CommunityOrGenre

Thomas Erickson argues that some alleged online communities operate more like apparent genres than real communities : http://www.pliant.org/personal/TomErickson/VCas_Genre.html

Is this distinction interesting?

Contrast : Meatball:CommunityOverContent (which is also interesting on SoftwareStuffAndHardwareStuff)

Actually I wonder if this "community" vs. "document" question could be rephrased as a discussion between Popper's WorldTwo and WorldThree? WorldThree is a world of "objective" knowledge, which can be instantiated in documents, even after the original community has disappeared. World two is "subjective" knowledge, keyed to the psychology and contingent details of the agents that have the beliefs. Most "post-modern" or "post-justificationist" theories of knowledge, are, from a CriticalRationalist perspective, mere theories of WorldTwo knowledge.)

(Ho, ho! BonusFreakyConnectionPoints for this, methinks.)

See also :

• SocialNetworksAreNotMarkets
• OnlineWriting

• MediaSystem

• the paper on PhantomAuthority has types of virtual community

(IoB)(WarpLink) http://evolutionarymedia.com/cgi-bin/wiki.cgi?CommunityEqualsSumMedia

CategoryInformationSociety