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Community Networks and Websites?
brendano writes "I've been doing some research into the fascinating world of community networks and websites -- online places that can inform and connect
people of a real-life community. They typically provide news, discussion
forums, and email for local residents. There are some quite successful ones
(such as the nonprofit Seattle Community Network
or the Blacksburg Electronic Village), but also
also ghost town-like failures that
show how hard it is to get a community network/website rolling. In addition,
many struggle with questions of how to get funding; whether they can be for-profit while serving the community, or be
non-profit with enough money to keep going. Unlike the
wireless community networks we hear about so much, these
types of community networks go beyond just internet access and try to provide
access to the community itself. Some, even, are being done to help build
up disenfranchised communities, such as one in a housing project, or the
three of HP's Digital Village project (one of whose projects I'm researching for.) I was wondering if members of the Slashdot community know of more examples of community networks, and what people
think of these projects. Can real-life communities succeed in the online
environment as well? How so?"
was in yahoo.com forums and local newspapers' forums...
A pity... the problem is not to create good website, the problem is to make it visited by locals...
The town of Arlington MA has been online for many years now in the form of a community mailing list and adjuct web sites. The mailing list, of which I have been a member since 1998, serves several purposes: community Q&A, a notice board, and a place to vent on general topics of relevance. The forum is pretty self-regulating in the old usenet tradition, but there is a moderator to handle housekeeping and extreme problems.
}#q NO CARRIER
I think the day my "real-life community" goes online, I'll lay off the caffeine i.v. I have going here and pry my ass out of this chair.
Real life is good sometimes people. I know...you gotta deal with other people but if you're to the point were you but black paint under your eyes to reduce monitor glare (no kidding I've done this in a personal 48 hour gaming marathon), it's time to take a walk.
one way might be to start a LETS, like the kind in victoria.
I suspect a lot of people in a geographic area would have something to buy/sell (cars, collectibles, appliances, computers, etc.) Advertise free buy/sell classifieds. They will come. And then introduce forums, chat, community calendar, and all that stuff.
I work for a local community network. I'll admit, it's a rather small non-profit operation with a 'staff' of about 10 people that meet every several months. The main feature is the forum board in which people sound off about anything and everything around town. Slashdot it if you really care.
On a side note, it is interesting how people hold grudges and such, even on an online community. Still, on my online journal, and when I comment on friends, people that had nothing better to do in our chat room then insult me still do it, even after being gone for over two months now.
Free Mac Mini
As of right now I am posting this through community DSL. Granted, it is for profit and more pricey than Bellsouth, but I've had negligable downtime (only twice, once due to a server upgrade on their end and once when their pipe got broke). When I call them up with a problem (like getting a static public address), I talk to as person. There is no machine that picks up and asks you to hold for fifteen minutes with confusing options. The people are generally helpful and their service is impeccable. And if you're wondering if they are a community provider, website.
Slackware forever. Honestly, what else would you trust when it absolutely positively has to be stable, secure, and easy
Communities like /. Provide a large user base, which allows for diverse opinions, from trolls to god.
/. And super-communities are for you. While if you are looking for specific things, check google for XYZ board
While smaller boards allow for more of a targeted group, or individuals that are all interested or involved in a specific action or activity
It is hard to say which is better, for they both have there pros and cons, but if you like to argue about broad topics,
My $0.02
Medevo
I have run and developed communities online based on offline communities formed by media properties for a good number of years.
The common problem I have found is that the traditional media product failed to solidify a community itself, which inherently lead to difficulties reaching a critical mass in an online community.
As well, the community online needs to be able to solidify itself in various facets in order for it to be successful. For instance forming a community around Athens, GA wouldn't work as well as forming a community around Athens, GA and then a subcommunity in it based around the music scene.
So, in my experience, solidifying an online community around a regional media presense, or even a region is difficult. What I think would be more successful, and what is going to be my next project is forming the online community around national matters of interest (linked in with the national parent media company), and segmenting subcommunities based on regional interest, offering a kind of hybrid of regional/national topics.
today is the 10th anniversary of Tallahassee Freenet. Cinco de Mayo!
20K users, free dialup, community forums, etc. They sell used donated equipment from time to time, and have had library grant money in the past. Initially set up by Florida State University. Tallahassee Freenet
If the community has a lot of younger professionals, maybe it works. But if there are a lot of older retirees, maybe it doesn't.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
We then started a community website for Indian's in Hong Kong on hkindians.com and this has also been sucessful... even though we don't spend a cent on advertising, these community websites are very viral. People in the community (depending on how targetted your definition of community is) will talk about it and will spread the word. It is then up to you to make the money.
Here's my take on what it takes...
a) Building a community takes a lot of hard work. You genuinely have to be interested in networking with the people and getting to know people. You have to be prepared to answer tons of questions and deal with a lot of trivial (to you as a webmaster) issues. It is not easy.
b) Once you've got a few hundred people rolling, take some time and figure out what they purchase, who are the people who want to target them and try to bring the two together. On HKIndians.Com we are working currently with a couple of local insurance providers and a long distance call broker. We have had sponsorships from local cable companies who want to target new channels to the Indian community. There is money to be made.. just not dot-com millions. Don't give up your day job.
c) This is very important... don't loose your passion for the community. Once you do.. others will sense your disinterest and loose their interest.. this will happen very quickly.
On well
Perhaps community sites would work if we started things like voting on-line. People would start to get the idea of what the web can actually do for their community.
This online designe community was destroyed by those who created it because of over-zealous deleting/censorship. They have effectively eliminated the most productive and helpful demographic because of puerile editing; an excellent way to bring a community to it's knees is by silencing it's most active members...
Freenets (no, not the peer-to-peer who stole the name) have been offering community access and news for over a decade (albeit dial-only access). The National Capital Freenet (http://www.ncf.ca/) has been in existance since 91/92 and is still in operation today, still as a not-for-profit organisation.
They offer access, local newsgroups (SIGs), internet access, etc.. etc.. etc...
At one time there were almost a hundred Freenets around, but only a handful are left. They offered internet access (gopher, telnet, newsgroups, IRC) even before the Internet was commercialized. For many, Freenets was the first taste of the Internet (myself included).
Unlike standard file sharing networks, your identity (by way of your university e-mail address) is clearly tied with your content, so the theory :-) is that should discourage blatant piracy and encourage sharing of "commnity oriented" content. Unfortunately we launched it right before summer break so users are slow in coming, but we hope interesting things (other than rampant piracy :) will happen...
IMO this is a much better example of "community web" since each user has as much control as any other member of the community as to what content is published. Of course this is also rather anarchistic, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
I'm the Technical Director/CTO for a large sports-based web forum located at http://forums.fanhome.com
:) But don't confuse 'usable' with 'simplest'. The technologies you use can't be crap. :) No one likes reading Times New Roman 10pt. for your entire site. Font tags can be your friend!
