recurs as their "community" evolves.
I also agree with Howard's comments about the "smugness" of
so many of our communities coming from what I call electronic
insularism. This is especially the case in the realms of
centralized BBSs and conferencing systems where there are
no links elsewhere, or where local discussions and local
issues far outshadow anything going on elsewhere, relevant
or otherwise.
The WELL is pretty well-connected, but all these public
topics here are local discussions, just like all the hot
debates going on in PARTI BeeJima on TWICS. If this VC
conference were linked with parallel conferences on some
other systems through some distribution mechanism, not
necessarily broadcast out there to 100,000 news sites,
the discussion would be somewhat different, with concerns
of The WELL as examples of facets of the larger issues,
rather than taking over as the central theme.
As Cliff says when referring to the fame The WELL has
among the world beyond, this place is AN example of where
we are going online, and not necessarily THE example.
I was also amused by Howard's description of Dave McLane's
AEGIS site in Kyoto. Actually, Dave used to have
a group of folks who met regularly at some coffee shop
and talked about their interests, mainly techie (as seems
to be a trend in early development in this medium). The
first AEGIS host was a BBS that Dave wrote himself, and
while he did try to get hot discussions going, he found
that the nature of the folks in his area was that they
preferred private mail and info exchange to hanging around
online arguing about things they really had no influence
on anyway. So he set things up to be a conduit of info
according to the needs of those he served, including
himself. He and I have talked about this at great length,
ftf a couple times and through MBs of mail, and he has
described a couple of major factors in what always
ended up as comparisons between his AEGIS and my TWICS.
Dave is a sysop-programmer, and his own interests lie more
in building an information exchange system that runs
elegantly in this function. I am, or was until the end of
June, a sysop-communicator, and my interests lie more in
bringing people together and building communities. I said
earlier, over in the intro item, that the role of the
founder/faciliator/moderator is something that should be
explored more. Just as the philosophy of the author of
Picospan shaped the tools, likewise with those of the
founders of systems and communities. AEGIS is not a
community server because Dave did not build it to support
that kind of interaction. (Now we gotta start to question
what that kind of interaction is and how to build tools
that support it, eh?)
Another factor has to do with the very differing natures
of the user market. Both AEGIS and TWICS default to English,
which in and of itself makes them pretty wierd in the
Japanese seas. Both can support Japanese and have Japanese
members using them for Japanese language comms, but the
orientation towards the use of the global language, rather
than the local language, sets them into rather specific markets
right off the bat. TWICS is in Tokyo up on the Kantou Plain,
and this is where something like 90% of the non-Korean and
non-Chinese gaijin (foreigner) community lives works plays.
It is also the center of biz and government for Japan, so
folks from all over the country go there, and return to
after time abroad. Very centralized, and lots of
opportunities, relatively, actually to get together and meet
other folks. AEGIS is in Kyoto in a valley in the rather
mountainous Kansai region, where you have different dialects
on each side of the hill, and very well established
insularism, say, between the merchants of Osaka, the
artisans and culture vultures of Kyoto, the cosmopolitans
of little Kobe, and so on. The members of AEGIS are scattered
all over the region, each into their own little niche of
teaching or research or translation and so on, and more
or less enjoy their isolation. Their focus on community
is on the physical communities they live work study play
in and have bought into the insularism of it all. In the
Kantou almost everybody comes from somewhere else, so
affiliations are based less on where you were born and
grew up and more on more abstract ties like where you
went to school, what organization you work for, and what
your interests are.
But it is a small world, so there are TWICSters living
in the Kansai, and even in Tokyo, who are also AEGIS users.
And TWICS and AEGIS are the only two public access sites
with internet email and netnews services.
Ever heard of Dejima, the tiny island in the harbor of
Nagasaki that was the only place foreigners were allowed
to live for a couple hundred years before Perry's black
ships and their cannon "opened" the doors which toppled
the Tokugawa Shogunate, and which was also the main
bridge for information exchange between Japan and the world?
I will talk more about this later...
--jefu
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#174: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Fri, Jul 31, '92 (21:07) 13 lines
I've got some stuff about gemeinschafft and gesellschaft that came out
of private correspondence with msmith. I'll remember to start an
appropriate topic soon.
Dave Mclane's Aegis in Kyoto is one example of a system that is not a
community in some ways. It's a collection of people who use the node
to make their own communities out of Usenet newsgroups, Bitnet mail
lists and international email. There isn't that much going on in the
BBS area of Aegis, but according to Dave, there is a lot of stuff
going on that threads together communications from around the world. I
dunno about Netcom. Is that a similar deal, where there is
comparatively little emphasis on the commons, but people use it as a
way to access larger communities?
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#175: Jeffrey Shapard (jefu) Fri, Jul 31, '92 (21:27) 9 lines
And most likely like most mail and netnews servers, where the
model is client-server rather than terminal-host, and the
common dataspace is personal mail, mail lists, or newsgroups
distributed between various. Communities in this modality
are even more abstract than those which share a dataspace
on the same host computer, and similar interface environment
and so on.
--jefu
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#176: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Fri, Jul 31, '92 (21:39) 2 lines
Gee, we must have been telepathically tuned in to Dave ("tenth rib
floater") McClane's dimension at the same time, Jefu. ;-)
Topic 7: The WELL as a community
#177: Kathleen Creighton (casey) Fri, Jul 31, '92 (23:12) 3 lines
Yeah, I was going to ask Jefu if he was a 10th rib floater :-).
(Just one of the millions of stories in the naked virtual community :-).
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Last Updated: September 22, 1994