How is it good?

OK, I’m not going to pretend I can answer this question definitively.  But there are three things I want to point out.

First: (and I’ve mentioned this before) There’s a geographic component.  If there’s not a shared geography in physical space then it’s not really a community.  It’s some sort of club or interest group.  It’s a network.  But it’s not really a community.

Second:  Communities are made up of individuals, networks, and networks of networks (in any community that’s not shrinking, networks of networks can be multi-layered, and will become more so over time, and the quantity of simple networks will increase over time).  Related to the first point, geography is necessary but not sufficient.

Third:  The nature of a community is that some portions of it will be invisible to other portions.  This is as is it should be.  Not every individual should be connected to every other individual or to every other network.  Firstly, because not everybody likes everybody else, and these conflicts can derail otherwise productive endeavors.  Secondly, sometimes people really don’t have enough in common to make a connection valued, even it it’s technologically possible.  Thirdly, just because the technology makes it possible, and even if there’s enough commonality, and even if, in fact, we would like each other yet still connections shouldn’t be mandatory–I shouldn’t be forced to be connected, and I almost never appreciate unsolicited opportunities to become connected.  That’s why we can opt out of junk mail, register with do-not-call lists, stop paying dues and subscriptions, and slam the door on Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Finally, and I know I promised three things–this is like a bonus track, except it’s possibly my main point–no single component of a community should be, should try to be, or should want to be a mirror of the whole community.  It will fail in the attempt.  There will always be components in a community which will be invisible.  There’s an underground economy in every community.  There’s an illicit economy in every community.  There are things which get done in a community anonymously for the good of the other, or for the satisfaction of the donor.  Some things which are good in a community cannot sustain themselves in the face of all the connections possible–either they might generate too many clients, or they might generate too much uncoordinated good will.  (The Red Cross, in times of natural disaster, has been known to ask people to stop sending things and just send money.  And even just sending money got the Red Cross into trouble after the Sept. 11 attacks.  A less dire example is a book group, or the dance group I used to be associated with… fully connected, either of these examples might grow beyond a manageable or fun size, and splinter or die, or harm the credibility of the group or the idea of such a group or the notional leaders of the original group or sap those leaders’ passion for the mission.)

What I’m about to say seems weird to me, but there it is.  An effort to mirror a community on-line, or to present a community on-line feels to me like an effort to control what the community is.  Let me refine this a bit…

Lists of links can be helpful… the idea of the Grand Rapids wiki is appealing…  but something about this forgr post gave me the wrong kind of chills.   And it’s a little more than the mission drift I alluded to in my comment to that post.  I has something to do with control… I can’t put my finger on it, and I don’t doubt I’m over-reacting…

Anyway… every community has its cranks and its idealists… (and what is a crank but a worried idealist?)