:)
I basically do all the tech work (Sybase ASE, PHP, Linux, etc.) but am also vitally interested in keeping the user-base happy with high-performance and reliability combined with ease-of-use. The problem has been integrating casual members of different real-live groups (e.g. Red Wings sports fans interacting with PGA Golf fans) while still catering to the hard-core fan.
We've taken to limiting almost all off-topic posts to specific forums (called the 'BBQ's) while keeping on-topic posts in the team-related forums. Typically the 'word association' and 'what are you wearing' type threads are relegated solely to the BBQ. Users who want to get their Pedro Martinez fix can do so without wading through 100 pages of 'What is your favorite food' threads. This allows both the hard-core and casual fan user groups to coexist but also via the BBQs we can also get different fans (Football and Hockey for instance) to begin to know each other.
Another often-ignored section is usability. As has been said countless times before - usability is king. As we all know from Windows vs. Linux etc. the mass market is generally quite computer-illiterate when it comes to anything more complex than double vs. single clicking on icons (sometimes even that is too complex!!). Slashdot for the masses? Sheesh, if you look in the prefs section there are a billion different things to click on, some of which have scary names like 'threshold', 'display mode', and 'thread'. Sure, for Slash's audience this makes perfect sense, but for mass-appeal you have to really, really dumb things down. Keep that in mind when developing - as the 'elite' we work with computers very often. Mom-n-Pop (who probably have a larger disposable income than most college computer-savvy types) need to be able to maneuver and feel comfortable in your site. Why is AOL so freakin popular? You don't have to worry about DUN, TCP/IP settings, or even trying to figure out what browser you are using! All you have to do is click "Connect to the internet" and you're there!
Don't also forget that usability doesn't necessarily mean 'high-tech'. The user doesn't necessarily need to have 30 widgets available to them on the front page, but us geeks really like to poke with settings. Make the 'default' interface nice and clean. If it limits some of the 'cooler' options then so be it. Let the geeks check the box called 'power user'.
Keep it fast - they say that most users have a 3 second (or thereabouts) tolerance for page lag. Most I've noticed are quite lower than that - if it doesn't start loading by the time IE makes that little 'click' sound they're somewhere else.
And last of all -- make sure it is 'boss friendly'. People that need to browse covertly at work have a much easier time if you use few 'neon' colors and pop ups!
Thanks,
--
Matt
This may not be an insightful post to anyone, but I thought it was so great of a coincidence that I had to post a comment.
/. or via email (fivepanATyahooDOTcom -- you know how it is).
I've just recently started working on a community website for my local community. We're not a large group of people and fairly rural as far as that goes. But we are growing fast (in the top 3 fastest growing counties in Missouri, USA) and a lot of "computer-friendly" families are moving here from the city. My web design business is starting to pick up as they do as well.
I've started to do a lot of research on the 'net, looking at other community sites and reading articles on the subject. I haven't found too much to help me, however. The Seattle website that you mentioned was one of the best organized that I found. I think, for-profit or not-for-profit, that a community site could work if advertised, well monitored, updated regularly, and information posted that was relevant to the community. You might even find people logging into the site that normally don't spend any/much time on the Internet.
With that said, I am still looking for help myself. You can be sure I will be reading through every post on this subject over the next couple of days. If anyone knows of sucessful sites or websites that offer points to consider, I would appreciate the info...either in reply on
Here are assorted Web sites of members of the Community Technology Centers Network (CTCNet). And there's a complete directory of the Network's 650+ member organizations at a href=http://www2.ctcnet.org/ctc.asp">http://www 2.ctcnet.org/ctc.asp Most of those centers would love to get more volunteers with good tech skills since their budgets are usually pretty tight. Some are full-fledged community networks, others mainly provide skills-building opportunities for people in the neighborhood. -S.
Not all things are intuitive. For example, NeighborSpace.org, cited above as a ghostown, is a pretty site, but Seattle Community Network, a successful one, is fairly simple and plain.
The approaches are quite different, but SCN seems to be providing a resource that is useful, while NeighborSpace seems to be more focused in getting me to contribute something first. If I lived in Seatlle, I would probably use the SCN local directories, at least for a while. Just looking at it, it is useful to me, streamlined, right to the point.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
A few years ago I started the "Oaxaca Web Community", to help people from Oaxaca stay in touch with each other. Oaxaca is a Southern state of Mexico from which millions of people have had to emigrate in order to find a living. Most live now in the USA, and through this site I tried to give them a place where they can stay in touch with each other and their origin. It has had quite a following but due to time constrains I have not been able to update it in a while or add new services.
It has about 1659 registered users.
URL: http://oaxaca.com
just look at university communities. through gaming and other 'real' activities, i've met many people. check out www.ecliptik.com and its forums. this is a widespread phenomenon, really.
There used to be a board called The Dwelling Place in my hometown. Every now and then, the sysop invited all the callers for a potluck dinner at his house. It always felt like Thanksgiving with the family, even though some of us had just got done flaming each other in the Politics & Religion forum. So yeah, it's possible. I can see it happening today if there were bulletin boards and suchlike on the community freenets, accessible only to members of the local community.
http://bogr46qdy22tc.bc.hsia.telus.net:9000/networ kp/
I just finished this project a few weeks ago for my Information Technology 12 class. It was a half-ass job, but I got a really good mark for it seeing that others didn't go as far as I did.
I am QUITE aware of the holes in my project.
I'm a contractor working on a rural area community site. After going through various phases before I joined the project we are now partially under a state grant and trying to go for-profit. We've been relativly successful considering that we are located in northern california. Access to the area is limited by a few hundred miles of highway in any direction and a small airport. With the lumber and fishing industries going down hill we are struggling to get other indutries into the area, including IT. This community site is part of the effort to get local residents more involved with IT.
The 'portal' in question is HumGuide (http://www.humguide.com/).
I run a community site at NWTekno.org (basically ravers in the northwest), which is kind of interesting because many of the people on it know each other in person, and for lots of them, their whole social life revolves around the web site. Kind of weird. We've made very little money (kids don't have credit cards, can't sell ads without losing indie cred, etc etc) and survive only because our hosting is donated, and I of course pimp them out every change I get in return. Just thought I'd add that, in case it's of any value to your research.
Having read all the (on topic) posts on this topic I find myself wanting to describe the website I am building for my community. I live in a co-operative housing community of approximately 180 residences in the middle of a large city. Currently there is no online presence for the community other than a single page advertising its existence on its parent associations website.
The people who live in the community come from all walks of life and embrace most age groups, religious backgrounds, levels of financial stability, etc. However, having talked to a large number of them, I have come to an understanding of some of the general functions and premises that would build a great community website.
First is universal access. A website doesn't do a community any good if there are some who cannot (not to read will not) gain access to it. Currently there is a single computer and dial up internet connection at the main office available for public use. After talking with the board of directors for the co-operative, they have agreed that if I could get enough interest and show sufficient progress and early participation from community members that they would be willing to purchase three additional computers and install high speed internet...its a start. (Note: about 78% of the residences in my community have Internet connected computers).
