More Thoughts on ETP as Community Internet/Weblog Culture5/2/2000; 11:07:05 PM Feb 22, 2000: On Deciding... Better: "And there's respect and politeness here. I don't know how we get along without alcohol as social lubricant."I'll take a shot at that. Weblog community-links along which negative energy flows tend to break themselves. Rather then leaving two antagonists in a more conventional community, neither of whom will leave and neither of whom will back down, the link between the two will simply sever... possibly with a great deal of noise and smoke, but sever it will. *Shazam*, no more contact, yet the meta-community remains more-or-less intact, and is even better off for having less negative energy flowing through it. Weblog community-links along which positive energy flows will tend to reinforce themselves; we see this in the list of links to other weblogs which seem almost redundent because the 'blogger links to them so often anyhow. It's not redundency, it's a sign of the strength of the bond between the two community-units.This implies that to be fair I need to create my own list of blogs-I-like. I'll get to that sometime, I guess.This might explain the difficulty in getting a decent discussion going in these communities; those likely to post are likely to already have their own weblog, and do it there instead.Expect me to mumble some more about communities in the future. I like what I see here; a bunch of people, communicating, a system that encourages polite behavior (or you are ignored, even more so then on the Usenet). New dynamics at work! Not totally new, of course, but new nevertheless. I like this. I don't just want iRights to explore the wrong ways of doing business, like Boundary Breakers, I want to explore the right ways too, which is hard to do when you just read the news .I used to think weblogs were over-rated, even avoided the term, because I agree with those who say that this is not a fundamentally new type of web site, and they are nothing to get excited about. The community that may form from a large number of people using them, however, may just be something to get excited about.