Hi all, I’ve gotten very busy and I don’t post in this thing nearly as much as I used to. But I thought it would be interesting to note, for people in the Virtual Communities class, that my own virtual community project is finally starting to develop. I have been working on the SUNY Fredonia Campus Greens site for a little over a year, and for most of that time it has had a discussion board, recently that discussion board has been getting some use. It may be an interesting case study for people working on similar projects.

Over time I kept updating the site and pushing the discussion board more and more to the forefront, until there were three links to it on the home page (one of which was big and purple), and about 100 throughout the site. Still there was little to no activity. I had sent out e-mails to every listserv or friend I could think of, the e-mails sometimes led to a surge in visitors but few messages. I even got the WNY Peace Center to send out an e-mail to its 1,000 members, hoping the discussion board could be a regional meeting place, that effort led to about 300 visitors in 2 days and about 5 new messages, then nothing. You could find the site on Google or Yahoo, and the Fredonia website, it still didn’t take off. The site got an average of 5 visitors per day, sometimes 15 or 30, but people weren’t posting on the discussion board.

Recently I completely redesigned the site, I had to stop spending time on it but I didn’t want the site to sit idle. My idea was to make it as easy as possible to update, no HTML skills necessary, no bureaucratic nonsense trying to gain access to the code. The idea was interesting yet simple, I put the discussion board on the home page.

I changed the entire layout to use frames, converted all the pages, which was much easier than I thought, and let it fly. After a short delay there is now more activity than there has ever been.
I learned a few things through this experiment, and one very good lesson from the Virtual Communities class and Rheingold. That lesson is that you need hosts, more than one, it is very much like hosting a party as Rheingold mentioned, you need people to help keep the guests comfortable and entertained or they’ll just get bored and leave. I couldn’t really get anybody to help me host the discussion, and I think that was a major failing. Currently two other members are hosting the discussion (though I’m not sure they completely realize it).

A more obvious note is that the easier you make your discussion board to find and use the more people will participate. I think having the discussion board on the homepage has had a significant effect on participation. I had tried to figure out how to set up an RSS feed to send the headlines of the discussion board to the home page, but I didn’t understand how it worked. Now the discussion board is the homepage, and for a community like the Fredonia Campus Greens, I think it is working well.

Please feel free to visit the site and see for yourself, make comments etc…

http://www.fredonia.edu/sa/campusgreens/

Community is one of those interesting words that nearly everyone understands, but nobody can easily define. We use it and hear it almost daily and we’ve formed an abstract collection of contexts to which the term “community” might apply. But if we are pressed to define the word to a foreigner say, we find ourselves fumbling with terms like “group”, “neighborhood”, “town”, “area” or, “people”. It is a broad term that has come to define many things. We should recognize the roots of our understanding of the term in order to see how it applies to Virtual Communities.
We all live in a community, a neighborhood, defined by certain borders. In Buffalo you may say you are from the West Side, Lovejoy, or Black Rock. In the suburbs it may be difficult to view the whole town as a community, West Seneca for example seems better described as a town rather than a community. But within suburbs some developers have sought to create communities. Streets are laid out in loops, common areas are provided, there may even be a sign proclaiming the name of the community “Lakeview Manor”. There are also smaller versions of neighborhood communities, retirement communities, and religious communities like those formed by Mennonites.
Ones understanding of a community is surely colored by where they live. For example if you live on a close knit city street with a well used park nearby the term community will call to mind those people in your neighborhood who you saw every day. On the other hand in a remote suburb where people are physically separated from neighbors by distance, the school you attend and the people that you meet there may define your community. Or if you live in the country you may know the names of everyone in your community and the history of their family, thus you may come to expect a very thorough knowledge about those in your community.
There are also many types of communities beyond our neighborhoods. We may belong to a professional community that relates to our field of study. These organizations serve to expand our understanding of our chosen profession, but they also can provide social connections. These organizations tend to rely on mailings to communicate with their members, but often host conferences and provide other opportunities to get more deeply involved in the group. They may meet many times a year and therefore foster the personal connectedness that we expect from a community.
We may also choose to join a country club, perhaps we like golf or maybe we hope to make some business connections and attend expensive banquets. Whatever the reason these are often very close knit communities. People may chose to join for a specific reason, but I suspect that their relationship with the community is the factor that causes them to stay.
Baseball, bowling and other sports leagues are another example. We may join because we love the sport, or because we are simply looking for something to do, but the community is an important aspect. This is even more obvious when we consider little league sports. The parent encourages their child to join, is it for exercise, or just the experience of belonging to a community?
However these types of communities have become less and less common. Since 1970 the number of people in these organizations has been declining. However, recently we have seen virtual communities begin to fill that void. I think it is important to see virtual communities not as a new phenomenon, but as a means to the same end as traditional communities. People have used various means to develop their communities including mail, newspapers and telephone, the internet is simply a new addition.
One tends to separate virtual communities from the rest, in fact I just recently began to see how they are related and why we tend to draw a line between them. The element that stands out about virtual communities is that some people only experience the community through the computer. We miss the fact that many virtual communities offer opportunities to go beyond the computer and have some face to face interaction. Just because most people stay behind the computer screen doesn’t make these communities all that different from the ones we are used to.
Traditional communities are facilitated by remote as well. Professional societies frequently operate through mailing, magazines and other materials are sent to individual members, they are also invited to conferences and other gatherings but need not attend to feel a part of the organization. Similarly what I view as the most basic element of the community, the neighborhood, also uses remote means like free newspapers that are delivered to your door announcing events and community affairs.
However there are some things about virtual communities that are quite unique. The versatility of the internet has enabled different types of communities to form. The key ingredient of an online community is remote interaction, and communication. Some things clearly represent online communities, such as discussion boards. Also, any website where a viewer can add his or her thoughts is an online community, interaction means that you are not simply observing but that you have the option to actively participate. Blogs and News websites like Indymedia fall into this category. Websites allow viewers to participate in various ways, viewer comments and other activity may be more or less central to the operation of the website but all are online communities.
Defining virtual communities gets more difficult when we consider Instant Messaging, and E-mail. I view these as virtual conversations, rather than communities, but the line is fuzzy and pockmarked at best. Though these media function primarily to facilitate discussion in a mail like fashion between 2 people that is not all they are capable of. Instant massager allows one to chat with as many people as you like, either separately or in a chat room. It also allows you to exchange pictures and other files, you can also communicate through video and audio rather than text, and it has space for a personal profile that is available to anyone. More features are added regularly, and it is difficult for me to keep up. What may have started as a simple remote conversation tool has quickly expanded due to the versatility of the electronic medium.
However these are neither permanently available nor public, that is a key difference. When you exit instant messenger your profile is no longer available, and you can choose to remain hidden as much as you want. In these ways instant messaging and e-mail are more like conversation tools than virtual communities. They are more like the telephone and mail than a community.
Virtual communities and traditional communities have different features, but they have a similar meaning for people. They allow one to extend their social network and their connections with people. We are a social species, we like to interact with others, and we like to form bonds with people. Through virtual communities you can get to know people and share your experience, that’s why they are rightfully called communities.

