online people are real people too:

this is a 'cool resource' i found on a fellow bloggers page that attempts to define the online community and some of its functions. it is written by Robin Hamman, who appears to be an employee of a media company called Granada Broadband, UK.

online communities:

the obvious choice for online dance communitites in oz is ITM. but the online community isnt restricted to music subcultures. i occasionally participate in community centered around saltwater aquariums called nanoreef.com. is this a true community? tutorial discussions today revealed that there are many different criteria for validating an online group as a 'community'. some said that the community would have to meet up in 'real life' to be a true community. another comment was that once there has been a funeral, its a community.

in ITM communities, participants often meet up in real life at events. but sometimes they dont meet up, even when they have been to the same event. just because they didnt actually see each other at the event (knowingly at least), does this mean that post-event discussions are any less relavent? surely discussing an event that was experienced by a group of members creates a sense of community, if not a text book definition of one.

the other example regarding nano-reef.com, is that most members of nano-reef are scattered across the USA or internationally. what they do to create a sense of community is have active discussion boards where members are continually seeking and providing advice and opinions. interestingly 'the lounge' discussion board is one of the most popular (some 30,000 posts) and is a place for 'off topic' discussions. this board would have no function at all if the site was used purely for fish tank info! aside from that they also have 'tanks of the month', opinion polls, and has a list of members birthdays on the bottom of the page! despite having more than eight thousand members, this page has more community spirit than most pages ive participated in..

itm's poll update:

Have you experimented with making your own dance music at home?
Yes
62.6%
No
37.4%

Total votes: 837

im quite impressed that this has remained quite steady from last week, and now with 837 votes! it would still be interesting to know how voters are defining 'making own dance music' though...