Who's afraid of community participation?

Posted October 23, 2002 11:01 PM.

There's a fascinating post about the emergence of the UK Weblogging Community at notsosoft.com at the moment. One of the tools that has strengthened relationships between UK-based webloggers (of which there are several - pubs being a significant one of them) has ceased to function - the GBlogs Update Tracker has shut down so that its creator can concern herself with (considerably) more important creative work. But does the removal of a tool signal the end of a community project? And was UK Weblogging's emergence as an active and vibrant interconnected community ever a project?

The most interesting aspect about some of the debate that has ensued in the responses to Meg's post is how uncomfortable people seem to be with the concept of being part of a "community" at all. Also fascinating is the assumptions of what participating in a community involves. The assumption seems to be that being a member of a community is something chosen, something that involves heavy participation, and something that requires each of its participants to be friends with one another and socialise.

These aspects of participation are almost held up as spectres - huge achievements that one would have to wish to overcome in order to participate. I can't tell whether it's because we're English or because we're bedroom-bound webloggers that being part of such a community seems to terrify so many people. It could be just the reification of individuality that has brought us to this place. But I think it's unfounded. And I think it's unfounded because this sense of community is artificial and overblown...

Let's look at a couple of examples - when people talk about the local community of people in a village do they mean that (1) they all go drinking with each other all the time, or (2) that they are familiar with each other's existence, may know each other (sometimes only by several degrees of separation) and share a vague vested interest in their local environment? I would contend it's the latter. And when people talk about the 'gay community' or the 'Jewish community', they're not referring to individual social groups of friends, but instead to a roughly shared set of goals, aspirations, interests or cultural principles.

In web circles, community has come to mean different things. Mostly we think of specific sites or services designed to create communities, like Habbo Hotel, Metafilter or Barbelith. If we push ourselves we might extend this to Usenet groups or even Instant Messager communities or e-mail. But fundamentally these are tools for helping communities to germinate, develop and extend themselves - not the communities themselves. Just as the communities themselves are not necessarily defined by drinking with one another, or by believing exactly the same things. Do all members of Metafilter go drinking with one another? Do they all participate to the same extent?

In fact what community represents, what community is is something much looser than a definition surrounding the activities that the members undertake with one another or the tools that they use to communicate with one another. These can be sidelines in fact - at best, they strengthen the bonds - maybe they make possible communities between people who would not be able to form them otherwise. But that's all...

I do consider myself a member of a community of UK webloggers. And I feel that way because we all have something in common - a shared experience maybe, or a desire to learn from one another, an interest in other people who validate our 'hobbies' or maybe it's just because what matters to one of us is more likely to matter to other ones of us. I don't share my politics or my sexuality with many of these people. Nor my gender, many of my interests, my ethnicity or my obsession with Buffy.

I also consider myself part of an online community of webloggers in general - an ever-growing group of people who share certain things with me, including the fact that they might be at home writing a huge post at eleven o'clock at night, or that they feel a need or a desire to express themselves.

I also consider myself part of a community of gay webloggers, and gay people on the internet in general, and in fact gay people in general. And then there are the communities surrounding the issues of design that I'm interested in. And the communities of people who are interested in Buffy.

Some are communities which manifest themselves through geographical proximity, closely shared values, friendships, sex even. With other communities there will be none of that at all - simply a shared characteristic, or chromosome, or interest.

We're all members of hundreds - thousands even - of different overlapping communities all the time. Some are tiny, some are huge. Some are more important to us than others, but all are important to an extent. And it's nothing to be ashamed of!

Comments

Please stay on-topic, informative and polite. I reserve the right to remove comments for whatever vague capricious reasons seem reasonable at the time.

So, unless I'm really tired and whatever I'm reading isn't making any sense whatsoever, what you've done is taken Meg's basic premise and expanded upon the definition of the word 'community'.

I myself hate the word. It's really not a nice word. It may not be the worst word out there, but it's pretty bad. It reminds me of the local 'special' school (and the associated childhood insults); the 'rebel' teenagers who smoked and stayed out late - 'ooh, what would the community think?'; of fuddy-duddy Neighbourhood Watch schemes; of badly mis-spelt Church newsletters; of ridiculous politically-correct tabloids references to 'asylum-seeking foreign refugee scum'; of the silly woman next door who is wary of the 'ethnic minority' family down the street.

So, yeah. I guess 'community' is a fitting word for what we have: we have the politico-warbloggers; the uninformant who links to mainstream news sites while completely missing the point of the story told; the blatant stereotype I've shoved in just because I'm putting my side of the argument; religious propaganda spreaders who ping and abuse; the camgirls; the 'nerdy' kids who pay no attention in school and thus learn computers better than the rest of us because their heads are emptier.