Of the things that I have discovered that are most desired are:
1. A community schedule of events
2. An online copy of the co-operatives manuals
3. A set of community chat boards
4. A news board for non co-operative sponsored happenings
5. An online booking resource for the co-operative's public maintenance and groundscare equipment
6. A community for sale / wanted board
7. A babysitting service listing / opportunities
8. A personalized reminder / scheduling system for those community members who have tasks assigned
9. A place for people to publish their thoughts, ideas, suggestions, comments, etc...(moderated of course)
10. A place where some of the more creative souls in the community could write the occaisonal column or review for their friends to read
11. A listing of all the public facilities with up to date descriptions and comments on availability
12. A birthday / anniversary board
13. A listing of all the businesses in the area such as stores, restaurants, etc. where the members can post reviews, critiques,etc.
14. A member listing
15. A security and advisory alert
16. Links to other pertinent and community-useful sites on the internet.
17. Personal pages for some of the members
There really isn't much else that the community has currently expressed interest in so I won't try to include anything that isn't needed yet. As the title to my comment notes, you have to target the community with the website.
These are just suggestions that have come my way. I plan to implement them in stages as time and resources permit. Currently I have just the basic foundations laid out so this is quite a timely discussion for me.
As for the site, I have a service plan through my service provider that has a static IP and a domain name...I will be offering it to the community as part of my contribution as a member of the co-operative.
I will be making every available attempt to make the site fast, easy to use, and personable for as many people as I can. You cannot usually please everyone, but if I can get most of them then we're laughing. Who knows, if this takes off, I might box it up and offer the basics to other co-operatives to use...anyways, thanks for letting me share my thoughts.
I live in a predominantly rural area, and we have a community network that does a pretty good job of providing an internet-based tie for the community. The network is run by a non-profit organization and is funded primarily by selling internet access and web hosting to local individuals and businesses.
Among the community services that are funded by this are providing free internet access in libraries, schools and senior centers, which would otherwise not be available in typical rural communities, providing free web space for other local non-profit organizations, providing local real-time election results, refurbishing donated PCs for use by other non-profits, and providing links to local businesses.
Our community network has been very successful. Because of being non-profit, they can offer competitive internet access rates and high quality local service. They have attracted many local users who have migrated over from larger ISPs such as Earthlink as their rates have gone up and their service has gone down. Selling low cost internet access as a non-profit and providing good service seems to be a good way to fund a community network, at least it has worked for us.
http://www.livejournal.com
They focus on building community, rather than specific content goals.
I'm actually working on a business/service that aims to do just this. It's an entertainment guide aimed at teens here in the Phoenix area, but it's also designed to build a community and help foster the community offline as well as online. The point of the site is to help people find things that help them get off their butts and go have fun with other people in their community.
/.-ing definately won't be good for it's health.
I'd give a URL, but the server's struggling as it is, and a little
Why not? It's a great use of the web. The trick is certainly getting people using it, but just let people know about it, and if they like it, they'll tell their friends, who will tell their friends, etc. Internet popularity is as much viral as anything - you just have to plant the seed.
The area in which I live (Cairns, Queensland, Australia) has a rather large community of folks that are online and they all usually congregate on an IRC channel devoted to the Cairns area to chat to each other.
:)
They are mostly teenagers but a few older folks also participate. There are also websites for the channel which say where the parties and events in the area are happening and pictures of those parties.
Its amazing how many people i meet in "real life" that also chat on the channel.
Quite a few slashdot readers are there too
Remember The Well from back when the mainstream internet was in its infancy. They are still around but they are subscription based. Also this seems like old BBS' used to be before the internet was common.
I'm currently running a server for my friends and relatives. We were a pretty tight knit group in high school, but now we're scattered all over the United States and New Zealand, going to school, traveling, working, etc. It's not a big group, only 25 or so people, but it works.
It's great -- we have forums, a web based instant messaging system, web mail, file archives, and a handful of domains for people's personal sites. It's really helped us stay in touch.
As far as funding goes, everyone chips in. The server is hosted at Rackspace, and between all the people involved it costs about $6 per month each, which is really affordable, even for us student types.
It's a very successful system, in my opinion. If anyone's curious about my experiences setting it up, or has any questions, send me an e-mail.
MaroonTown is a place our little start up got hired to fix up. We did a good job, making it about 10 times more useful than it was (check out the menus). The marketing company we partnered with hasn't been promoting it much though, so it just kinda sits there. Couldn't be more free. Not even any banner ads (can't sell 'em when there's no traffic).
Any specific opinions would be helpful.
One of the difficulties with getting a successful community network off the ground is the amount of buy-in that you could get from the general population. Many projects were started by early technology adopters who "knew" that widespread capacity and the early development of resouces would benefit the community, but if a broad base of support did not come together then it would be difficult for those individuals to sustain. I co-authored an early study of the expression of community networks through the web and directed a community-funded project as well, Aurora Online.
While we had buy-in from community leaders and early adopters, the rate of technology adoption by "real people" was always too slow to help us build critical mass outside of certain key segments (education, government, but not business in this manufacturing town). Involvement at the state level pretty much mirrored this: the community network initiatives that did well did so in communities with either a rapid rate of adoption (pure numbers) or a broad adoption pattern (depth).
As the term "community" has come to have a broader application I think that the same observations apply. Fan sites, communities of interest, &c. generally do not do well if they are imposed top-down by a few individuals, but can thrive if they allow the broader base of potential participants to express themselves through the medium, while also feeling that they are served/informed or that they otherwise learn of grow via participation and contribution. Anyway, if you want to follow up with Seattle and all of the things that they did right then take a look at Douglas Schuler, particularly his book on community networking. There is a lot of good history out there, starting with the FreeNet movement and NPTN, and you can get a good idea of how technology has changed over the years as CN issues have moved from access to hardware, to access to bandwidth and email (I am retiring the free email accounts on AOCN this summer, it was a big deal to offer them in the pre-hotmail days), to community technology centers and job training. Glad to see this get a thread.
--chris
One group of people you might want to talk to about funding/providing content for would be your local newspaper if you have one. A community website shares many of the same functions as a daily local paper. Community features such as bulletin boards and chat servers could be provided either with a paper subscription or by a small monthly (or yearly) access fee. It might be a local community blog. News articles could be discussed on the forums or in the chat rooms. It might even be pretty useful to have some method of talking to your neighbors about some local bit of news. An article complaining about potholes in the road could spark enough discussions and whatnot that could lead to someone actually fixing the holes in the road.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I was a little surprised to see Blacksburg Electronic Village as one of the examples, because compared to Seattle we are a very small town. On the other hand, we do have a very successful electronic community here, and I think the are two main reasons for this:
The first reason is that Blacksburg as a whole supports this online community. The whole town is devoted to improving local connections and online information.
