Week 6: Communities in Cyberspace

I have experienced some of the types of community onine: email
(use everyday), discussion list (use sometimes), BBS (use
everyday), blogs(use every week)... However, I have never touched
MUD. After reading this article, I think I will have so many interesting areas to explore in the cyberspace.

For me, online commnunities are part of my life. But they are
obviously differed from off-line communities. I agree with the points Kollock and Smith mentioned: 1)Identify problems 2)Social control 3)Age, gender, and race become unimportant in online interaction. 4)It has no connection to the other facet of a person's life. 5)It seems to be an ideal of community.

In the online community, people are not face to face. They don't need to be accountable for their actions. Individuals will be judged by the merit of their ideas, for example, between honesty and deception.

People's physical appearance is not manifest online, too. That is often very important, such as in online dating, etc. Online community often give people imagination and surprise!

About the ID, the article summarizes two sources of ID information: account name and history of previous posts on the Internet. Every ID online has its own reputation, writing style, signiture, with its owner's address of company and position. Although some one did not give true information sometimes, it is often easy to find out owner of this ID, by checking other information and previous posts. So, there is another characteristic of online community: terribly not private sometimes.