The gblogs list is like a street; you click on one member of the list, and it's like knocking on someone's door. You can tell that this is an open community, because most people don't require you to have a key - there's no registration process on most blogs, almost never need to register to read what's being written.

Tch, eh? Like my Grandmother always said - life was better when you never had to lock the doors properly and the neighbours always popped over. I knew her wisdom would come in useful somewhere.

Or maybe it's just a fledgling community - more like the cavemen who hadn't figured out how to roll the rock in front of the door yet. Following that analogy, in a few hundred net-years of evolution, you'll have to be authorised for a 'key' to get into a blog. And the super-classy ones - like a five star hotel - will want you to pay. Would you lock up your blog to prying eyes if you could? But anyway - that's besides the point. Forgive me, it's 3AM.

I could argue about whether or not that it's a true community, but what there is, is art imitating life, because this is an artform made out of people's lives, on the whole. Blog my thoughts onto my site, and, although visitors may not like what I are saying, they tolerate it - just like how anyone from my 'real' 'community' can make a judgement on me based on walking past my house and how it looks - because, just by viewing my site, they are coming into my personal space.

Then again, they might throw paint on my windows if they don't like what I say to them.

To be honest, I feel like the rowdy neighbour in the blog 'community'. No-one pays me any attention in the street, I don't often talk to anyone and I don't expect them to talk back. Doesn't mean I'm going to give up my space, though, because I own it and I'm paying for it (hmm, does this make blogspot users the rental tennants of the 'community'? Do they give up and move away quicker than the rest of us would? Maybe, when they haven't invested in their own domain name home).

'Community', in essence , is a show of respect. IRL, it is being able to live side by side, whether the two sides agree or not, or even talking to each other or not. The same applies online - one blog can't force another off the web (like how the average neighbour can't often force the next door dwellers out) and whether or not I am interested in the person writing or topic of discussion, doesn't mean I have to 'come in for a cuppa tea' every day - I just log off and keep walking past from then on. Unless I don't want to. I acknowledge the prescence in some way, even if I don't like it. Frankly, I'm always seeing names in lists of blogs that I'll never click on just because I don't like the name, or the address, or whatever. I'm picky. Yes, it's my own fault.

More importantly, does this all show that webloggers are stuck in one place in this big old internet thing? Can you weblog and not keep cropping up amongst the same old lists of sites? Because the whole linking phenomenon makes that idea kind of impractical. If I could stop people from linking their site to one of my posts, would you? If I could tell google not to spider my words, would I take that option?

Yes. I would. So I'm probably not a member of the so-called community. I'm sure that other people probably wouldn't act so drastically. Maybe they see themselves as part of a community. Like Buffy fans, say, as opposed to Buffy watchers.

What does this make me? A nethead who doesn't like blogging? An anti-sociopath who doesn't get on with his neighbours? Ooh, that's close to the bone.

So that's why I reckon that there's a blog community. And it's also why I'm not a part of it, or more like someone who's stuck in a twelve month lease in a part of town he doesn't like, but not for any aesthetical reasons. So why am I here? Like, say, living in Paris, I like the history, I like the potential, but I can't be there full time because I don't know the language and I wouldn't make any sense.

Sorry, I've been rambling. And it's late. Worst. Post. Ever. And so on.

Feed me back if you think I've made any points whatsoever. Next up: 'Blogging - it's more like speech writing than diary-writing, innit?'

→ Posted by: James at October 24, 2002 3:57 AM

The word "community" has been hijacked into meaninglessness. Witness the media's favourite post 9/11 expression: "the international community". There is no such thing! It is an oxymoron.

→ Posted by: Gina at October 24, 2002 11:13 AM

I don't think that's strictly fair. It's oldest root we know of is communis, the latin for 'common' which was used as the basis for the word communitas - meaning fellowship. This travelled through Old French towards the middle english 'communite', meaning citizenry.

In fact the usage of community as something that only refers to tight-knit groups of geographically and socially friendly people is relatively new. The usages which include things like comunities of similarity, communities as representing segments of society or between those sharing common interests are far older - congruently as old as those that refer to groups of people as political entities...

→ Posted by: Tom Coates at October 24, 2002 5:31 PM

The idea of a web community (virtual) is built on the principal of hope. It's the hope (of webloggers, e-commerce, IRC, message boards etc.) that all individuals will interact.

In 'built communities' planners, architects and politicians have attempted, over time, to build communities on hope ' they hope people will live together, interact, communicate, bond, equalise and most importantly trust each other.

