Passed on (with permission, of course!) to Flutterby because I'm going to respond to this and need a context in which I can do it. But Todd and Debby have said they welcome comments
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 99 16:13:37 -0500
From: mouth organ
To: Misc-Recipients
Subject: About online forums and "community"
This is what you might call a Request For Comments. It's being sent to a lot of people, and we apologize for intruding into your mailbox.
If you've gotten this, it's because you're an in-person friend or a regular correspondent or both. Some of you have spent a lot of time in online forums (We don't mean the web or email, we mean "live" conversational venues). Some of you have never been in a chat room or a MUCK in your life. You represent a broad spectrum.
We'd like your thoughts on the material below. If you do have something to say, please let us know if we have permission to quote you; we're going to be writing about it. If you don't have something to say, we'll understand :)
Please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might be interested (and won't be offended by the nature of our usual columns).
- - -
Janelle Brown speculated in SALON recently about how "online communities" don't really have much "community" at all. (We've written her about this separately.) http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/feature/1999/01/cov_19feature.html We have also been having thoughts about this for a few weeks, but we want a different set of answers. She was talking about web sites; we want to know about conversational environments. She was observing the symptoms; we want to know the reasons why.
We're not singling out any particular online forum, now; everything we are about to say should be taken as a generic.
We go into MUCKs and other online social environments and we may find 200 people on, but few rooms with two or more people. An average night on an average MUCK or MOO (one which is for conversation, not role-playing) finds almost everyone sitting alone in their "home" room, maybe trading a few remote messages with other people ... and one "common" room which contains six or seven people, all not saying much of anything.
Chat rooms: We can't count the times we've been in a chat room that had twenty people in it, and nothing happening - like people standing and staring at each other in a filled room at a party.
These are not the exceptions. These are 99% of our online experience. A lot of people are there, but nothing is happening. We've tried all sorts of different places at different times of the day. We've tried to lurk, tried to strike up conversations, hidden and waited to see if our friends said hello ....
What we're interested in is the underlying psychology: Is there a reason people aren't using this medium for group contact more often? Do people think that the online methods work better for one-on-one conversation? Are they shy? Intimidated by the strange medium? Have trouble in the absence of visual stimuli? All of the above?
Or is the online world just really horrible for conversation unless your brain's wired a certain peculiar way?
It's not that these places are unpopular, because they aren't. Ask a MUCK administrator; even a small MUCK or MOO has a fairly steady influx of newcomers. But there is a high turnover rate; many newcomers join, try it a few times, and don't come back. Sometimes they leave because they can never find a conversation. The thing is, we know what the newcomers don't: Most of the "old hands" aren't having all that many lively conversations either. What's wrong with this picture? Why are online communities often anything but?
Tell us what you think - even if what you think is that we're full of nonsense.
-Todd Belton and Debby Levinson
mouth organ - sex, gender, culture, commentary
http://www.mouthorgan.com/
Monday, February 1st, 1999 danlyke@flutterby.com