The second reason is the support received from Virginia Tech. We have several research oppurtunities related to BEV, and have played a large roll in deveoping and improving this community continuously.
From this it seems large-scale community involvement and university support help promote a healthy electronic community.
I started an online community for Purdue University students in late 1997. Going on our fifth year, I'm frequently asked if I would do it all again. I'd like to think not. Using slashcode has certainly allowed me to focus time and money elsewhere. Our target audience is small, operating budget non-existent with page views in the 300 thousands per month. When the board of trustees wants your domain, it's tempting to just give up at times. The $5 in advertising revenue certainly doesn't make up for the bandwidth. So, would I do it again? I'm a geek, enough said.
Check out the City Stories website-- a weblogging community of local events and culture.
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
...is a copy of phpRated.
paul
kd4idr
palo alto, ca
While I don't know if such efforts are successful or not, the OpenACS project I lead is directly oriented to this space (and other common-interest communities).
... much can be done by dedication, knowlege, and persistence.
I'd say that thus far such communities most naturally grow around subjects of global interest (such as photo.net), which spawned the codebase that grew to be OpenACS.
But I wouldn't give up on communities of more narrow interest. After all, in wetware space frequently membership to meetings is depressingly low. Yet
In your post you refered to "viral" marketing, "targetting" your audience, and being "reduced to using affiliate programs".
It sounds like you've already soldout your community.
I find it very interesting that slashdot is running an article on this very topic. I, personally, have been working on some PHP based on-line community type software. Sort of mixing some of the BBS stuff from days of old, with new technology, as well.
MAGE
I'd definitely be interested in hearing what types of features and functions people who are interested in doing this type of thing would find useful.
Though my site has no specific Geographic limitations, the vast majority of it's users are from Michigan and Louisiana. I find it really quite difficult to get most 'net users into message boards, and such.. but perhaps I just don't have the right layout/format.
I'm open to all ideas, and I'd love to contribute work to a project, if there's anyone out there that's thinking of doing something like this.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
The best other examples of working online communities are the numerous chamber of commerces across the country. These are usually funded by businesses, and do a great deal to keep business to business and business to consumer activity working. I know they usually don't have chat rooms, but often have good directories and calendars. I've been working on several chamber related sites. The sites don't generate a great deal of online activity, but generate a great deal of buzz in the business community.
http://www.redbricks.org.uk/
Everybody thinks they know what their community wants/needs. Sometimes they're right. Sometimes they're not.
That's why the model of an individual creating a geographic community's website doesn't work so well. Instead what you need is a place on line where individual community members can create their own resources. They get involvement at a level they're interested in, you get volunteer labor and a diversity of ideas that couldn't exist otherwise.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
This top community website cost $1,000,000
of tax payers money in Oz.
Derek Powazek, creator of Fray, Kvetch, and others, wrote an excellent book on the subject: Design for Community.
I highly recommend it. It goes to the broad level of creating relevant communities, how to make sure they're useful, and also discusses the nuts and bolts of registrations and logins. It even has the pragmatism to devote a chapter on how to close communities down when they no longer serve a needed function, without leaving people in the lurch.
This really is a great book.
Kevin Fox
The BBC is trying this idea out in the UK with three new websites:
They're set up to have articles on various aspects of local life... to allow people to create pages about whatever they want... and with forums for discussion on each page. However, there don't seem to be too many people there yet!
I guess it's mostly a case of good publicity and luck...
I was wondering if members of the Slashdot community know of more examples of community networks...
Telstra Research Labs did a little bit of an information session/recruitment drive at my university a few weeks ago. One of the things they said they were working on was a community network in Launceston. Sounds like the kind of thing you're talking about. There's a link to the community's page but nothing about the results of the research as yet. Not that I could see anyway.
---
Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
I volunteer as an online help guy for our local community net, Chebucto Community Net, which is based out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. As you can see from the About Us link the community net here has been around since 1993; that page is also a reasonable summary of what the operation is all about.
I have participated in some policy workshops, and although I am by no means a primary volunteer (too much other stuff to do) I can certainly assert that community nets like this are the only source of connectivity for low-income folks, are one of the few affordable sources of connectivity for many other community organizations, and are also frequently the only ISPs that seem to give a damn about accessibility.
Although I use cable myself (now) I still maintain a dialup account through CCN. It is interesting to note that they provide a full-featured PPP experience at a theoretical 56K for only CAN $100 per year. Contrast that to any other ISP locally, where your annual costs will be at least quadruple that.
They offer a reliable connection and the responsivity to help requests is good. What more can you ask for?
Is there anything wrong in making money on a community venture? The freebie newspapers have been making money based around microcommunities / free publishing / providing a service by infact doing what I have said...
They viral market, by publishing content which people are interested in and talk about. They target by providing content which is very specific to their audience and required by their audience.
The comment about being reduced to using affiliate programs was more of a statement on the downturn in the ad markets. We have fixed the problems by going out and actively seeking advertisers who need to get their products out in front of the people who visit the site.
While I am at it ... could you define selling out? Oh yeah .. probably means making some money out of your cause. Bleah...
I am a student at ISU (Iowa State University). Here we have a thriving community network (even though it partially revolves around *ahem*trading files*ahem*). It all started about 4 years ago with the creation of a ISU network search engine, StrangeSearch.http://strangesearch.net/ by one Dan Dunham.
take a look at VillageSoup.com. IT's an online community 'station' that provides news, real estate listings, local gossip, community boards, jobs, for sale ads etc.. a great resource, but one that is still searching for how to become a successful for-profit business. I suspect that the web-surfing community here is just not quite large enough to tip the scales to full profitability - but the company has been going for several years now, and they are working hard to survive.
Anyway, take a look...
I did not read all the comments yet, but I did not found the word wiki in them... This is a powerful technology for building something together. It is sometimes difficult to keep the structure sound but some are used with success in wireless community networks seattlewireless is one, wireless-fr is another one (in french). General info about wikis can be found on Google directory/Wiki A lot of implementations now exist (I prefer phpwiki), the original one is on c2.com Some of them, like TuxScreen allow you to protect modifs with a login.
I've only seen two kinds of communities that still exist in the traditional sense.
Traditional meaning the users are online together for a period of time, not just posting messages or web pages in a collective area.
The first one would be online action fps shooters like Quake Arena, Unreal, etc. These are where players want to compete for a few rounds and focus on a task.
The second one would be online role playing games like Everquest, AO, DaoC, etc. Here players are visiting the dungeons with the good experience or loot in their quest to get maximum levels and loot (could take thousands of hours). Ultima Online could be in this category but the game had a mass exodus. It's too easy to get the maximum attainable skills (a month or less) and instant teleporting to anywhere. Kind of like winning a Warcraft level.. nothing to do afterwards.
Online communities only seem to work when the people have a common task. Otherwise it becomes a chat room.. which some enjoy but i'm an action person.
I was half expecting an "Okerly-dokerly" after reading a few discussions on http://www.neighborspace.org/ The guy sounds like Ned Flanders he's so enthusiastic about not much...
