“that’s a lot communities..”, you say? “like, a ton of communities”, yeah, that’s true. but that’s how it should be.
I’m interested in hearing more about your thoughts on this point.
My intuition is the opposite—that in general there should be very few communities, and a person can realistically only belong to a few of them. I feel this way because I am strongly convinced that in order for a community to have any meaning people need to invest energy and attention in them over time: a community is a unit of action.
If there are dozens of communities, how will a person become familiar with other members, with whom they are coordinating to change the equilibrium? How will they establish that they really share values? How will they build trust? How will they determine who does which task, and who can be counted on to do the task for which they volunteered? I expect there to be minimum amount of wrench time to get these things figured out per community.
I can see the sense in what you’re saying, here’s where I’m coming from -
I’m aiming to open up as much possibilities for coordination, so i also want communities to be very versatile (When a CA is made for a community you’re a part of you get notified).
I expect most communities to not being very active (most don’t try to initiate massive changes all the time). you probably won’t have to devote attention only to some and not be able to afford attention to the rest.
now, think of all the communities a person is actually a part of, not just the ones he identifies with—through your geography, workplace, hobbies, lifestyle, areas of interest, social circle, and maybe more—it becomes quite a bit (but In second thought i might have went up too much with saying “upwards of hundreds”, it’s a little hard to quantify before actually doing it). and still, all of these can be important for you (and you for the communities), at certain times and for certain actions. think of it as trying to have a community map that matches the community territory. I think that more resemblance will open more possibilities, thus making it a more powerful tool.
Another thing i thought of is to let users rank communities by their activeness or how important it is to them. and that will both change what they’re notified of in the community, and shown to other members in that community, so it’s easier to know who’s in the community’s core.
So to answer your last paragraph—I don’t think everyone who’s going to commit to a CA has to be familiar with other members of the community (It depends on the situation), eg Vegans may join a CA with other vegans even if they’re not into activism. I think the second question is interesting but a bit more complicated. for the last two questions—a lot of the trust should come from the structure of the website (like in KickStarter), else you don’t only rule out many communities, but also large communities.
What you made me think of, is how much other tools should this website give to communities, since they already exist on it
So trying to restate your viewpoint, would it be fair to say that you see communities as essentially the recruitment pools from which people to coordinate with are drawn? So the maximize-communities strategy is maximizing the contact surface for coordination opportunities?
I’m interested in hearing more about your thoughts on this point.
My intuition is the opposite—that in general there should be very few communities, and a person can realistically only belong to a few of them. I feel this way because I am strongly convinced that in order for a community to have any meaning people need to invest energy and attention in them over time: a community is a unit of action.
If there are dozens of communities, how will a person become familiar with other members, with whom they are coordinating to change the equilibrium? How will they establish that they really share values? How will they build trust? How will they determine who does which task, and who can be counted on to do the task for which they volunteered? I expect there to be minimum amount of wrench time to get these things figured out per community.
I can see the sense in what you’re saying, here’s where I’m coming from -
I’m aiming to open up as much possibilities for coordination, so i also want communities to be very versatile (When a CA is made for a community you’re a part of you get notified).
I expect most communities to not being very active (most don’t try to initiate massive changes all the time). you probably won’t have to devote attention only to some and not be able to afford attention to the rest.
now, think of all the communities a person is actually a part of, not just the ones he identifies with—through your geography, workplace, hobbies, lifestyle, areas of interest, social circle, and maybe more—it becomes quite a bit (but In second thought i might have went up too much with saying “upwards of hundreds”, it’s a little hard to quantify before actually doing it). and still, all of these can be important for you (and you for the communities), at certain times and for certain actions. think of it as trying to have a community map that matches the community territory. I think that more resemblance will open more possibilities, thus making it a more powerful tool.
Another thing i thought of is to let users rank communities by their activeness or how important it is to them. and that will both change what they’re notified of in the community, and shown to other members in that community, so it’s easier to know who’s in the community’s core.
So to answer your last paragraph—I don’t think everyone who’s going to commit to a CA has to be familiar with other members of the community (It depends on the situation), eg Vegans may join a CA with other vegans even if they’re not into activism. I think the second question is interesting but a bit more complicated. for the last two questions—a lot of the trust should come from the structure of the website (like in KickStarter), else you don’t only rule out many communities, but also large communities.
What you made me think of, is how much other tools should this website give to communities, since they already exist on it
So trying to restate your viewpoint, would it be fair to say that you see communities as essentially the recruitment pools from which people to coordinate with are drawn? So the maximize-communities strategy is maximizing the contact surface for coordination opportunities?
yup, pretty much nailed it :)