Communities Without the Community Center

I think that my take on online communities is a little different than that of the reading we had this week regarding online communities.  I've been maintaining my online journal through LiveJournal for the last 8 years and before that I had another online journal through Xanga.  While Xanga may not have had this feature, LiveJournal is know for it's numerous communities.  They can be created by anyone and maintained in various different ways.  I've been an active member in communities which focused on women's health, World of Warcraft (specifically women who play WoW), groups who are fans of Futurama, The Simpsons, Family Guy, The West Wing, and many others.  I was even an active member to a community called "The Question Club," which existed solely for members to ask mundane or ridiculous questions and start conversations.  These communities acted like bulletin boards or forums.  Everyone who was a member of the community could make posts and comment to posts in that community.  This, I think, would be the closest online example of a physical "real world" community.  You have a regular space to talk with fellow community members and there is a hierarchy of leaders or moderators within the community to keep the peace.  You can make friends within this community by contacting them outside of the community space or following each other's LiveJournal journals.

Outside of this rather structured version of an online community, I think those communities which are free-form rely solely on links to one another's blogs or websites.  I write a cooking blog (La Petite Chef, in case you're interested) and my blog is one of thousands of cooking blogs currently being written online.  My reader base isn't that large, mostly close friends and family, and my presence online is not that big.  However, those other cooking blogs out there, like Smitten Kitchen or Hungry Girl, can form their own network or community of food writers by linking and commenting to one another in their blog posts.  If they include other food writers in that net of link-backs and comments, they can start creating a larger community of food writers.  I don't think that online communities need a common physical space online to commune, but a web of blogs or websites can easily create a community of like-minded writers or individuals.  For libraries that are one of a system of library branches could easily create an online community, connecting each branch with another (outside the usual lending connections).  For school libraries in various school districts, cities, counties or even states or countries could create their own community by linking back and forth to each other and perhaps even going so far as creating their own common space online. 

I can see where this can be confusing for people who want to study online communities.  With the Internet, people can communicate and connect with people all over other world with relative ease.  It doesn't have to start with a few friends, a piece of paper, and bulletin board at your local community center anymore, but merely a search through online blogs and websites of people who have similarities to yours or have different points of view on the same subjects.  Reading Efimova's paper on online communities really opened my eyes to how difficult it might be to track online communities, where the originated and who the members are.  The network of an online community can be incredibly dense and expansive all at the same time.  Honestly, I think it's what makes them so incredibly cool!