An online community provides a way for people to interact by remote. Unlike the telephone where only a few people can communicate at a time, and where you are restricted to the using and sharing of sounds, an online community allows many kinds of communication and interaction. One can share sound, text and video, and also use these mediums to communicate with others in the community.

The way I understand an online community it can include anything from discussion boards, to file sharing networks, to open listservs where all members can add their comments. The key ingredient of an online community is conversation and conscious interaction. Under this definition I have been a member of a few online communities, most of them are listservs, one was based around a discussion board and another was a file-sharing community. However I would consider the discussion board based community to be the best example of an online community. This community was called The Fredonia Underground it was created by a Fredonia student, and membership was restricted to those with a Fredonia based e-mail address, not including teachers. It had many features including the discussion board, a place to post upcoming events on the home page, and a database where students could record their opinions of teachers and others could look them up by the teachers department and name. Members could also create profiles including a few pictures, a list of their friends on the Underground and some personal information including their class standing and major etc. part of the fun of the community was that it was attached to the actual Fredonia community, you could learn something about the people you saw on campus by using the Fredonia Underground website, but you also met people you may not have seen through discussing your shared interests on the discussion board.

Through my experiences with this community I could relate to some of the things Rheingold mentioned. At some point someone posted a thread on the discussion board called “Underground Meetup” in which they suggested getting together in person. The plans were worked out and when the gathering happened there was about 25-30 people in attendance. I only stopped by for about 10 minutes but I can imagine that some deeper understandings and friendships grew out of that meeting that may have developed similar to those Rheingold mentioned with his parenting group. Also at one point a student on campus was killed in a car accident, his girlfriend was an active member of the Underground and she shared her story, and received the comfort of many in the community.

I can also relate to his being addicted to the community. If you are participating in a very interesting conversation you find yourself checking for activity on the site frequently. And there is a feature where you can see who’s online and how long they have been on, some would be online and active for hours at a time, personally I never became quite that interested.

I am comfortable being a member of an online community, though not sure how much of myself I’d like to make available for the world. Some people I know such as my younger cousin, have Live Journal accounts that they update every day, and in their entries they pour out all of their experiences and what they are feeling. I would not be comfortable putting so much of myself on display. However as in my experience with the Underground as I get to know the community better I become more willing to post my more controversial opinions. But the community was based around the Discussion board, it was not really a place like a Live Journal or a Blog where one could go into elaborate detail about their daily lives. But I enjoy online communities and I think they provide a good way for people to communicate with each other.