Introduction

It's 7pm and I am just settling in for a beer with my friends. As they enter the room we greet each other with hugs and excited smiles. It's great to see so many here tonight. Looks like it's party time in the ole pit tonight! Most of the gang is here, some new faces and some old friends who have been MIA for awhile.

Oops should I define MIA ? Well, as the language of most virtual communities consists of many acronyms, I won't define them here but have provided a section The Glossary (click here to go there OR click the acronym, word, etc. to be taken to a definition) at the back of this essay for such terminology. So if you want to know what MIA is or any other funny acronym, word or expression I use in here – click on item to go there. Thanks.

Now where was I, or better yet where am I? I am not in a local neighborhood pub I am online in a virtual community with a ton of my friends. The pit I refer to is the Hamster Pit which is a Social Lounge in the Yahoo Game – Gin. So just what is a virtual community?

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About Virtual Communities

A Definition

The Living Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language gives the following definitions -

Community: "The state of being held in common; common possession, enjoyment, liability, etc; common character; agreement; identity; social intercourse; association; life in association with others; the social state; a number of individuals associated together by the fact of residence in the same locality, or of subjection to the same laws and regulations; a number of persons having common ties or interests and living in the same locality; hence any body or group living together, esp. any monastic group living together; a communistic society; a body of people of a place; the public."

Virtual: "Being in essence or effect, not in fact; not actual but equivalent, so far as result is concerned; as, a virtual denial of a statement."

So by definition a community consists of people with something in common. It is often used to refer to people living in the same geographical region. It is also used to describe people who share common values or interests. Examples: religion (the Catholic Community), values (the gay community), ethnical community (the native community) intelligence/knowledge (the information technology community).

Many of these communities have moved online. However not all online or virtual communities originated in the real world. Their existence came about because of the Internet or other technologies available today and in the last few years.

Using many of the available search engines one can quickly find websites with information about a multitude of communities available online. For example I entered the words "virtual communities" in the Yahoo search engine and the resulting search was a list of 30,300 web pages (note the number you get may vary from day to day). In this essay I will touch on some of the more commonly known or used virtual communities. I will describe some of the issues and my own experiences. Sites used are linked throughout the essay and also listed in the References/Bibliography section of this report.

 

What Makes It a Community?

So just what makes a virtual community tic? By definition (and you won't find this in Webster's dictionary, at least not yet) a virtual community is group of people who share common interests, needs or just the pleasure of being social. They do not necessarily share a common location but instead meet somewhere in cyberspace. The definition of a virtual community is not always agreed upon nor are the definitions of recently coined words such as cyber, cyberspace, etc. and a new one I add later Cyberish (I just made this one up - it seems to fit and I talk more about it later in this essay).

So what of the Pit I mentioned earlier? Our common interest is social but also the love of the game Gin. Some come purely to play and the quest for the Red often referred to by the ladies of the lounge as a "Red Dress". If you play rated games, Yahoo rewards the winners with points and for the various levels there are colors. Red is the ultimate prize and some players will beg, borrow, steal or cheat to get it……lol . Others come purely to chat and seldom play. They are looking for laughs, companionship and an escape from the real world. Some have only been coming online for a short time, others are so called lifers and have been online for several years. They have formed close relationships with many in this room or others. Some have met IRL. Some are dating, some have married, some have given birth and sadly some have died. While much of the "playing around" in the lounges is not real, the emotions felt, feelings of closeness among the visitors are often very real. I will discuss more about the various communities, friends and life online in later sections. Because the Pitsters (a phrase coined by the regulars and community members) share a common bond of Gin and socialization, the lounge can be classed as a virtual community. These friends communicate in the lounge, chat on Pagers or ICQ, share emails, and get together in real life or IRL .

 

The Technology

Today's technology has provided us with the means of communicating with people from all over the world. Many communication tools are utilized in virtual communities. The early Bulletin Boards or BBS are credited with being the original virtual communities. To utilize these services the user dialled into the provider via the modem. The services provided varied from provider to provider. One of the ones I use to visit was run by a friend out of his home. He provided access to information on local entertainment, jokes, shareware, a chat area and more. If you want to know more about BBSs check out http://www.helsinki.fi/science/optek/1993/n2/kuehn.txt. As the Internet expanded and such services became available online people migrated to these communities.

CMC: Almost every website I visited or article I read in researching this essay mentions CMC. Technology such as CMC or computer-mediated technology enables the communication tools as used by virtual communities of today. It began with the invention of the Internet. CMC is defined as communications mediated via the computer. It includes but is not limited to computer conferencing, e-mail, relay chat lines or Internet Relay Chat (IRC), and Multiple User Dungeons (MUDS). CMC came into existence in 1969. For more information visit Computer-Mediated Communication: Literature Review of a New Context.

