I think that a community is a group of people that have a common trait or interest that brings them together. Communities can come in all types of forms such as: online gaming communities, residence hall/floor communities, sports communities, and even national organizations. The strength of the community is strongly dependent on the size and interaction within the community, although non-interaction with members if the community does not exclude anyone from it. For example, people that live in a large city are all part of that community, yet it is highly unlikely that each person knows and interacts with all members of the city. However, in smaller communities where members interact more often, such as this Global Engineering Learning Community, are usually more meaningful to its members. The reason for this is because members of the community feel like they know each other on a more personal level, even if they do not know the other members in “real life.” For example, a small online-only community of people can also be very strong because people who might be shy in person can express themselves online without having to worry about some of the physical consequences that occur in real life.
Communities that thrive and have success/stability are ones that interact to address situations and solve problems. Conflicting opinions are more likely to occur in larger communities that are not interaction-based. In order to address these issues communities usually have open discussions or ways for it members to express their opinions in how to solve the problem. In most communities there is a leader or organizer that is usually the representative or spokesperson for the group that has more “say” in the decisions made. The communities that are unhappy are unsuccessful are mainly the ones that do not interact or come together to fix a common problem.
I thought it was very neat how you took the approach of trying to evaluate communities on their strength or weakness. The ones that exist, but people in it do not really know each other are the weak ones while the smaller one that know each other are the stronger communities. It is a good idea but not necessarily true. I'm sure the apple community (the actual company) has employees that do not know all the other employees. But yet still as a whole the company is doing extremely well with its products. The fact that they make multi-billions but yet not everyone knows everyone, does this make the apple community weak. They still all work together in order to rack in profit for the company. They seem strong to be.
ReplyDeleteIt is also cool how you think of problems within communities because I am sure that many communities have problems all the time. Strong communities would be good at getting rid of the unnecessary feuds and weak ones may live in conflict. It is really impossible to say, but communities have to go about entering conflict and being peaceful all the time. (ENGL106)