The single most successful online community I've seen is the one at Emory University, LearnLink. Not much of a website to look at, especially for outsiders. It's client-based -- uses FirstClass -- and really is the only thing that ties a very apathetic school together (this is a school without sports to speak of). I think the key factor is the client -- you can't have the same level of community with slow-loading web pages.
Neighborhoods and wards were at one point the real power brokers in much of the USA; however, no longer. Now a mercantile oligarchy rules through the mass media. The mercantile oligarchy buys advertisements in newspapers and TV, and their viewpoints and political leanings are most strongly projected by the mass media. Now, the mass media tells people what to think, and what the mass media tells people to think is what the mercantile oligarchy finds pleasing.
Formerly, political communications to voters were person to person, unfiltered. But the pattern of life for the majority of Americans is vastly changed now. And so political communications take place through the mass media. BTW, "political coomunications" is a phrase that covers a wide range of communications, most of which apparently have little overt connection to "politics," per se.
With the presence of cheap headheld computers and cheap internet connections, and a neighborhood network that is *uncensored*, populist politics would appear on a scale never before seen. However, what is happening nowadays is that censorship on Web bulletin is killing true political communications. Witness the political website FreeRepublic.com, for example. Or any of the big job search websites where forums have been shutdown because of ADVERTISER PRESSURE.
Slashdot itself is an excellent example of how ostensibly uncensored web forums practice censorship of political communications. My own nick and sig are forms of political communications. Why does Slashdot allow those who favor importation of cheap, 3rd world labor to mod down political communications? ADVERTISER PRESSURE?
This post is protected under the DMTA (Digital Millemium Trolling Act). It is illegal to moderate it as a troll.
We're such a small, spread-out community, I set up a site www.nzpagans.com to let people know about the various groups, shops, websites etc there for us. There is a more well known international site, www.witchvox.com, but many people think it's only for Witches and Wiccans, and besides, it's good to have a more locally orientated site.
Problems with the site:
1. I'm doing it manually. I'm a moron. I'm gonna set up everything using PHP, mySQL etc eventually (soon? I've just been lazy...) because one of the points of a community site, is that the info is contributed by the community, and I'm not making it that easy.
2. Because I'm doing it all myself, and manually, it only gets updated every month or so. This is a major problem, as people tend to only regularly visit sites that change at least every week.
3. I have no message boards etc (how can I possibly think of it as a community site!!!). Originally my purpose was to direct people to the existing online groups etc, but having a community forum on a site itself, means people visit more often, and, since Yahoos Clubs & Groups merger, theren't aren't many nz pagan message boards anymore, only e-groups.
There's a bunch of stuff I should do on the site and haven't, but even if I'm doing a bad job, it's still better than me not doing it at all. :)
And, if I ever do get the site running as I wish, I was thinking of starting a site for Geek Pagans :D
There's a weirdly high percentage of us - the only big-name geeks I've found so far are Eric Raymond & the guy who created (co-created?) VRML but there's probably a few more...
Oh yeah, and critique's of site, design (what design?) etc are welcomed.
---- I've fallen, and I can't get up.
I Actually think it is harder to have a local 'community' on the web. There is far more pressure for your members to go elsewhere and nothing really keeping them on one site.
Way back when, before the web, when I dialed into a local BBS I think there was a greater sense of community. Everyone was a local call away. They couldn't just click to the next link at their first urge to do so. The heroic characters who ran BBS's usually created something in their likeness. Although it was often only text, the alias BBSs I remember were more private, more close, and more homegrown. I had much less to choose from so a guy who seemed to know about 'X' was more rare.
Its something of an obstacle to local web sites that the Web does not promote middle men. Most people take their interests to the web and try to find the best place from the whole world where they have expression. Fly tying, writing, computers etc its not likely that the best site is your local city.
Regions should make online databases available, that they keep up, modify, and that basically reflect their area. That would make them _the place_ for local data, bylaws, garbage days etc.... then spin that user traffic into a community.
Thats actually the way it works in real life isn't it. Towns weren't created because they promoted a sense of spirit, or to justify the existance of some organization they formed from a real need.
Bo
A very very interesting subject.
/. note on subject as after years of research, development and waiting for market readiness; this year, something will happen for real and next year it is common.
Jon Katz have tried to bring it up earlier.
Personally I have researched how to benefit real geographical communities with an online companion for almost 10 years now.
I started with the bbs's, but was limited by availability of technology and lack of technological experience by the commoners at that time. Then with the web I started discovering the oportunities in 93.
My conclusion so far is that it is possible and the local web communities, as a tool for each individual, may very well become important parts of our infrastructure in this modern world of information technology.
My discoveries were that it would require enormous resources to move from thought to action. Since 93 till now, I have produced several larger papers on subject and have notes and drawings taking up a significant amount of space.
In order to turn my vision into something tangible I started a company in 96 to further my research and develop the necessary tools. Tools are required, tools for the people to produce activity, tools are the most important asset. With no tools, there will be no activity, and the level of activity is the primary indicator of success or failure.
Concider this my own little
http://egnsnet.dk will contain something sooner or later. now nothing. pardon me for not disclosing any detailed information. agreements with investors prohibits me from doing so at this time.
http://www.prairienet.org/ is an example in Illinois.
I just checked out neighborspace.com (the 'ghosttown' mentioned). It looks like it's just a big clunky bulletin board system, nothing else. It's webX, I think, which wasn't cheap when I looked at it years ago (probably when neighborspace.com started).
Did they expect massive success by taking a bulletin board and putting (arguably) ugly graphics on it? It seems to only be catering to a small geopgraphic area, but the domain name seems to indicate it would be for a wider audience.
creation science book
here in the UK I'm about to graduate and move away from a fine example of a community network.
our university charges extortinate rates for internet access in its residences, so a few geeks decided to live out in rented accommodation within ethernet acceptible distances from each other. this was about 4 years ago. we setup a basic coax network and just shared files to start with.
since then the network has peaked at around 30 users in about 12 houses, through word of mouth. the non-geeks are now the majority (biology, business studies, phychology) who rely on a few of us to provide a good service. there are two shared ADSL 512/256 lines and anyone is free to provide whatever services they like - we've had web and ftp servers, a (legal!) exchange server, tape backup provisions, and a couple were even prompted to develop a rather fantastic winpopup replacement (before ADSL and IRC became commonplace).
in the last year some have moved away, but there are always newcomers who like the idea and want to continue. some points i'd make are:
1) the whole thing was not-for-profit, with each house paying for their own hardware
2) sometimes coordination was necessary, for example with IPs and a DHCP service
3) *no* guarantees of service, although geek pride usually ensures we work till the wee small hours fixing that web server!
