Posts Tagged ‘forum’

Christine talks about ‘fellow believers’ and the question arose if that is the same thing as ideology. Ideology is “the body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class, or culture” (ideology), therefore I would say Yes it is the same thing. The fellow believers are those that share common ideas and join together in different ways such as an online community. I would like to relate this article to an on-line community I am involved in to use a personal example to help explain the article.

As I said in an earlier post I have been involved in VW’s & Audi’s since I was born. I started to understand the significance of the sub-culture following that went along with the VW/Audi scene when I was younger and would go to the shows with my family. Once I got older (around the time I was going to start driving) and wanted to be more involved in the VW/Audi community I went to the internet for more information. I came across a website called VwVortex.com which is a news site for everything involved with VW’s (and there partner companies: Audi, Seat, Skoda, Lamborghini, Bentley, Bugatti). The largest part of the website is there forum, which to me is what an on-line community is because it involves not only the ‘experts’ as well as the average-Joe’s.

To justify the website as a good example of an on-line community, VwVortex is the 20^th largest forum on the internet (Rankings) with 60,695,474 posts and 526,883 members (Those numbers are old there are 66,235,188 posts and 591,813 members as of 3/15/11). I personally used the website since 2003 and have been an active member since 03/20/2004. Everyone has their standard routine when they get onto a computer. That usually consists of checking Facebook and/or e-mail where in my case it is checking VwVortex. I would definitely consider this site an on-line community because it brings together a large number of people from different states, countries, and backgrounds together in the common interest of Volkswagen’s. There are also different parts of the forum that are dedicated to other interests which you can connect with those that have an interest in VW’s as well as other hobbies such as art, travel, video games, sports…etc. The environment is friendly and people are willing to help you with whatever it is that you need. I have seen people use the website when they are road-tripping and they break down in another state (or where have you) to send out a sort of SOS and fellow members that were in the area of the break down helped out.

As stated above the forum is broken down into sub-categories. This makes the site extremely organized and efficient for posting information or questions in the correct areas of concern. They have everything from sub-categories of different car generations as well as different regions of the USA/World. Another large part of the on-line community is informing everyone about upcoming car shows and events. The news is spread fast and effectively because of the use of the forum.

I really like the idea of on-line communities because of the ease for connecting those with common interests together. If you think of every page on Facebook dedicated to a product, service, or any kind of interest they are all on-line communities because those that like the particular page all have something in common.

Works Cited

ideology. (n.d.). Retrieved March 15, 2011, from The Free Dictionary: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ideology

Rankings. (n.d.). Retrieved March 15, 2011, from Big Boards: http://www.big-boards.com/