What is the Community?

Recently I've had some interesting conversations with both old and new players, who, in the course of talking to me, or telling me to do this or that, referenced "the community".

What is the community? Who is in it? Who leads it? Where is it?

It's all of us. No one leads it. That you even have to ask is highly amusing (and telling).

I dont get the bias built into the poll response choices. A community is a group of people who share a common interest in..."SOMETHING." In that respect one could support any of the choices presented.

If what you mean by the post is to convey a message that some may feel excluded from certain subset communities, then why not just say that instead of posting an absurd inflammatory poll.

Well, it's a community of people that share a common interest in absurd inflammatory postings. What do you expect?

ME


....

pls?

You can be my community anytime baby

I may be missing something here but I don't see anything inflammatory about this poll at all, can you explain why you feel it is so? I also don't understand why you feel there is bias, there seem to be a selection of many choices, which lead in different directions, but I can't see an overall "bias" here as you seem to think there is.

My first thought to this question is... Secondlife is a virtual "nation"... within our great nation are hundreds, if not few thousands... of "communities". Within these communities are individuals of all walks of life, interests, lifestyles... be it residents, groups, businesses, etc... the communities are ever growing.

I think Viva just has a bias toward Prokofy.

ok the responses start out relatively benign:
The community is all residents of SL regardless of land or reputation status.

But now the responses have a built in not so subtle message: "The community is all residents of SL, but some have leadership status from age, reputation, etc."

What relationship does the concept of community bear to the qualifications specified in the other responses, such as community is all of us and some "have leadership status from age, reputation, etc."

Why include the clarification at the end if the reply is all of us?

"The community is wherever 2 or more people are gathered in Philip's name." What the hell does that mean? It is just a cheap self serving slam.

My point is that embedded in the answers is an inflammatory message that makes the poll disingenuous.

Well apart from the couple you point out (and even then, they're valid options as far as I can see) the rest seem pretty benign, so I think you're overplaying this somewhat.

The Philip's name one is tongue in cheek, like the way people love to put a Pecan Pie option in their polls here. As for the leadership status one, are you saying that it's unnatural to have an option with a 'community leaders' overtone? Last time I checked communtiy leaders exist a lot in RL I'd say that having such an option on a poll about communities is also valid.

I guess you're reading something you want to into this poll, that's all I can conclude.

i wish polls had not been added as an option to the forums. they commonly are poorly done, and are slanted, and in the end hold no water as a valid poll. they seem to just generate more threads with pointless issues.

the purpose of this poll is what?? to discover what maybe 50 people in the forums will choose from a list of options about the definition of a community? makes me tired.

marilyn

given the history of the person who posted this thread, and given their incessant claims of an elite that runs/inhibits sl, and given that several of the options mirror several of their claims about that supposed ruling/inhibiting elite, i'd say the poll is biased and skirting the edge of trolling.

sure in isolation this would probably be benign, but in context it smells fishy.

You know, there is no hope. This poll is not biased one way or the other. Nothing is even remotely like trolling. Some of you just wish to pick up on anything to continue your "battle". Frightening.

ymmv

i voted for the last.

i live in New York City. There are tons of communities within our metropolis, but I can't call something of this size and diversity a community.

SL has also gotten too big and diverse to be called a community. Maybe I would call it a society, and I would say, "There are many many communities that make up the fabric of SL's society."

The group of active forum posters I might call a community, albeit a highly fractious one . I'm always pleased to meet you all in-world.

I agree with Moopf.

Wasn't a dang thing wrong with this poll.

coco

P.S. I also agree with Forsetti. I voted for the first option, but I also agreed with several of the others.

I agree with Forsetti's assessment that the forums are one community within the game. All games with forums have forum communities. This one is particularly fractious, I would say, but it is still open to all, as is obvious by my continued presence here, and thus we form a community, albeit one that often reminds me of a dysfunctional family gathering over the holidays, with alcohol involved.

Amy Jo Kim wrote a book called "Community Building on the Web" which is recommended reading for anybody interested in the topic (and I don't just say that because a picture of one of my avatars appears in it

I don't know if she really defined "community" explicitly, but the book has practical advice for recognizing and rewarding community leaders among the player base (and the big payoffs for doing so).

