In that post she says,
Indicators are not all strength-based. Like anything, there is the light and dark of community and light and dark of a community’s indicators. This is not the utopian view. Dark indicators might include signs of exclusion, power and control struggles, banning and red-lining.In other words, "lynch mobs are emergent behavior too". (And profound apologies to the well spoken sociologist who blogged that about two years ago, I can't seem to find the reference.)
I'd like to propose a few community indicators that, on the surface, might seem to counter idea of community, but if we back off from the light/dark binary descriptions, we may see people working together to foster community among themselves.
Community Indicators: Petitions
Online petitions have a bad reputation as not only futile but dangerously becoming a substitute for action. In a large context, they may best serve as raising awareness of an issue, but in a smaller context, they can help strengthen the ties of individuals and their group identity even when they are unsuccessful.
Community Indicators: Protest
Protest is about a group of people coming together with a unified purpose to join their voices and actions to affect change. This one is from my personal archives:
In February 1996, users on Worlds Away got so riled over delays in getting private spaces ("turfs") that they staged a sit-in. Fed up with many delays from WorldsAway's then owner, Fujitsu, avatars filled the locales where new users first arrive in the world, standing and chanting, "No turfs, no peace . . ." (the words scroll up above the game's window)-while paying per-minute online charges. To Kollock, that protest was a sign of WorldsAway's success as a community. "The simple fact that they had a protest speaks volumes about the space-the commitment and collective action."
-From Chapter 2 of From Anarchy to Power: The Net Comes of Age by Wendy Grossman,
Community Indicators: Mass abandonment
How can leaving a group be an indication that there is a community? When it's done by a group:
"So many of us don't have a gathering place that feels comfortable and communal," [Sherry Turkle] said. "For those who found that on Flickr.com, its transformation into a 'service' on Yahoo is a loss; they are losing something important to them.
In this case it's the loss of community feeling that is prompting some to protest against. I think the true test if this really is a community indicator is if those who leave, group together again somewhere else.
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