EMR reviewed The Well by Katie Hafner
Review of 'The Well' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Short, focused story of an early online community, sometimes in it's own words. Seems to be trying to answer the question "what is a community?" or "can online communities be communities?"
From the perspective of a reader twenty years later in a world full of social networks, this is still fairly interesting because you can see very similar patterns play out; there are trolls, reviled moderators, consternation, drama, but also excellence-people helping each other out of jams, people treating each other with genuine kindness, and even mourning each other.
There are two contradictory premises at work. One is that The Well was truly special and something that you can't replicate by creating a threaded forum. The other is that The Well was promoted by media savvy Stuart Brand and Howard Rhinegold et al as this utopian place which can never be replicated. Clearly, the former is the case. I would …
Short, focused story of an early online community, sometimes in it's own words. Seems to be trying to answer the question "what is a community?" or "can online communities be communities?"
From the perspective of a reader twenty years later in a world full of social networks, this is still fairly interesting because you can see very similar patterns play out; there are trolls, reviled moderators, consternation, drama, but also excellence-people helping each other out of jams, people treating each other with genuine kindness, and even mourning each other.
There are two contradictory premises at work. One is that The Well was truly special and something that you can't replicate by creating a threaded forum. The other is that The Well was promoted by media savvy Stuart Brand and Howard Rhinegold et al as this utopian place which can never be replicated. Clearly, the former is the case. I would have liked a bit more clarity around just how similar (or different from) The Well was to the BBS scene which existed at the same time. And of course it also resembles web forums which came later and now social media like Reddit. If there was something truly special here, I fail to be convinced.