Why do we join communities?
I suppose it's a pretty broad question, because it could imply communities in the outside physical world, or it could imply communities here on Hive, or communities across the web in general.
Truth be known, we probably have a slightly skewed perspective here on Hive because so much of people's activity and energy revolves around the omni-present issue of "earning rewards" that we sometimes lose sight of why we engage in any activity at all... for non-monetary reasons.
So, why do we join communities?
I started by looking through the communities I'm subscribed to here on Hive and I can say that they are pretty exclusively related to things I'm actually interested in, things that are my hobbies/interests, or things I feel might offer news/information that I would want to read.
But that really isn't a very good answer, is it?
The Layers of the Onion
I typically join communities for one of two reasons: One, because I want to connect with other people who have similar interests to mine and learn how they approach our shared interest, and two, because I am hoping to learn something new and getting involved with a group of people sharing that "new thing" makes sense.
Going down my list of Hive communities also made me realize that community building is difficult and a lot of communities struggle to get any traction at all and it also made me realize that many of my interests are not necessarily very popular.
What does that mean?
Well the "popular" bit probably means that I really am not very much of an anarchist, or a blockchainiac, nor am I a cryptoholic or a gamer, and the quest to make everything decentralized is also not in my top 20. I don't think fiat currency is about to become obsolete, and I don't think the government is going to collapse and that we are going to fall into chaotic lawlessness and a collapsed economy anytime soon.
Meanwhile, many of my interests are pretty niche oriented, and if I have to be completely objective about it I'd probably better served by Facebook or Pinterest with their millions and billions of users.
But I joined this community — meaning Hive — because I wanted to learn something new. That new thing was to gain a better understanding of crypto and blockchain than I had previously done from my first cursory glance at Bitcoin some 10+ years ago.
Community Building.. Wow!
Community building is a remarkably challenging and multifaceted proposition. It's easy enough to create a community — let's say for gardeners, or for Bitcoin traders, or for people who are interested in creating music videos. In some cases it's also easy enough to get people to look at the description of your community and say "yeah, I'll join that!"
But then what?
I look at these communities I joined here on Hive and whereas quite a few of them have more than a thousand subscribers, I can't exactly say that there is any activity there that makes me feel like I'm part of an actual community. There's no engagement, there's no interaction, there's no outreach. Does a long string of content that's loosely associated with the topic of a community (but not necessarily moderated) actually constitute "community?"
Makes me ponder the interesting dichotomy that there is a distinct difference between simply saying "community" and the feeling and actual sense of community.
That said, some of the communities I belong to — including Silver Bloggers, from where I am posting this — do offer a sense of community. And how does that happen?
As always, the common thread seems to be that there is somebody(s) who is in charge; a management team; an admin team and they make an effort to make it seem like something is going on in the community. And maybe that touches in some of the important distinctions between thriving communities and dead communities. Thriving communities generally are a hands-on experience and you seldom get very far with a community without active and involved leadership.
And it never ends! I say that, as someone who has built communities in the past... the largest of which had a team of 12 admins and almost 30 volunteer moderators keeping everything flowing and on track, with with challenges, contests, events, meetups and goodness knows what else. And there was no monetary reward.
Most of those 40+ people took on their roles as a means of "giving back" to the community... perhaps a significant measure of success that the community did something right!
Why do YOU join communities?
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great week ahead!
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Created at 2024-01-15 00:08 PST
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