In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries wealthy industrialists in the UK like Hartley (Jam), Leverhulme (Soap) and Salt (Milling) created and built urban villages to house their workers. These 'visionaries' saw the value in creating communities and providing welfare ' good housing, sanitation, churches, schools etc. They gave something ' hope, and got something back - commitment. The individuals involved in these communities were unique in that they had something 'in common'.

The experiment in the UK of 'high rise' and of New Towns to solve 'inner city' problems of the 60's 70' and 80's has shown that by artificially bringing people together to create 'new communities' failed. Many of these new communities have now degenerated and represent some of the most socially dysfunctional areas in the UK. The social cost to this generation has been huge.

To be member of a 'virtual' community (I think that is the best way to describe it) is different, - it's one of personal choice. It's about the choice of wanting to belong, to share ideas and it's the creation of an on-line personality. This is its dynamism. One of the greatest issues for 'virtual' communities is one of trust (apart from security of financial transactions). Trust is developed over time ' you trust your parents, your teachers (well some of them), your neighbours (well some of them), and your friends (well some of them), your ISP, your server? - trust is earned.

Virtual communities are instant and therefore nature transient. They 'evolve' organically by referral (I've even read today about 'referral marketing') by links and by email. There is no need to build relationships. No need for commitment. No need for dependency. Just state your case and move on. No need for trust.

Or is there?

→ Posted by: John at October 26, 2002 9:42 PM

I'd like to belong to 'the community' but to tell you the truth whenever I've tried I've been shunned. Be it on message boards, the Yahoo! list, I've even spent countless hours hunting down and persuading people to partake in my local Blog Meetup (Liverpool) but to no avail.

Your blog was the very first British one I found (early 2000) and to some extent it gave me the inspiration to do my own. I've had my blog for 2 years now and I love it to bits, so much so my mind works totally in blog posts. But I feel I have more connection with Bloggers living just about everywhere else but blighty.

Not to sound like a moaning teenager, despite being one, but I just don't get respect. Apart from being the stereotypical nostalgia-lovin' angst-ridden student I have no domain, my pseudo-essays are on relatively immature topics and I do not recycle the same topical drivel that everyone else does. It the eyes of the so-called pioneers that can only equal 'crap'.

The way some 'a-list' bloggers reacted to Scary Duck being crowned top blog (a competition I was short listed in - and as only one of 4 free hosted sites) underlines this. Perhaps this elitism only exists in my head but I'm not the only one who sees the UK Blogging community split into classes...

→ Posted by: mike d at October 29, 2002 11:10 AM

community schmommunity... buffy rocks!

and in light of this, i am going to submit the word 'schmommunity' to collins, the dictionary people.

→ Posted by: lawrie at November 1, 2002 1:22 PM

Tom - I think one of the most interesting aspects of this discussion, which you touch on briefly above, is the lack of a clear distinction between "community" as something quite high-level & conceptual and as something more pragmatic & tangible.

To elaborate: the same word can be used to refer to "the internet community", "the weblog community", "the Blogger community", "the UK weblog community", "the London weblog community", "the London blogmeet community" or "the webloggers who drink in the Coach and Horses pub in Soho at 5:17pm every Tuesday night community". When the same word covers the whole spectrum from macro- to micro-, differences of opinion are inevitable.

I suspect that some people feel that they aren't part of a "weblog community" because they don't link, they don't read (m)any other sites, they don't meet other bloggers, etc. They might not be open to the more abstract notion of "community" (commonality?), which potentially includes them whether they like it or not.

James - you can tell Google not to spider your words, plus most other well-behaved search engines too. Do a search on "robots.txt" for more information - it's an easy process.

→ Posted by: Stuart at November 1, 2002 3:40 PM

Another thing that limits the notion of a 'community' of UK blogs is many blogs are really doing very different things. Journal blogs, Tech blogs and Pundit blogs, well, not quite 'never' the twain shall meet, but certainly not very often.

I have hosted three 'Blogger Bashes' in London at which about 20-30 folks turned up representing 7 to 10 blogs (eight of my blog's contributors live in or near London). Yet they were all politically oriented pundit blogs and hardly any of us knew any Journal or Tech bloggers, both of which actually out number us pundit bloggers by quite a margin.

We are all in our own ghettos and I am not sure that really matters all that much. I probably have more common interests with a US, Canadian or Australian pundit blogger than a London Journal blogger who might live around the corner from me to be honest.

→ Posted by: Perry de Havilland at November 19, 2002 2:23 AM

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