Any (yes, any) congregation of people who have a common denominator. A half-dozen people stuck in an elevator for an hour is a community, for the duration in which they're stuck in the elevator. A bunch of angry people posting to Slashdot that there is no such thing as an online community are, ironically, a community.
How can you tell if you belong to a community?
1. Satisfying the basic requirements for that particular community (i.e. being in the stuck elevator with other people, being logged into an online forum, living in a particular neighborhood)
2. Maintaining some degree of communication with that community. If you don't talk to your neighbors, you're still living in a community, but you don't belong to it in any useful/realistic sense.
Are there different ways of belonging to a community?
I think that in certain situations, it's possible to belong to a community without the communication thing. Like the person who always comes to parties and just sits in a corner and reads. Hm... though I see that there's some interchange between "communication" and "participation" there that I hadn't thought of before. Perhaps I should change #2 above to "participation" instead of "communication."
What communities do you belong to?
Ummm... currently: my household, my work, my school, the professional organization I've joined, some LJ stuff, some Usenet stuff, some other online stuff, several far-flung groups, several friend-clusters.
Why?
Various different reasons; each community fills a certain need in my life, some more than one.
By the way... hello again. :) I'm sorry I haven't been to AP to see you (and the AP community) in a long while.
All IMO, of course
Any (yes, any) congregation of people who have a common denominator. A half-dozen people stuck in an elevator for an hour is a community, for the duration in which they're stuck in the elevator. A bunch of angry people posting to Slashdot that there is no such thing as an online community are, ironically, a community.
How can you tell if you belong to a community?
1. Satisfying the basic requirements for that particular community (i.e. being in the stuck elevator with other people, being logged into an online forum, living in a particular neighborhood)
2. Maintaining some degree of communication with that community. If you don't talk to your neighbors, you're still living in a community, but you don't belong to it in any useful/realistic sense.
Are there different ways of belonging to a community?
I think that in certain situations, it's possible to belong to a community without the communication thing. Like the person who always comes to parties and just sits in a corner and reads. Hm... though I see that there's some interchange between "communication" and "participation" there that I hadn't thought of before. Perhaps I should change #2 above to "participation" instead of "communication."
What communities do you belong to?
Ummm... currently: my household, my work, my school, the professional organization I've joined, some LJ stuff, some Usenet stuff, some other online stuff, several far-flung groups, several friend-clusters.
Why?
Various different reasons; each community fills a certain need in my life, some more than one.
By the way... hello again. :) I'm sorry I haven't been to AP to see you (and the AP community) in a long while.