And Finally....

This will be my final posting in this Blog, in preparation for handing in at the end of this week. The module has been enjoyable, to the extent that it has reacquainted me with a few old websites I’d nearly forgotten existed and helped me find a few more of similar interest. Strangely, it also helped me with my paid work – I came across a lot of Tech forums that have helped me no end in Web Design.

Overall, I think that the COOL forums created a bad impression of online communities to begin with, and reminded me of one of the very reasons I began to give up online communities – the fact that the interesting people aren’t necessarily outweighed, but are usually out-shouted by the less constructive people with nothing to say. That’s the irony, the less a person has to say on a subject, the more rubbish they speak. And it gives a platform for people to express non constructive ‘views’ from a blanket of anonymity. Do you think that people on the COOL forums would have launched into such personal attacks on other students in person? In the classroom perhaps? Unlikely, because then people would know who they were. Arguably, the fact that our names are on the posts should still remove the anonymity, but I believe I could have kept my anonymity by simply not telling people my surname in person.

But that doesn’t exclusively apply to the COOL forums. Every chat room will always suffer from someone else trying to upset the users – such as the people that may go onto a gay & lesbian message board just to type a derogatory comment. But as with life, there will always be idiots, so it’s a lot easier to find ways to ignore them rather than wait for them to go away.

Messenger. Community builder, or community helper?

Happy New Year!

I believe Messenger software should be set apart from other community based methods of communication. I have accounts with all of AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Skype and ICQ, mainly due to the fact that I have a number of friends who each use different software, and all for different reasons, so to contact with them all, you need all the different software.



Already this highlights a major difference than with other communities. A message board only requires an Internet Browser and connection so is available to all. Messenger software is not, and requires a choice of downloading this software and registering. As with its nature, Message boards and chat rooms also allow for several conversations to go on at once between several people. Although many messenger programs now allow for group conversations, these are fairly new and not as regularly used.

Relating to the subject title of this post, I don’t think that messenger software builds communities. A message board builds a community, as it allows many people use at the same time and more importantly, when IT STILL EXISTS when a user is not there, unlike messenger – whereby the means of communication does not exist when a user is offline. Messenger software works more as a tool for communities to use once they become acquainted – more like an addition that allows people to talk in real time when the message board community may not be enough. Remember as well that in order to combat against problems such as child abduction and ‘grooming’ via messenger services, many now only allow people to add you to their ‘friends list’ once you have given explicit permission.

In conclusion, I don’t think that messenger software alone can create a community as such, although the presence of such software allows existing communities to become closer and interact in a wider variety of ways.