Virtual Community

The sloppy thinking is to consider any Group Discussion to qualify as a "virtual community". Perhaps a better filter would be "would you lend money to a member of that group, or invite them to stay over at your place overnight when they're in town?".

Jonathon Delacour says about the Radio Userland community (2002): A few years ago I was involved in the Electric Minds adventure, an online community that eventually imploded. Everyone has a theory about why that happened but I believe a community without tangible goals frequently degenerates into a talkfest or flamewar. Hopefully we can avoid that because we have goals: to build the infrastructure, wire up the communities, and generate the flow. Everyone can play. His general point is good, but I don't think the Radio usership counts as much of a community, either (or, it may for awhile as it's a small group with common interests and attitudes, but it won't be strong enough to scale, which is OK...)

Some historical documents, to avoid repeating mistakes:

• online fulltext of Howard Rheingold's The Virtual Community

• Rosanne Stone re Communi Tree: Will the Real Body Please Stand Up? and review of The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age ISBN:0262691892

• LambdaMOO (MOO) http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/AY2001/cs6470_fall/LTAND.html

• SlashDot moderation system http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml#cm520

• Wikipedia http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AOur_Replies_to_Our_Critics

• The Lessons of Lucas Film's Habitat