In my experience, the leaders of the community aren't necessarily the ones who've played the longest or who have good relationships with the developers. The real leaders often don't even think of themselves as leaders. They're the ones that have ideas compelling enough that other people want to help bring them to fruition.

There are definitely sub-communities within the larger community, but the question was simply what is "the community." In those generic terms I assume the question refers to SL's community, which would be everyone in SL.

Arcadia's book recommendation sounds very intriguing, can't wait to get it. I agree that "leadership" isn't necessarily something provided by in-game "leader boards" based on dwell.

Moopf is correct that I honestly didn't think up some "troll" or "time bomb" or something in this poll. If it seems biased, make your own, as you often do, just to be different.

Polls are notorious on these forums, and notoriously biased and inaccurate. I don't make any special claims for this one. I just want to start a discussion on "what is the community".

Example: someone tells me "the communit thinks X or Y" about something. The "community" they are referencing is either some self-selected elitist group, some old group of beta-testers, some group of "me and my friends" but whatever, it is just a group, and not "the community," i.e. all players. It is not even the "direct democracy" results (which are highly flawed and dubious).

So often people make a statement like "this is for the good of the community". "I'm doing this for the community" or "that hurts the community". What they really mean to say is "I'm doing this for my own self-interest which I believe to be enlightened self-interest" or "that hurts me and my interests". It's just good to become aware of these distinctions.

In a group of 32,000 people, nobody should be arrogating to themselves the definition of the community. Of course, the Lindens, as the basic gatekeepers, and their appointed liaisons, mentors, helpers, greeters, etc. may decide that they set the tone and the basic definition of what is the community -- they, after all, are the makers and keepers of the TOS. So in that sense, the definition of community perforce is set by them, and they are essentially what makes up "the community" -- the rest are merely subscribers.



Um, are you aware that when you say this, you are illustrating your own beliefs that there is someone who can set others straight, that *you* can set *me* straight, that there is some code of behaviour to which you can contrast my behaviour and find it "amusing" or "telling". Really, you should take a look at that.

To say that "no one leads" SL is really silly. Of course someone leads SL, like any community. It's normal, natural, and legitimate. There are some people who invest a lot of time and energy into "contributing" and "contributing" is the chief value-range of this community, it's really Randian in its harshness sometimes, when people are judged as successes or failures by what they "contribute to the community" -- but there it is, it's what is valued by "this community".

My point isn't to debunk actual legitimate leaders, to say there's no need for leaders, to question some age-old notion of "the community" that really means "the village elders". These are realities in RL as in SL. I'm just for having an AWARENESS of what this is so it can be LOOKED at and REVISED if necessary.

Why? Because "the community" is not all things to all men, it is a big amorphous thing for some, it is a tiny specific thing for others, and when you have that great a diversity of views of what "the community" is you really need to take stock -- so that people can have some rough sense of shared purpose, if nothing else.

Gotta say, that made me laugh. Is it just the Catholics that got that line?


I like Forseti's interpretation the best...comparing SL to a city the size of NYC (except no daily newscast to try and keep everyone up on the general happenings) in terms of communities within a society seems to be the most accurate comparison to me.

Poll, meet bias. Bias, meet poll.



No, I'm saying that I found it to be a very silly question with only one correct answer for purely semantic reasons.

i live in SL, but i don't consider myself part of any community here. so, not being part of it, i have no clue what it really is. my guess is that SL and the SL community is just different for everyone.

bette aka reddish tigereye

come visit 'lake charlotte' in blue

Well I think there may be two, or more different interpretations of what the community is. Or rather it is more accurate to say that the definition of "community' is wholly subjective to the intent of the poster.

In an general sense the SL community is everyone who is invloved with SL, as a player or as a Linden.

However I think in posting here on the forums, more people refer to the forum community, which is a subset of the SL community. (the statisticians my extrapolate that this is a representative sample of the SL community on the whole). However some posts use the community in a more pedantic way: meaning the community that agrees with the poster and thus gives support to the notion that the pedagogue's opinions carry the weight of the entire "community."

In a sense all these definition are right, and all are wrong. Community is a word with multiple and varied interpretations, and can apply to different layers of the same cake. It is all dependent on the intent of the speaker and the context of the post.