4) so far we haven't had any complete idiots get in on the act, so internal security hasnt been a problem; although on the other hand it hasnt been ignored
5) cabling (now cat5 of course) and hardware can become complex and expensive, especially when the owners move away. it's tricky not to drill lots of holes into rented houses (air bricks are handy here!)
finally, i knew next to nothing about Linux four years ago, and probably wouldn't know the ludicrous amount i do now without such an interesting application.
hth,
cheers,
olly (some_junk24@@hotmail.com)
The use of global internet tools in very local communities has tremendous potential. Embrace geography. Love geography. This is not high school anymore, use your technical skills to benefit everyone even those jocks who pushed you around.
However, when you mix the goals of Internet access, local content, and local discussions/information exchange most non-profit/voluntar individual/commercial efforts fail without some level of subsidy. Figure out what you want to do most and do that well.
With Minnesota E-Democracy we have focused on the use of e-mail lists for state and local political/community discussion since 1994. We use e-mail lists with web archives to reach thousands of people on an ongoing basis. We are completely volunteer-based, have a donated web site, and are completing a move to Mailman from Yahoogroups in part because of their marketing/privacy shift.
We have a wealth of experience and articles available on my web site.
Steven Clift
http://www.publicus.net http://www.opengroups.org
I used to work for a non-profit community network in Western North Carolina called Mountain Area Information Network (http://www.main.nc.us/). They raise revenue by offering dial up service to 13+ counties in the Appalachian mountain region of North Carolina, many of which have few/no other dial up options. They have been successful for many years starting service in 95. They were originally grant funded, but are now self sufficiant, and are planning on getting a Low Power FM station to further enhance the sence of community. One of the best things is that they have used Linux since the beginning. They are always looking for volunteers, too! Gyp
My favourite online community was the Trojan Room cafeteria web cam-- no I'm not kidding I really wanted to know how the coffee pot was doing.
As a coffeedrinker I found it fascinating and I've asked for a similar web cam here but everybody thinks I'm joking.
Considering the community this web cam serves is on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean I guess I'm only involved in this community out of a sense of long-distance voyeurism...
...but I can get help for that.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
Here's a fairly new example of a Wiki being used to develop an online community for the public wireless network in Richmond, Virginia:
http://www.richmondfreewireless.org
CCN
Look, building a community is a tough sell if there is no profit. From time immemorial the only purpose of community is to provide food, shelter, and clothing. Web community is an oxymoron because the only way the community can provide for itself is if they step outside the internet box.
In the flat-land world of the web the myth of community is romantic but the representational ontological reality of societal organization makes it so that the capital power would need to subsidize web community efforts.
It's dangerous now anyway after the Sept 11 bombings. I heard the FBI was shutting down some websites based on content. The same thing is possible based on community unless there is evidence of a subsidy.
I worked for the Omnifest Community Network in Milwaukee WI starting in 1993 and still maintain a rudimentary web site about it.
We offered dial-up service, email, interactive bulletin boards using CIX bulletin board software (developed by Tristate Online in Cincinnati OH) on a DEC workstation housed at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. In the pilot stage it was only open to local high school teachers, librarians, and UW-Milwaukee alumni, then it was opened to elementary and secondary schools, then the public.
Because there weren't a lot of other ways for non-university people to get onto the internet, the services were much in demand and we had a loyal following. For instance, the text-based interface enabled visually impaired people with screen readers to participate and we had bulletin boards sponsored by the Badger Association for the Blind. Many volunteers moderated bulletin boards and posted community information as well as providing technical support for users. I helped train volunteers and provide phone support and will attest that there was a real spirit of community service.
Operating as a non-profit organization presented problems. In addition to the obvious difficulty getting financial support, I got the idea that a lot of people didn't trust us. While members usually appreciated the low charges, we would get many calls a day asking about the service then get a lecture about how that was no way to run a business! We were charging $25 a year with even lower pricing plans for students who registered through their schools as a deliberate choice to keep the service open to everyone in the community. Libraries and community centers made computers available so that it users didn't even have to own their own computers to participate. It just didn't seem that people could grasp the idea of an organization run by a community for the mutual benefit of the members of the community rather than for profit.
Well, the inevitable happened. Omnifest closed in 1998. I feel we contributed greatly to the popularization of using the Internet in our community only to be set aside when Internet access via the WWW became commercially viable. Much of the demise was due to technological advances too, for instance, the text-based interface worked well with 2400K modems readily available then.
I was about to write the extensive community sponsored by SEFLIN in Florida as an example of a community network which had successfully evolved into a web site, but that appears to be gone too. Sigh...
Kathy A. Graff
Milwaukee WI USA
the creating community connection project might be of interest. while it's a little dated, an online paper [pdf], gives "...an overview of the C3 system, a description of the research design and methodology, a summary and discussion of the results obtained via one-on-one interviews with each family conducted in August 2000, as well as follow-up site-visits with a targeted sample of families during the months of March and April 2001, and finally, lessons learned and a step-by-step recommendations for future initiatives."
if you're in the seattle area around may 16-19 you might want to check out the shaping the network society, which is going to have presentations galore on wired and wireless community networks.
http://snowdeal.org [mutated daily]
For a commercial attempt to create a 'community in a box' see Out2.com.
In the specific area of online discussions in local communities we need your advice. Related discussions on this has occured on the Democracies Online Code Network e-mail list for civic-minded techies.
We use e-mail lists. They work. Our participants love them. They need to work better with the web. We do not need a web-based system that treats e-mail participants as second class citizens. Our thousands of users won't make the transition - and we are not going to sacrifice our sustainable non-profit model that has worked for eight years.
In an ideal world someone would create an e-mail/web system akin to a cleaner, crisper Yahoogroups but something better that you can host on your own domain.
What we have:
Mailman with additional archives using Mail-Archive. (We are moving our last few lists off Yahoogroups.)
Basic web pages with forum information, hundreds of Minnesota-specific political links, and special election/candidate link directories.
What we need in term of priority:
1. Advanced Web Archives and Subject Line Syndication - Improved web access to our e-mail forum archives including the ability to post via the web to -recent- messages by "no e-mail" members, the ability to automatically display via RSS the most recent subject lines from our various lists on our home page/other key web pages to posts in the archives. Hypermail, Mhonarc just don't cut it. They were great in their time, but we need something that takes advantage of MySQL, allows for linear display of posts in the same thread, and other tools. More on this ....
2. Member Preferences Page - A single page like Yahoogroups where someone can control their settings on the all the lists they subscribe to on our server. We'd also like to allow people to recommend new e-mail lists for their local communities and essentially reserve a spot by letting us know that they are interested in a specific city/county/region or statewide public policy issue. We do not open community discussions without at least 100 participants and have an extensive public outreach process that goes with each new lists (i.e. online and in-person recruiting). If we recruit 50,000 "e-citizens" across Minnesota we need to use technology to help shape our forum development priorities.