In an earlier post I commented on Bush’s state of the union speech and said that actions speak louder then words, here’s an example. He said:

To keep our economy growing, we also need reliable supplies of affordable, environmentally responsible energy. (Applause.) Nearly four years ago, I submitted a comprehensive energy strategy that encourages conservation, alternative sources, a modernized electricity grid, and more production here at home -- including safe, clean nuclear energy.

But in reality the President promptly offered a plan that cuts -- yes, cuts -- renewable energy and energy efficiency programs by 4 percent.
Other interesting notes from the League of Conservation Voters:
Arctic Drilling
The President's budget once again assumes revenues from drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Perhaps nobody told the President that there are no revenues from drilling in the Refuge, since Congress has time and time again, rejected opening the sensitive habitat to oil and gas exploration. Didn't this kind of clever accounting get companies such as Enron in trouble?
Oceans
Late last year, President Bush offered a glimmer of hope for the nation's oceans by announcing an action plan to combat problems facing our seas. But environmentalists were wary, saying follow-through and funding was key. It should come as no surprise, then, that the Bush Administration's budget requests a nearly 40 percent cut to the National Ocean Service and slashes funding for the National Marine Fisheries Service by 12 percent. So much for helping our oceans...
National Parks
A modest increase to address a backlog in maintenance in the National Park system comes up woefully short of what is needed. President Bush has fallen $4 billion short of his 2000 campaign pledge of $5 billion to take care of the problem.

I have joined two communities but I’m not sure that they are what I’m looking for so I may join another. I joined MySpace because I was invited by my friend, he started a group within the MySpace community called Buffalo Activists and he urged me to join. I expected to have some interesting discussions and get to know some people I had seen around Buffalo.
I also joined the Randi Rhodes Show Forum. Randi Rhodes is a liberal talk show host on Air America. I joined because there seemed to be a fair amount of political discussion going on.
Membership requirements are different for each community. In the MySpace community your account is generated immediately and you can start editing your page and your blog right away. I also had to join the sub-community of Buffalo Activists, and was accepted immediately, without peer review. However I found out that I couldn’t make any posts untill I had been a member for 7 days. It seems that they don’t want Newbees fumbeling around the forums bringing down conversations before they have explored the community, and that they want to avoid spammers. From roaming around the community I have noticed that the number of friends and comments in one’s profile represents a sort of status symbol. So to be accepted you need to do more than just participate in the forums, you should be developing little personal connections through the space. Indeed the forums seem to be an accessory rather than the focus, this and other aspects lead me to percieve this community as a sort of glorified dating service.
The Randi Rhodes Forum revolves around the discussion board, the profile page is minimal you can add one picture and a couple parigraphs of info and that’s it. My account had to be approved before I could do anything besides browse the messages. After being approved newbies are on “probation” which means their first 10 posts are closely minitored for any violations of the rules. Status on this group is denoted right below one’s icon in every post, the range is from “newbie” to “fancy pants elitist member”. In order to move up in rank you must post more frequently.
I can identify many of the roles mentioned, some polinator commented about a similar discussion in another thread, one Core Participant with a Sparticus icon composed about 40% of the posts in one forum that I was following. I also noticed a greeter in a forum on the Randi Rhodes site welcoming and encouraging a Newbie, and received my very own greeting on MySpace from some guy named Tom (probably hired, maybe fake) who wanted to be my friend.
So far I am just a Newbie and a Lurker, I’ve just started posting on both forums, and haven’t been involved in any important exchanges. I anticipate becoming more active, maybe not quite a core participant but active and engaged in the conversations that I join.

This State of the Union address was a waste of time. It was like a long campaign commercial, filled with the usual vague, feel good rhetoric. In past years I would scream out the truth contradicting each of his lies, but this year I just sat there thinking actions speak louder than words. He said he’s going to raise Pell Grants, and aid to veterans, ok, I’ll believe it when I see it since he’s been cutting both for the past 4 years.
Here’s an article that provided me with a refreshing perspective after listening to Bush’s performance.
Article

The Bush administration tonight demagogically postures as the great liberator. This is the pose assumed by all aggressors in modern history on the "home front."