Online Communities

[Charlsa]

Hey so I hope it's okay that I put this here, and if it's too off-topic I'll delete it...

But since we're all on a forum, I have a question: where did all the independent forums go? Or am I just out of the loop? I was a part of several in the early- to late-2000's and all of them shut down. They can be hard to find if you don't already have a name to search, it seems. Do any of you belong to forums that somehow survived? I miss having an online "family" that built its own home, so to speak. If you aren't a part of another forum outside of thegradcafe but have belonged to one in the past, I'd love to hear more about it. Call it Millennial Nostalgia, I guess.

[GreenEyedTrombonist]

I am a member of a few forums, only a couple I check regularly, and have been studying online community formation as part of my MA.  The main online community I'm a member of is Team Hooman, which is basically a group of geeky people who try to focus on positive interaction online (number 1 rule is "don't be a dick"). The group interacts a lot on facebook, but also has its own forum, twitter, discord, and shows up in chat rooms for a few Twitch channels.

[Charlsa]

That sounds great! I may check Team Hooman out, if that's okay. Is it fairly large or have its numbers dwindled much? Is than any particular aspect of online community formation that you're focusing on? 

[GreenEyedTrombonist]

It's really hard to gauge the community's size, but if you go on Facebook group members it's currently a group of almost 3k people. They were originally pretty active on one forum, but that site got a major overhaul which caused forum activity to die. They just launched their own forums on a separate site, but most communication is happening in the facebook group. Feel free to join! It's a private group so just request access and then a moderator should approve you.  

I did my research mainly with Team Hooman to understand how philanthropy can become a central group ideal (donating to charity isn't necessary for membership, but it is something hoomans praise and collectively tend to do) and how business practices help or hurt their associated community. I partnered with Team Hooman and two companies with Twitch channels and should be presenting my findings to everyone this spring.