I've found it interesting that as I continue in my Disney World communities, I begin to lean towards using certain websites. It is so easy to get involved in the message boards and reading other members' contributions, or to send my own input. I have yet to start my own thread yet, but it is one of my goals for the next few weeks. There are many different areas to contribute, including not just the actual trip planning but also some fun threads regarding the worst Disney rides to get stuck on, or someone's favorite show.
I have also noticed that there really seems to be a community through these forums. Some people refer to their family members by name as if the others all know these people. In the facebook group I am a part of, many members give a breakdown of their entire trip ("Trip Report") for everyone else. Though I have not felt like reading entirely through any of these yet, a lot of the members clearly want to know all about it- as they give encouraging remarks and are interested to know more about the trip. You can view one of these Trip Reports here:
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/topic.php?uid=54506296008&topic=18336.
I was also surprised by some of the other features on the discussion board I'm following. There is an 'arcade' that everyone can play games in (and try to get high scores against other members of the community). The Watson reading from this week mentioned the potential of people who just lurk around the pages and read without making any contributions to the community, but the arcade requires users to have posted at least 25 posts in order to participate, which helps control the amount of these people. There is also a feature that ranks members according to how many posts they have made. I'm currently still a "Junior Cast Member" (with one star out of 5) but I have high hopes of eventually making it to "Senior Cast Member" (3 stars) or "Super Cast Member" (4 stars).
There's so much more to say about my progress in the forums, but I'll save some for future posts and my presentation. Speaking of which, I have a few questions for everyone to think about for tomorrow. How many of you have actively participated in an online community? Whether or not you have, do you think you would care enough about any certain topic to read paragraphs full of someone else's experience with something (whether it be their vacation, their most recent cooking creation, or a description of the new scrapbook pages they just made and how they did it, etc.)? Do you think contributing to these discussion boards makes one feel a part of a community? Is it important to actively contribute (rather than just reading posts) in order to really feel involved?
I do not participate in any blogs or discussion forums. I do however read a few blogs (somewhat regularly). My favorite is a blog called "uni watch" which is written by a guy who is uniform-obsessed. He'll point out many little subtleties in uniforms (a player wore his socks incorrectly, a player had too much of his shoe taped, a player's name was misspelled, a player wore a teammates batting helmet, etc). It is interesting to me because i too like uniforms in pro sports. He will also post any updates to uniforms (from special patches to new jerseys) which I find very interesting. I do not comment or post anything on the blog, though.
ReplyDeleteI think i would care about certain stories from other people enough to read about them, but i don't think I would comment or share my own stories from a vacation or something like that. I would look to friends or family for advice and would not look to random people on the internet (even though they may give good advice or tell you about something you have never heard of). All in all, these are definitely communities in my mind and I find it very fascinating to see what people are willing to write on the internet to complete strangers.