What is Community?
What is a community?
I think to be a community, you have to have these things:
Can be found anytime two or more individuals coem together in common interest to share and interact in a sustained manner
I think one thing that is often mistaken for community is commonality. Just because there are a lot of people doing the same things does not neccesarrily mean that they are in a community together. For example, my accounting class is not a community. While we do share time together in class and we do listen to the same lecture, there is no interaction or sharing between students. This could change. If the class meets to study together for the first test, then we will have the beginnings of a community, but until then we are just students enrolled in the same class.
I think to be a community, you have to have these things:
- two or more individuals
- some form of interaction (face-to-face, on-line, smoke signals, whatever)
- there has to be some commonality that brings the people together (family ties, location, proffesion, hobby)
- there has to be some form of sharing going on (goods, services, ideas)
- it has to be sustained (all of the above qualifications have to be fairly current)
Can be found anytime two or more individuals coem together in common interest to share and interact in a sustained manner
I think one thing that is often mistaken for community is commonality. Just because there are a lot of people doing the same things does not neccesarrily mean that they are in a community together. For example, my accounting class is not a community. While we do share time together in class and we do listen to the same lecture, there is no interaction or sharing between students. This could change. If the class meets to study together for the first test, then we will have the beginnings of a community, but until then we are just students enrolled in the same class.
posted by Katie at 10:24 PM
1 Comments:
careful with your spelling. remember, this is going out to the entire world. (possess, necessarily)
another caution: are "smoke signals" enough to yield community? this suggests ANY communication, no matter how simple or mundane. i'm not sure i can buy that. the communication would seem to have to be a bit deeper, a bit more nuanced. we should explore this, particularly in a COM class.
i like your notion of sustainability. this would indeed seem to be requisite. and it is of particular interest to us as we look at internet sites and online communities, because the interface itself (and everything else in the code) has to enable AND sustain community. good.
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