Virtual or online communities encourage sharing of knowledge and information and allow for participation in online, collaborative, collective intelligence. Participation in online communities can be explained through the rise in the "...decline in opportunities for demographic participation and community formation in contempory industrial capatilist and mass-mediated societies, and thee need to build social capital" (Flew 2004, 64). These online communites are forming friendships, playing, sharing interests, expressing views and opinions they are continually rethinking and reusing information and then publishing/puitting their own versions out there online. But due to users able to pose as anyone they like some online mis-representaion is published, (also called trolling) for example (Flew 2004, 70) unquallified people passing themselves off as medical doctors and giving faulse information which leaves people who have real medical issues in a terrible state.
Online communities must organise themselves to make themselves work and avoid this trolling effect. Godwin (in Flew 2004, 70) suggests that making use of discussion promoting software, removing limitations from length of postings, include diverse and talkative people, let users resolve their own disputes, archive previous threads, promote contuinity, and acting as a host to interested groups, make the space child friendly, maintain the space as public, be able to step in and confront users if crisis occurs to promote continuity of participation. Some problems have occured with this model as users resolving their own problems is often a cloudy issue, personal abuse and dogmatic adherance may turn some users off the discussion group as with most areas in the real or online world a referee may be needed.
As online communities are about sharing information, allowing and promoting continnuity of contribution is what will ultimately keep people interested and commenting back.
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2 comments:
Very interesting blog.
My personal opinion is that communities do not organise them selves. Instead individuals organise which communities they are connected to. It is this freedom that has caused such growth in online communities.
I agree that by allowing users to step in to confront bloggers about their content can be a cloudy issue. Who defines what a community standard is? Just because someone doesn't think that a piece of writing online isn't appropriate, it doesn't mean that it is an opinion held by the majority of the community.
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