week 6 : 7 november
community
Highlights From Student Posts[back to week 6 ]
- Barrie
- Group 2 .
- Belle
- Group 3 .
- Group 3 .
- Chloe
- In a virtual community, I think people would like present another self and in order to present a better self, they will do some adjustments to conform the request of other people on Internet. They might decorate themselves and deceive other community members. This is a difference between a real life and a virtual community.
- Courtney
- No post
- Elina
- No post
- Jeanne
- Group 2 .
- Kai-Chen
- Group 3 .
- Kevin
- Group 2 .
- Kristina
- Group 3 .
- Luke
- Group 3 .
-
Magnus
- Group 2 .
- Mini
- Since my first year in college, I started my internet life. On the outset, I only had the email account and MSN messenger as well. Roommates always chat online even though we just sat next to the other. At that time, having a MSN account is necessary to social life...
In my mind, I always felt the virtual world is not reliable. In other words, the real conversation I had with friends is more comfortable and can lead to less misunderstanding.
- Since my first year in college, I started my internet life. On the outset, I only had the email account and MSN messenger as well. Roommates always chat online even though we just sat next to the other. At that time, having a MSN account is necessary to social life...
- Nancy
- In 1996, when the web was just taking off, a family member was diagnosed
with a life-threatening form of leukemia. I immediately searched the web
for information, and within a short time met a guy online with the same
disease in England, who had just started a list-serve for patients. Keep
in mind that list-serves were not widely used by the public @ that time.
Soon, others joined, and one brave leukemia survivor named Barb Lackowitz
became our de facto leader (sadly, she passed away from this stupid disease
a few years ago)...
Our listserve was a precursor to ACOR, which today has listserves covering many types of cancers. Things I learned from the listserve that would have been impossible before the internet included: real patient stories of treatment successes, failures, and side effects; information directly from leading international researchers who monitor the list; and information that contradicted "standard medical practice" of the day, but which in the intervening 10 years has been shown to improve outcomes. Patients and families from our list have testified before the FDA and founded multiple research organizations. Participants range from biology professors and statisticians (both handy people to have onboard, by the way) to all manner of scared but determined everyday people. Believe me, courage lives on this list...
- In 1996, when the web was just taking off, a family member was diagnosed
with a life-threatening form of leukemia. I immediately searched the web
for information, and within a short time met a guy online with the same
disease in England, who had just started a list-serve for patients. Keep
in mind that list-serves were not widely used by the public @ that time.
Soon, others joined, and one brave leukemia survivor named Barb Lackowitz
became our de facto leader (sadly, she passed away from this stupid disease
a few years ago)...
- Nika
- What characteristics of the Internet affect growth, power, and effectiveness of online communities? First, the people need to have something in common. Like knitting. There is some common bond to bring the people together. Second, it has to be moderated to keep the "bad" folk out that would ruin it for the rest. Finally, people have to be able to foster a community through chat/bb/messaging ect. If those are in place, I think you'll very easily have a happy little online community.
- Randa
- Points us to a NetAid testimonial.
- Gotta read Anna DuVal Smith's “ Problems of conflict management
in virtual community”. Hey, I wonder if there are 2nd life
HR conflict management courses to send your members to….
Be vastly more entertaining than sitting with a bunch of coworkers
and working out personal style issues...]
... because I never saw anyone, which forced us to connect through written interchange, relations were built on similar interests and values. One advantage was a wider variety of people contributed from different geographical areas, i.e. one tile resource was in Denver and the other in Texas.
- Rex
- My most recent "big project" was a citizen journalism project in Minneapolis (where I emigrated from last year) called MNspeak.com. It was a hybrid of different forms -- part group blog, part community aggregator, part media, part gossip. But mostly, it was immense fun. In the time that I ran the site (which I sold before moving to Seattle), it broke many stories that were later picked up by the daily papers. One interesting example was the story of a mysterious blimp that was spotted floating around the metro area. It became a fascinating instance that illustrates how people collected together around a website can commit acts of journalism -- in this case, following up rumors of the dirigible's origin (Oprah Winfrey, a mayoral candidate) with actual phone calls. To repeat for emphasis: people without any journalistic training whom I have never met before picked up the phone to verify rumors and then reported them back to the website, just like real reporters. Astonishing!
