That's a really important point. Joining an online community has become much lower effort than joining an in-person one. Just finding a time and place for everyone to meet is more of a chore than even running a small site online. Depending on the type of community you might also need to deal with recruiting speakers, storing/maintaining shared equipment, etc. My family belongs to a ski club, and it's a commitment in both time and money. It's not a full time job or anything, but it's on the same level as a typical four-credit college course. If not for the fact that the underlying shared interest is physical in nature, the online alternative would seem very compelling.
The downside of online is that the conflicts and competition for "internet points" often colors the conversation or even drowns it out. People start to show up who actually don't care as much about the shared interest as they do about having another arena in which to fight. Without the real-world mechanisms that tend to curb the most outrageous behavior, and often with substitutes that encourage it, the need for explicit moderation becomes greater ... but brings its own share of problems. In my thirty years or so of online experience, moderation and moderators have exacerbated conflict and degradation more often than they've helped. Just read the news and you'll see it happening today on all of the big sites.
The solution, IMO, is to pay attention to the actual science of how people coexist, and apply its lessons. What are the empirical effects of upvotes and downvotes and other reactions? Of showing or not showing view counts? Of hierarchical vs. flat conversations? Of content restrictions or moderator behaviors? Unfortunately, that kind of examination will never happen where "soft" sciences are disrespected, which is every place where these decisions actually need to be made. Everyone just flies by the seat of their pants, and most of them fly into mountainsides.
That's a really important point. Joining an online community has become much lower effort than joining an in-person one. Just finding a time and place for everyone to meet is more of a chore than even running a small site online. Depending on the type of community you might also need to deal with recruiting speakers, storing/maintaining shared equipment, etc. My family belongs to a ski club, and it's a commitment in both time and money. It's not a full time job or anything, but it's on the same level as a typical four-credit college course. If not for the fact that the underlying shared interest is physical in nature, the online alternative would seem very compelling.
The downside of online is that the conflicts and competition for "internet points" often colors the conversation or even drowns it out. People start to show up who actually don't care as much about the shared interest as they do about having another arena in which to fight. Without the real-world mechanisms that tend to curb the most outrageous behavior, and often with substitutes that encourage it, the need for explicit moderation becomes greater ... but brings its own share of problems. In my thirty years or so of online experience, moderation and moderators have exacerbated conflict and degradation more often than they've helped. Just read the news and you'll see it happening today on all of the big sites.
The solution, IMO, is to pay attention to the actual science of how people coexist, and apply its lessons. What are the empirical effects of upvotes and downvotes and other reactions? Of showing or not showing view counts? Of hierarchical vs. flat conversations? Of content restrictions or moderator behaviors? Unfortunately, that kind of examination will never happen where "soft" sciences are disrespected, which is every place where these decisions actually need to be made. Everyone just flies by the seat of their pants, and most of them fly into mountainsides.