{"id":105,"date":"2016-06-08T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-08T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/wordpress\/poetponders\/?p=105"},"modified":"2023-11-26T12:55:28","modified_gmt":"2023-11-26T18:55:28","slug":"dying-digital-communities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/2016\/06\/08\/dying-digital-communities\/","title":{"rendered":"Dying Digital Communities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Teaching colleagues, especially those in New Media Studies and the Digital Humanities<\/a>, might find the pattern in the graphic\u00a0with this blog entry interesting. The image is the report for activity on an\u00a0academic mailing list from 1999 to present. There was a steady rise in the number of subscribers and email postings through 2004. After 2004, the activity declined. By 2014, the community was dead, except for the rare automated message.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Similar patterns are visible when I check other mailing lists<\/a>. It’s like\u00a0the USENET<\/a> statistics. Where are people going to discuss academic topics? Some online communities<\/a> rise and fall faster (SecondLife), but most seem to have a five-year cycle. Facebook is defying that cycle for now.<\/p>\n

I left the WPA-L and other lists, because they were too often off-topic and\/or not about scholarship and\u00a0pedagogy. I didn’t enjoy the mailing lists anymore. The fun was gone, though a core set of users remained active\u00a0on other issues. Maybe that’s the problem for all online spaces: they become insular.<\/p>\n

The loss of RSS<\/a> from some sites also reduced my connection to academic discussion. I really miss having easy\u00a0access to RSS and don’t like Twitter<\/a> or Facebook as my news feeds.<\/p>\n

From 2002 through 2010 was an active, exciting time for online communities. That’s eight or nine years, which is a long time on the Internet<\/a>. Still, the loss of these communities disappoints me.<\/p>\n

I’m using my phone more than my computer, and I’m reading fewer sources with almost no “community” content.\u00a0Slashdot and MacRumors are about the only communities left that I check daily.<\/p>\n

Even the theater and film communities I used to love are on life support. They tried podcasts, but that’s not community \u2014 it’s\u00a0top-down from the organizations, not the membership.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Teaching colleagues, especially those in New Media Studies and the Digital Humanities, might find the pattern in the graphic\u00a0with this blog entry interesting. The image…<\/p>\n

Continue readingDying Digital Communities<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1875,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"iawp_total_views":11,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[155,205,374,375,387,467,548],"class_list":["post-105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-technology","tag-digital-humanities","tag-facebook","tag-new-media","tag-newsgroups","tag-online-communities","tag-rss","tag-twitter","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/12\/FB_Banner_Pen_Mac.png?fit=1200%2C630&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfiw78-1H","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1669,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions\/1669"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/csw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}