2.1

Communities are abound on the internet, many of us are members of at least one web based community, but when the number of members exceeds a certain point does the sense of community collapse?

Let's take a look at a hypothetical real life community, a cul-de-sac neighborhood. For the sake of simplicity let's assume everyone knows everyone else on this cul-de-sac. These members as a group decide that they should do some type of project that will improve the looks of their little community. You are sure to find some members of the community are going to be much more passionate about the improvements while others are likely to remain silent or nonparticipative. Let's expand upon this model and look at the city this cul-de-sac's located in. The city decides to promote a city wide improvement effort calling upon volunteer service. There will be similar results, there will be some who are going to be much more passionate about the request, while others will be nonparticipative or only respond to certain types of volunteer work/discussions.

It's highly unlikely that everyone in the city knows everyone else or even a large enough cross section of the city to say they know at least one person from every individual community in it, yet the outcome of the city planned event will closely resemble the event of the cul-de-sac. What would not be found in the city event however as opposed to the cul-de-sac event is, is that due to the size of the city, even though the city could be considered a community one thing that is more than likely to happen, is the members in the larger community will form a series of smaller communties.

A similar outcome happens on community web sites. It is rare that you will find a community online with a very limited number of members, but in those types of communties there is a much stronger sense of everyone being part of one (and just one) community. When you branch out into a larger community such as facebook, myspace, Livejournal, or even sites dedicated to a product or franchise such as Rooster Teeth Productions you are almost sure to find that the members of the vast all encompassing community will inexplicitly branch off within the community to form their own smaller communities.

Do these smaller communities negate the overall feeling of community?

The answer is, at least in this context, no. While the members may join into a smaller community, they still refer to themselves as a member of the larger community. If the larger community was to ask something from its members, the smaller communities would also respond in kind. The size of a community is not always a good measure of how much particpation it has, it's merely a number of how many people they have who may participate.

Cheers,
Eric Summers