3. Member Directory with Archive Links - (Again, we are not interested/able to use a web-centric conferencing system) This is where the web can complement our e-mail environment. I'd like each member to have the option to share information about themselves (our rules for posting including signing your real name, we have to use personal accountability in our model for online political discourse or everything would be pure crap). I'd like each e-mail that goes through the list server to insert their member directory page URL. From the member-directory page I'd to present both the information provided by the participants but also links to their recent posts across our various forums. And perhaps ...
4. Participant Ratings - With unmoderated mailing lists, rating each post before it is delivered is impossible. Even if we moderate our lists, a multiple moderater bottle neck among our mostly non-techie audience would cause major delays in discourse. So ... one idea is to allow participants to optionally vote +1 substance, -1 for style for any post after it is distributed. We don't want to create a situation where people simply vote against people of other ideologies (we have a cherished and extremely rare cross-political spectrum audience) so some sort of forumula would have to be developed to give various weight to votes (i.e. repeat votes by one individual against another count less over time) and always bring the rating toward zero over time. Oh - why do this? While our unmoderated lists to have forum managers who have the power to sanction participants who violate our rules and guidelines, we ultimately believe that self-regulation, and group self-governance is our strength. We walk on a tight rope between chaos and control in order to keep and build our participatory civic audience based on our democratic and community purpose.
5. E-Newsletter Distributed Content Management System - We have currently have 4,000+ people on our general announcement list (over next five years we'd like it to raise it to 50,000 or 1% of Minnesotans). We are planning a once or twice monthly e-mail newsletter with various content sections. I'd like to give our volunteer editor the tools to allow other volunteers to submit content (i.e. event lists, Minnesota political history this month, quotes of the month from our forums) on a regular basis into key sections of the newsletter and assuming that some content will be to long for e-mail newsletter format, something that integrates with a longer web section. 6. Mailman Advancements? Or another list packages. As an organization we'd like the ability to send one message to everyone on one of our lists without double posting. For our volunteer list managers we need the ability to quickly delete all the non-member (mostly spam) posts in one or two clicks and not have to click and select every post. What list packages do people recommend?
If you actually read this far, you should join the DO-CODE e-mail list that I mentioned above.
Cheers, Steven Clift
http://www.publicus.net http://www.opengroups.org
I run a sydney aus site www.townhallsteps.com
a lot of people like the site and praise me, but hardly anyone wants to lend a helping hand.
It is dam hard especially when im not a coder (and dont want to be one). The site is still gaining popularity but with out help i'll have to close it soon.
Wow what a wonder new thing, actual virtual communities formed by people who live close to each other. I though we killed BBS's a long time ago.
We've been having a hard time over at seattlewireless, but we are making good progress. We have quite a dynamic group - -From business people, geeks, 'users', and other wireless groups asking questions. As of this point, we have a bunch of 'DXnodes' (nodes offering 'hotspot' internet), a few point 2 point links up. We should be getting 3-4 more point 2 point links up in the next two weeks. If you are interested in wireless, checkout our website:
http://www.seattlewireless.net
I believe this is one of the last surviving FreeNet services - free or almost-free internet access, free web sites for non-profit community organizations (and, really, anyone else).
I used to volunteer with them by staffing the "internet room" at the Eugene Public Library.
Eight or nine Windows 3.1 Pentium PC's with 17" monitors and ethernet to (somewhere on the city network). The access was fast and free. It was a nice system and it may still be there.
See http://www.efn.org and http://www.opn.org for more details.
The Association For Community Networking is the national organization that represents community technology projects like SCN and the BEV. The AFCN has been active since 1997, and has about 150 members.
More information can be found at:
http://www.afcn.org/
The AFCN currently is offering a open source cash award for the best CN management package submitted by late summer.
http://www.afcn.org/opensource/
I wrote an essay on a new breed of virtual communities that exist both online and off. I thought it might be relevant to the discussion:
Getting real: Virtual communities that break the fourth wall
"Of course there is a real world out there when you're engaged in a virtual community. But, in most cases, the web world and the real one rarely intersect. A few websites are changing all that."
http://www.lunarstorm.se/ has over 30000 people logged in most of the afternoons and evenings, and over 20000 all day long.....only drops to less than a couple of thousand like 5am..
;)
Quite successful web-community reaching pretty much every person in sweden between 10 and 25 with just a slight computer interest..
Hehe, I'm helping out on a much smaller community with around 4000 users now...the poor linuxbox can barely take it
Ohwell...
Here in San Francisco, we have a wonderful resource at Craigslist. I'm sure most slashdotters (especially those in the bay area) have heard of it. I believe they've added some Craiglists for other metro areas as well. I wouldn't claim to be a Craigslist history expert, but I believe the site started off as a free classified ads site (mostly appartments for rent). Just the classifieds alone have created a one-stop meeting place for finding just about anything you need -- I've found both of last two places I've lived there, bought a Vespa, bought and sold a couch, etc, etc. And now with the addition of forums and real-life Craigslist get-togethers, I would argue that Craigslist is turning into a true on-line community.
The Association For Community Networking maintains an active list of projects worldwide.
http://www.afcn.org/
I have been involved with communities that started out of MUSHes and later evolved into off-line communities, and vice versa.
I run a business/technology community in Cambridge.
Things we have found to be useful include:
- Getting local 'heros' to represent/communicate the values of our community
- Putting equal effort into 'physical' and 'virtual' activities of our community
- Getting our members to pay once per year and post their own material
- Using situations vacant as a way to drive up traffic and a value argument (we are a lot cheaper than newsprint media)
Things which did not go so well include:
- Assuming that people would renew membership automatically once they got an e-mail
- Trying to touch members outside our catchment area for meetings [50kms]
- Chat / bulletin boards
Our thoughts for the future include:
- Moving the whole process to pocket devices
- Being proactive - triggering the right people with e-mails/sms
- Linking up with other communities
I was the project manager / developer of a federally funded project to experiment in how IT can improve community development. We were working in an affordable housing complex in Washington, DC (which the cops referred to as 'Little Beirut'). We partnered up with MS, Data General (who says you can't get hardware manufacturers to donate gear), and Netier to wire all 355 apartments in the complex. We used thin clients in the apartments and WinNT Terminal Server Edition (now Win2000) to offer Office, Money, and a host of edutainment apps.
This was all supported by an active computer training facility (5 classrooms with 10-20 PCs per). Classes were offered in basic computing, Office, Web Dev, and a couple of IT employment training fields.
It was not a perfect solution, but the impact it made was incredible. An example: a former welfare mother is now on the WebDev team at National Geographic. She still maintains correspondence with Steve Balmer (who she met at the groundbreaking).
This was developed starting in 1995, and is an ongoing project. Knowing what I do now (and having made the spiritual conversion to Linux), I would do things differently. Same architecture, but different platform.
Anyway, the non-profit running the project is Community Preservation and Development Corporation. The project has been slow to adopt the web, both to support the community and to publicize the successes and failures, but you can visit what they do have here.