-
Stephanie
- The first online community I joined was my 4th grade classroom in 1995; we played an Oregon Trail game with everyone in the class. In middle school, I entered the world of email but only checked it by the prodding of friends who would tell me face-to-face “I sent you an email, open it!” In high school I never caught onto IM or Live Journal, the joke became if you want to get in touch with Stephanie, you better track her down personally…she’s not online and never answers her cell phone...
Only through necessity (school, work and social pressure or time/distance issues) am I present in online communities. In that sense I feel old-fashioned, I have not been super active in many online communities but I am active in other groups within my community (Kiwanis, Sorority, Honor Societies, Politic & Law Groups etc.). For me, Winston’s comment may have some truth: “Beyond the hype, the Internet was just another network. This is to say its social effects could (and would) be as profound as, for example those of that far more ubiquitous network, the telephone. As profound…and as unrevolutionary (336)...
Otherwise, online communities are similar to real-life communities, you only matter if you show up and participate. Like any communication, it has to be a habit. At the moment I have a habit of showing up more in face-to-face, online is just a habit I am lacking.
- The first online community I joined was my 4th grade classroom in 1995; we played an Oregon Trail game with everyone in the class. In middle school, I entered the world of email but only checked it by the prodding of friends who would tell me face-to-face “I sent you an email, open it!” In high school I never caught onto IM or Live Journal, the joke became if you want to get in touch with Stephanie, you better track her down personally…she’s not online and never answers her cell phone...
- Steve
- ?
- Tony (Fu-Yuan)
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I know most media that the article "Communities in Cyberspace" mentioned, such as IRC, MUDs, and the BBS, which is popular in Taiwan. Maybe many people think that BBS is such an old medium, but it is one of the important ways Taiwanese communicate, including me. Although the interface of BBS is simple, it is more convenient than World Wide Web because of the speed of browsing and the regular system. Actually, the BBS is so great that I cannot understand why people in the other countries don't like to use it.
Besides the terms of conflicts the article mentioned, I think there is one more important difference, that is we cannot receive one's tone. I remember someone said that 80% of one's message passing relies on his tone and facial expression. So we can find that when the internet seperate the people, we still cannot receive the real meaning of the message and that might be misunderstanded, especially the personality in the cyberspace could be different from which appealed in the real world.
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I know most media that the article "Communities in Cyberspace" mentioned, such as IRC, MUDs, and the BBS, which is popular in Taiwan. Maybe many people think that BBS is such an old medium, but it is one of the important ways Taiwanese communicate, including me. Although the interface of BBS is simple, it is more convenient than World Wide Web because of the speed of browsing and the regular system. Actually, the BBS is so great that I cannot understand why people in the other countries don't like to use it.
- Vaun
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I have not spent a lot of time in online communities, but I have visited a few user groups for video and audio equipment, where I found some helpful interactions, a lot of merchandise plugs obviously planted by salespeople masquerading as users, a surprising number of smartass comments and some downright rude putdowns. In many cases, the tone of conversation suggested that members of these communities had learned their social graces in the School of Beavis & Butthead...
But beyond all that, Cyberspace has a definite ATMOSPHERE: a sense of place so strong that sometimes I think I can actually SMELL it. And what does cyberspace smell like? I could not figure this out until last night, when I was reading about the ugly “flaming,” feuds and “virtual rapes” that occur in online communities. All of a sudden I realized what smell had been creeping up my nose. Cyberspace sometimes smells like…a public toilet.
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I have not spent a lot of time in online communities, but I have visited a few user groups for video and audio equipment, where I found some helpful interactions, a lot of merchandise plugs obviously planted by salespeople masquerading as users, a surprising number of smartass comments and some downright rude putdowns. In many cases, the tone of conversation suggested that members of these communities had learned their social graces in the School of Beavis & Butthead...