 

The Tools

Besides the technology of CMC members and visitors of virtual communities will need access to the tools of CMC via a computer, services of an Internet Service Provider (ISP), reading skills and while one can survive with 2 finger typing it helps to bone up on your keyboarding skills. Those who frequent today's online communities utilize services such as email, pagers or ICQ, IRC chat rooms, list servers, message boards, and more. Some have websites where they share information/pictures about themselves or display talents, knowledge or many other items. Definitions of these services are provided below

Email: E-mail is electronic mail. It is information transmitted by means of digitized packets over phone lines, cable or other such network connectivity to other computers using an Internet provider or online service (such as AOL).

ICQ: It is downloadable software that provides the online user with an interface that allows one to chat, share web sites, share files and much more. More about ICQ can be found at http://web.icq.com/ . It should be noted for some that ICQ is not just a tool but also a community in itself.

IRC: IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. It is a means for online users to share real-time conversations. The technology works similar to that of a CB radio enabling only one user to talk(type) and enter at the same time. All words typed are seen by anyone in the Chat Room/Lounge. Not all are required to participate and many will simply watch until they feel comfortable enough to pipe in their 2 cents worth.

List servers: This is a service supported by a software program enabling the user to subscribe to discussions of the Internet. This service helps user groups to converse via e-mail lists on their chosen topic. When a participant sends e-mail it is relayed to all the subscribers of that list. They are similar to newsgroups. One should be cautious when using this for there can be a high volume of e-mails.

Message boards: These are a service provided by most online communities. A series of topics are listed and one can post a new message or respond to an existing posting. A sample of such a message board is located at Yahoo Message Board - Gin Rummy. Another example of message boards would be that of the Web Board provided by the university for those taking courses. Students can post emails for all in the class to read and if desired comment on.

Pagers: Again this is a service provided by some of the online communities. There are others but the one I am familiar with is provided by Yahoo. It allows you to send private instant message to your online friends and community members. It allows you to add and remove friends from your list and know when you go online if friends on your list are also online. It also allows for group voice chat if you and participants have speakers and a microphone. For more information on Yahoo's Pager or Messenger services check out http://messenger.yahoo.com/ .

 

Reality versus Pseudocommunities

Are virtual communities real or just a novel fantasy of those who are members? For some perhaps this is the case but for others it is very real. This often requires extra caution in learning to tune out the "noise" and tune into what maybe real. The level of fantasy will vary from community to community or even within areas of a particular community. For example within one of the virtual communities I frequent we occasionally don the identities of a variety of Disney characters/cartoons and return to the lounge to play out our version of the costume we have put on. I play the "queen of hearts" and if you cross me, I yell out "off with his/her head!" lol. Not all participate, as with any costume party. Some think it is fun and others choose to use the ignore feature (discussed later).

Accepting what is or isn't in real in a virtual community depends on where you are. There are some very serious onliners and some that are strictly social. For my favorite hangout - Yahoo Gin, I compare it to playing cards at the legion, only the average age may be somewhat younger.

In my opinion, asking the question if virtual communities are real is like asking if puppy love (or for that matter any kind of love, including cyberlove) is real. To those experiencing it, it is very, very real. To those on the outside it is not.

Differing views and perspectives of virtual communities are offered by many authors such as Horn, Slovka, Mitchell, Williams, Rheingold and others. In two articles on the net - Public Life in Electropolis I and Electropolis II these authors discuss theirs views on virtual communities. Some are very critical of this way of community life. They fear it may lead to the end of face-to-face or real life communications. Others argue that they merely add to or compliment real life.

 

What isn't a Virtual Community?

Do all situations where people gather on the net create a virtual community? Previously I have described what in the view of most is recognized as a virtual community. In the opinion of some actually, no situations online are communities. But that aside, among those who are pro (and I count myself in that group) the existence of virtual communities it is felt that the following activity does not constitute a virtual community. This is best described by the following exert from Virtual Communities, Virtual Settlements & Cyber-Archaeology: A Theoretical Outline.

"The entire collection of Usenet newsgroups cannot be considered a single virtual community (or a single virtual settlement) because it is not one symbolically delineated place, but rather thousands of individual places. On the other hand, an individual newsgroup or a collection of related newsgroups could have an associated virtual community. An IRC-server containing hundreds of unrelated channels would also not indicate the existence of a single virtual community for exactly the same reason, although a single channel or a small collection of channels could. At the same time activity on an individual IRC channel does not demonstrate the existence of a virtual community as it may not represent a significant degree of interactive group-CMC. A listserv managing email discussion groups should also not be considered a virtual community because the symbolic delineation occurs at the level of the individual email-groups." In summary one should be cautious about categorizing newsgroups or listservs as virtual communities.

Next Section: Making CyberFriends