The subject of community websites is of course very important to me. I am starting my own Community Website Provider called Community Momentum.com (http://www.communitymomentum.com). I am focusing on HOA and Apartment Complexes, but am also looking to break into more types of communities. I am experimenting with Family, Churches, non-profit orgs, etc. I am a for profit organization, and hope I don't fall into the bomb category. Feel free the check out my site and ask me any questions you might have. Ken VeArd
The web site and forum are now being used by the community to organise protests and petitions for his return to the force, after he was suspended after allegations of allowing a boyfriend (yes, just to make the story even more juicy for the Press, he was openly gay) to smoke cannabis. He has proved very popular with the populace (a figure quoted on the website is 83% approval), and they are campaigning for his return to the police force.
Read more at the website.
On the humour site, you might want to see the Punch a Celebrity page: although most of them are British, so the non-British may be bemused by these "celebrities"...!
PS Brixton is an area of London (England) in case you didn't know.
Sen vord is thrall and thocht is fre,
Keip veill thy tonge I conseill the.
Basically, it's a college dorm network. The only difference is that VTech students live in dorm-like off campus apartments built by private developers. These are wired into VTech's university network. BFD. No one but VTech undergrads lives in these apartments. So it's not as if real Blacksburg residents and businesses are particularly wired. Outside the little student enclave, the broadband situation is like the rest of rural America- it sucks!
I am currently building online resources for the village I live in (my server is having a tough enough time right now, so I will not /. it today). The village improvement association is a well developed group where I live, and after several attempts at creating such an online community (First attempt was with a 2 line WC4! BBS circa 1994), we actually have it going.
What I have discovered is that while people will read and respond to email, AIM, and Y!Pager, its really tough to get them on any kind of web board.
We have a web site where we post information, an area restricted to village residents only that becomes hot around election time (block voteing is a wonderful thing), and an email list that we get traffic on when something comes up.
The most intresting thing we do is when ever we post something on the web site that we want people to see, we send out an anouncment to the email list, and I set up Trillian (talks on Y!, AIM, ICQ, MSM and IRC)with an away message telling people what to look for. We get more of a responce from the trillian anouncments than from anything else, although the email list comes in a close second.
Volunteers maintain an ODP-like categorical index of web sites relevant to Boulder County. We also host hundreds of nonprofit web sites. And we make good use of our large volunteer pool to teach classes and help nonprofit organizations.
For folks just starting out, I'd recommend using ODP to maintain the categorical index. A community forum based on something like slash is a good idea. Obviously, promote (even demand) the use of open source software so you can share with others. Promote accessibility and World-Wide-Web Consortium (w3.org) standards also for better search-engine indexing, accessibility from handhelds, use from other operating systems. "Best used by any browser"... Don't rely on plugins, flash, custom fonts or any of that non-standard stuff.
Funding is the hard part. Don't bite off more than you can maintain. We're all-volunteer at this point, supported in many ways by the generosity of the University of Colorado and other donors.
For more information, including a history, web hits, policies, etc. see http://bcn.boulder.co.us/bcn/.
Neal McBurnett
--Neal
Go IETF!
AzTeC Computing Free-Net provides free web space to Arizona based non-profits and free text based web access, local discussion groups, e-mail and usenet access.
The system has supported as many as 30,000 users and is still going, even in these days of ... flashy, blinking, dancing babies ...
Free-Nets were built all over the world in the early 1990's many have closed down, some have turned commercial and others continue to survive.
If you want to try it, you can telnet there.
The login is guest and the password is visitor
Bill Austin, Famous Quotes and Sayings
http://home.att.ne
Once upon a time I used to own and operate an online community. It was successful because it was only through word of mouth which created a private memberbase. It provided a haven with like-minded individuals from the hell of newbies etc. It wasn't very big, only about 300 members with an average of 70 people online at any one time. But still, it was cool and people came. What made it so popular was that it revolved around a set of people with the same things in common: Work, Kids, Responsiblities... "Real Life". In this instance it was just a need for a bunch of adults to have a place where we could chat, message, email and just 'hang out' away from net babies, newbies etc. This online community also extended offline with yearly scheduled visits in different parts of the country (USA), with members even flying in from the UK.
A related note: The site utilized carefully picked free/co-branded solutions. A word of warning, I recently required support from OemMail.com, a third-party co-branded webbased email solution for sites. I reqretfully share that while I find their product decent, though not as slick as say Everyone.net, I feel that their Support is totally lacking with the exception of one lone individual who works in their DNS department. This is just my own recent experience with OemMail. Perhaps others have had better luck.
Hello. I live in Japan now. Many of the people who live in Japan are use their mobile phone. Actually they don't use their mobile phone to talking, they use the "i-Mode". In Japan i-Mode wireless network is a high degree of development.
I wanted to let you know about a free online community service we run called Local2Me.com that connects groups of neighbors together in locales all over the U.S. It lets each user choose their group of people to connect with based on distance from them and age range, e.g., "people who live within three miles of me." Neighbors then trade messages via group email or web message boards. (It's kind of Yahoo Groups meets Match.com.)
The service has subscribers around the country, and is most heavily used in greater San Francisco Bay Area neighborhoods. The "Guest Login" link off the home page will give you a peek into a SF peninsula locale's discussions.
While it is challenging to get the word out, users in populated areas are thrilled with its usefulness and it is growing quickly via word-of-mouth.
--Michael
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Within the "neighbors Local2Me" community, residents share recommendations on restaurants, schools, contractors, doctors -- almost anything they can think of and get connected to their local communities. The service is available nationwide but is hyper-local in nature. It is getting national attention, having been selected as an innovative web site by PBS TV's NetCafe show that aired around the country from Feb 14-20, 2002. (Other media articles available via Local2Me web site.)
This service is unique for community builders because:
* there's no setup - easy growth - groups form automatically as users sign up
* a user doesn't need to know the name of their neighborhood to sign up
* when less critical mass, users use broader personal circles to connect with people further away
* as it gets popular, users can tighten personal circles to control message traffic
* people communicate with each other across neighborhood boundaries as well as within neighborhoods
QUOTES: Here are some recent quotes from users:
* "The lady who gave us the [carpenter] referral invited us to her home to see [the work]. That is as 'neighborly' as it gets."
* "Both my husband and I have gotten Lasik surgery thanks to unanimous [Local2Me] recommendations of one doctor."
* "It is wonderful to count on neighbors I haven't even met who have answers to questions I haven't even been clever enough to ask."
Please sign up and help spread the word:
http://www.Local2Me.com
I publish an online newsletter focusing on the Lower Greenville section of Dallas TX.
:)
http://www.barkingdogs.org
I report on local issues - parking, crimewatch, code enforcement, news.
We hit the "big time" this week when the local media giant BELO sent a Cease & Desist order to stop us from hyperlinking to articles in their site.
30,000 hits later they are not very happy they picked on me
Avi S. Adelman
mailto:topdog@barkingdogs.org
I'm currently working on a project which may be of some interest here. Actually, that's an understatement. ;^) See
The AMPU Website
for more details.