"A group of people who form relationships over time by interacting regularly around shared experiences, which are of interest to all of them for varying individual reasons."
In biological terms, a community is a group of interacting organisms sharing a populated environment. In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks, and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.
In sociology, the concept of community has led to significant debate, and sociologists are yet to reach agreement on a definition of the term. There were ninety-four discrete definitions of the term by the mid-1950s.[1] Traditionally a "community" has been defined as a group of interacting people living in a common location. The word is often used to refer to a group that is organized around common values and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household. The word can also refer to the national community or international community.
The word "community" is derived from the Old French communité which is derived from the Latin communitas (cum, "with/together" + munus, "gift"), a broad term for fellowship or organized society.[2]
Since the advent of the Internet, the concept of community no longer has geographical limitations, as people can now virtually gather in an online community and share common interests regardless of physical location.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community)
Below is a very interesting site that I came across when I was researching the idea of community from a social perspective.
(An excerpt from http://www.scn.org/cmp/whatcom.htm)
The Social Perspective of Human Settlements:
A human settlement, or community, is not merely a collection of houses. It is a human (social and cultural) organization. (The houses, which are cultural products of humanity, belong to one of the six dimensions of society or culture, the technological dimension, as explained below).
Also, it is not just a collection of human individuals; it is a socio-cultural system; it is socially organized. This means that you need to know some things about society ─ things learned in sociology.
The community has a life of its own which goes beyond the sum of all the lives of all its residents. As a social organization, a community is cultural. See Culture. That means it is a system of systems, and that it is composed of things that are learned rather than transmitted by genes and chromosomes. All the social or cultural elements of a community, from its technology to its shared beliefs, are transmitted and stored by symbols.
VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES
Why Do People Join and Build Virtual Communities?
People have been using online spaces since the beginning of the Internet to communicate. That includes prior to the World Wide Web, when BBS, or electronic bulletin boards and email loops connected folks across time and space. (For a good short history of the Internet, see http://www.dsv.su.se/internet/documents/internet-history.html). Many found that they began to form bonds of one sort of another. Today, the online forum tracking service, ForumOne (http://www.forumone.com) had more than 270,000 distinct communities and forums registered at their site in 1999. (The site no longer lists total numbers.) And many more remain unlisted.
Here are some of the types of activities people have enjoyed through these online connections.
- Socialize - meeting people, playing around, sharing jokes, stories and just taking interest in each other. Communities like this often focus around bulletin boards and chat rooms. An example of such a community is Electric Minds at http://www.electricminds.org
- Work together (business) - Distributed work groups within companies and between companies use online community to build their team, keep in touch and even work on projects together. A very detailed description of how online work groups work can be found at http://www.awaken.com and http://www.bigbangworkshops.com .
- Work together (community - geographic) - Freenets (see the Freenet Directory) have offered local communities ways to communicate and work together. Some have even combined this with ISP service. Community groups such as soccer teams, school groups and others have used online community to provide forums for information and discussion, helping bring groups together.
- Work together (issues) - Virtual communities have been very important to people who share interests in issues and causes. Support groups for people dealing with certain diseases, causes such as politics or the environment, or people studying together, all can form a nucleus for an online community.
- Have topical conversations - Online salons and discussion forums such as the Well (http://www.well.com), Salon's TableTalk (as of mid 2001 a paid subscription model) (http://www.salon.com), Cafe Utne (http://www.utne.com) and others have formed communities of people who enjoy conversations about topics and shared interests. ForumOne noted in 1999 that the top ten topics for forums registered at their site are around the topics of (in order): relationships (16%), "mega sites (diverse topics, aggregations of smaller conferences - 11%), business and finance (8%), health (5%), hobbies (4%), religion (3%), music (3%), international (3%). It would be interesting to revisit those stats at the start of 2002.
Community Examples
The communities noted above and others across the Internet represent a wide range of interests and motivations. We asked a few community owners why they set up their communities and how it has turned out for them. Here are their stories.
· Case History: A Community of Purpose - John Aravosis
· Case Study: the IBM/Electric Minds'Kasparov v. Deep Blue
· Nancy Rhine and Women's Wire
· An anonymous parent at the neurology web is concerned that the anti-oxidant vitamins have too much copper for her 60 lb child with Tourette's Syndrome. Bonnie responds - "Copper increases the action of tryptophan 2,3 dioxygenase, thus breaking down tryptophan to kynurenine. In TS some studies have shown an already reduced level of tryptophan and increased level of kynurenine in the blood. Some copper is needed for the antioxidant action of superoxide dismutase and one of the cytoshromes, but the normal diet should provide enough copper without supplementing it further. Copper water pipes alone provide plenty (and sometimes too much if they are new) of copper."
- From Neurology Web, Tourette Syndrome forum, http://neuro-www.mgh.harvard.edu/forum/TouretteSyndromeF/2.19.994.55PMQuestiontoBo.html
· Jen CA9-Sunset19 worries about the leafless Butterfly Bush in her yard "I haven't under- or over-watered, etc. I planted it last fall. I guess I'll have to wait til spring really arrives (TRUE spring, not our pseudo/spring-wannabe winter) to see if it starts to come back. I know I could just get another one but I really don't want to have to do that." Within a day, she has four responses - Wanda's butterfly bush is in full bloom, Denise's is limping along. Gardening Gal and Kelli think it may be too cold. - From the GardenWeb, California Gardens (formerly at http://www.gardenweb.com/forums/load/calif/msg0210504717260.html?5)
· Over in the Rock Hall of Fame forum, Robert Wilcox is hopping mad that AC/DC still hasn't been inducted into the hall of fame. "Let us not forget that the often forgotten AC/DC has sold more albums than the Stones. Yet for some reason, millions line up in droves to see the glorified British bar band perform the same antiquated riffs that Eddie Van Halen could play with his feet and a carboard pick." He falls into a dispute with Pay Attention, who insists that AC/DC is already an inductee.- From Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 500 Songs Forum, http://forums.rockhall.com/forums/get/songs/504.html
(Taken from the following site of interest -http://www.fullcirc.com/community/communitywhatwhy.htm)
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