Dusan Writer>“communities with a foundation in an online world where the venue for community can take different forms in addition to the world.”

This is still “venue” to mean “place”. There’s a big difference in saying that online worlds are a venue for communities (which I agree with) and saying that communities are themselves venues.

>I’m personally increasingly interested in how to describe virtual communities that exist across multiple spaces, rather than trying to contain that sense of community within the term ‘virtual world’ or ‘online world’ because that limits our descriptive capacities.

OK, so you want to get across the idea that community rides the ether, phasing in and out of different spaces as it touches them. Fair enough. I fail to see from that how you get “online communities are a venue”.

>I don’t think a venue is equivalent to “place”. A newspaper is a “venue” (for expressing opinion, say) or the arts is a “venue for personal expression” – neither need to be a place

That’s using the term metaphorically. In both cases, you have to say what it is that the concept in question is a venue for - you can’t just say it’s a venue straight out, because the metaphor needs the other component. If I said “hunger is a venue” or “dogs are a venue”, you wouldn’t have the faintest idea what I was talking about – you’d have to try and interpret it poetically unless I told you what it’s a venue for (ie. what takes place in it).

>I don’t see why “venue” needs to be qualified – in common language it isn’t, why does it need to be when attached to online communities?

It doesn’t need to be qualified when it is attached to something that is instantly recognisable as a place. If it’s attached to something that you are likening to a place, then there needs to be something more to sustain the analogy. Now if you said “communities are spaces of belonging”, you could further that with “they are venues where the play between individual and group is acted out” and you’d be fine – you’ve established the premise of the metaphor and then run with it.

If you say “Online communities are a VENUE” then you have to say what they’re a venue for (or of). If I said “Online communities are a SHAPE”, well that may well be true but it’s no use to anyone as it stands. I’ve established the premise, but not followed it through.

>So: online communities, which can share a sense of place in an online world, can nonetheless have various venues for expression.

So why not say “Online communities are a VENUE for expression”? That makes perfect sense, and tells the reader what takes place in them. Otherwise, it could be anything.

Personally, I still don’t see what you get from saying this: online worlds are venues for community, but all communities are venues for expression; why pick on their online component in particular? If a community can manifest in multiple, disparate locations, why make a point about online communities in particular? Come to that, what does “online community” even mean in this context? Communities are rarely confined to one location, they spill out into others; you can talk about a community as it manifests online, or which engages primarily online, but communities that only exist online are few and far between.

>Or, in this case, a real world community can use online venues for expression, among them online worlds.

I have no problems with the view that communities can use venues; my hackles rise when communities are stated to be equivalent to venues, without any mention of the basis for the equivalence.

Richard

Richard – I can’t help feel like we’re all re-parsing definitions that you managed to bring some clarity to (and thanks for that! You’re a hero to so many )

However, I believe this parsing is happening because it feels like we’re at a stage where we’re looking for words to express the increasing sense that online worlds aren’t as neatly defined, or to put it another way – that we’re looking for words to express that while online worlds hold communities, those communities are increasingly “cross-border” and so we’d like terminology to express “communities with a foundation in an online world where the venue for community can take different forms in addition to the world.”

Maybe it’s just me, and it’s not like these are NEW things, online worlds have always had elements of sociality that extend past the world space itself. But I’m personally increasingly interested in how to describe virtual communities that exist across multiple spaces, rather than trying to contain that sense of community within the term ‘virtual world’ or ‘online world’ because that limits our descriptive capacities.

In this case, I’m going to reparse – because I don’t think a venue is equivalent to “place”. A newspaper is a “venue” (for expressing opinion, say) or the arts is a “venue for personal expression” – neither need to be a place, they can BE places but they can also be forums. I don’t see why “venue” needs to be qualified – in common language it isn’t, why does it need to be when attached to online communities?

So: online communities, which can share a sense of place in an online world, can nonetheless have various venues for expression.

Or, in this case, a real world community can use online venues for expression, among them online worlds.

Neat. I always enjoy reading articles like this one. I also think you put that statement rather well.