For my Virtual Community, I have chosen Something Awful, an online forum bound together into a community by some very unique dynamics. With members in the thousands, this forum has become a major landmark on the internet, and, due to its unique social regulation, it is of particular interest within the scope of this course.

- Chance Navarrete

For my virtual community I've chosen a MMORPG called Dark Age of Camelot. I've played this game before in the past but stopped a couple years ago. Since then a lot of expansions and improvements have been added to the game, and it has taken some getting used to. It differs from most other MMO games because is based on realm vs. realm combat, which puts players from 3 different homelands against each other. There is a very involved player community, and I think the social aspects of the game will make it a good fit for this project.
-Ronald Saenz

Well finally I post something, on time as usual.
My choice is a community called "Spinchat". I chose it because it has EVERYTHING all in one, and I love that. It's free to join and everyone gets to create a profile. There are chatrooms, forums about any topic you can possibly dream of, games, a mail system, and instant messaging. also everyone gets their own blog that you can update daily. it's kind of a cross between aol and xanga. I really enjoy it, and I'm thinking about keeping up with it after this project is over. Then again I'm already on facebook and xanga so I guess it would be pointless. Here I go rambling... that's it for now.
-catherine difulgentiz

I've decided to look in depth into www.clutchfans.com which is a BBS for fans of the NBA team Houston Rockets. Being based around a team located in the 4th largest city in the US, you get a large diversity of people and because the teams biggest star is from China, you'll often get a good look into their culture from native posters. But what makes it so interesting are the off topic discussion forums. Threads range from anything to really big Chalupas at Taco Bell to International Politics. And yes, girls post there too. =)
-Jonathan Hayden

I have finalized my decision on which virtual community I want to join. I thought about the obvioius communities such as facebook or Xanga. The one I ultimately chose was MyCoke. MyCoke is a music online community. You have an avatar called "V-Ego" that you create. It is a reflection of you or who you portray to be. MyCoke allows you to share and mix music online. You have a virtual studio, a blog page, and a messenger. This virtual community is sponsored by Coca-Cola (hince MyCoke).
Orlando Morriesette

I was having a lot of problems deciding which on-line community to go for and then I forgot to post my choice! So here it is: http://www.mallasch.com
This is an on-line journalism community where people can come to discuss any thing from the craft of writing, to current news, to particular news paper, and even rss feeds and rss comments. It's great! I think it is a fantastic way to get involved in the news in a way that you can taper to your own interests. The community appears to be very positive as well as highly informed which is a wonderful type of exposure, as this is my first on-line community :-)

I haven't exactly decided what I'm going to do yet. So I am going to join two, and see which one does better for me. One is a motorcycle forum for people in or around Houston, www.motohouston.com. The other is www.myspace.com, which is more of like a social thing I guess. I don't really know how to explain it. But anyways, thats what I am doing.

Taylor

I am planning on doing my project of a Battlestar Galactica fan forum, but I am having some issues of which forum would be best for our project. I was wondering if any of you had any suggestions on these forums: Television Without Pity BSG Forums, SCI-FI BSG Forum, or Livejournal BSG Community. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
--Heather Harrison

I decided to go with a fan community, as I've been a member of a couple fan meesage boards and have always been fascinated by the bizzare social hierarchies and conventions that spring up. For the project, I chose the forums on the Anime News Network website. The boards appear to be rather busy, and interestingly enough there is no off-topic section, so I'm interested to see what effect the topic restrictions have on the community.

Stephen Hurd

I decided to go with XuQa, a new site that I just joined recently. What it is, is an online community that is designed just for college students and can be used for networking as well as socialization. It seems pretty interesting and even has an anonymous blog section.

i think i'm going to join whyville. not only was it the first hit under google's online communities, it's "A virtual 3-D world for curious minds where you can own land, build your own house, play simulation games, win prizes, chat, and help the community grow." i signed up and i think it's mainly for children and i think i'm going to experiment with the whole gender issue and say i'm a girl. it should be interesting.

Many single interest forums have a sub-section called 'off topic' or something along those lines. The founding members of my virtual community choice, Offtopic.com, were originally active members of such an off topic section on a popular car forum. For a variety of reasons, the least of which being overly-strict regulations on that particular car forum, the OT founders decided to create a completely new forum in which users would have much more freedom to say and do as they please. Offtopic.com is now one of the largest and most active social forums on the web, with nearly 130,000 registered members and thousands of users online at any given time. The main section of this forum, which I will be focusing on, is a topic-less section in which users can discuss anything and everything from relationship advice to politics to simply venting frustrations. Since its conception in 2000, the great influx of new users has resulted in a fairly clear cut social hierarchy, cliques, and rules and regulations.

Sanjay Mahatma

My community is in the form of a forum and it is called the wcnet.net community forum. It is a forum for residents of Wharton County, my hometown county.

It brings together small towns throughout the county to discuss local, national
and personal issues. There are passionate and lengthy debates and conversations about many of these issues. Some people obviously know each other in real life and others are only acquainted through the forum.

There are already apparent social constraints dealing with issues such as cliques, acceptance, and ways of dealing with belligerent or hate postings.

Mostly, I am interested in seeing these small town people and their issues come
to life on the computer screen, how they interact with each other, and how it
is different compared to their real life.

Laura Williamson

I'm going to be one who goes with what he knows. Final Fantasy XI is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) I've been involved with for a little over a year. I didn't relish the thought of joining a community I suspect will take a lot of my time only to leave it in six weeks. Also, I took very seriously the admonitions to be wary of picking a community I already was a part of, but in all honesty I've wanted to do some real work and writing on my particular FFXI community essentially since I joined it. I look forward to this project.

www.youthink.com is a website with a variety of channels for users to express themselves, including forums, a journal section; ability to ask yes-or-no types of questions that produce statistics based on the responses given; movie reviews by users and links to interesting material on other websites. It has no particular specialization unless sought out by the user.
Martin

SecondLife is a virtual world - a 3D online persistent space totally created and evolved by its 50,000 users. You may have read about the guy who paid thousands of (real) dollars for his own virtual island. He leases land to others for virtual money. I like the fact that people build bars and malls etc- there is no MUD aspect of developer created content it is ONLY user made.

www.secondlife.com

After much consideration, I've decided to join Oh No They Didn't, one of the largest communities on LiveJournal. The community is solely dedicated to celebrity gossip through links, photos, and speculation provided by its members, but it's more interesting than it sounds. Members get into very heated debates and become involved in relationships with one another. (There's a LOT of drama. Really.) There are almost 20,000 members of the community, and another couple of thousand people who "watch" it. From what I've gathered, there is a definite hierarchy in the community as well as very strict rules and standards. I think it'll be a very interesting "world" to get involved in and observe.

-- Paige Hermansen