Introduction

After more than a decade of mass participation in Internet, World Wide Web and e-mail technology and practice, and the intense popular and academic interest and writing on these technologies and practices, a number of different avenues of inquiry and manners of online social organization have emerged. Sociologists have been interested in the effects of technological mediation on social capital (e.g., Wellman and Haythornthwaite 2002) [PDF]; psychologists on the further implications of the “media effect” (e.g., Reeves and Nass 1996); communications scholars on the fallout of emergent technologies on community cohesion and news distribution (e.g., Schaffer 2007) [PDF]; anthropologists on marginal and immersive online spaces (e.g., Turkle 1995); and many scholars and commentators from a variety of backgrounds on the emergence and impact of online social networking sites (OSNSes) (see e.g., boyd and Ellison 2007). There are a large but relatively stable variety of modes of organization and mediation in online spaces that have been the subject of many of these studies - listserves; community (both physical and virtual) sites; OSNSes; online dating sites; MOOs/MUDs/MMORPGs; media websites; and blogs. Tokens of membership vary in these communities on a number of scales, many having to do with identity and identification. Some encourage use of real names, some encourage psuedonyms, and some allow either. Some tie profiles to (presumably) real photographs, some to avatars, some only to a text handle. In each of the cases and in each typology, one constant is that in successful and cohesive online spaces, community norms are signaled clearly and (usually) adopted by new users. Violation of norms can lead to expulsion from an online space or marginalization in future conversations - both of which require in the first a consistent and persistent token of identity of some form.

But there are also many, many spaces for online interaction where participation is fleeting and not persistent - for some users, these can include spaces that others consider communities (think of a one-time commenter at a blog, or a one-time contributor to a specific area of knowledge at Wikipedia). Sometimes there is a marker of identity required anyhow (e.g., a Blogger handle), but often participation can be done anonymously and with no lasting record or association. With nothing either physical or virtual tying a user to a community, and with knowledge or entertainment often desired in easily-consumable chunks, it’s no surprise that there are many online spaces more like bus stations than community centers - busy, but nowhere you’d want to hang out.

For these reasons, it’s reasonable for scholars to focus research on those typologies that have proven most common and durable; however, there are exceptions, and this paper examines a case - that of the washingtonpost.com online chat, “Chatological Humor” - that, despite violating most of the observed tendencies for effective and persistent online communities, is most certainly a persistent, supportive online community. The methods of analysis are descriptive and the findings not meant to be taken as generalizable. However, it should be noted that descriptive studies of unorthodox communities can prove useful in this regard, and especially in exploring marginal or emergent practice. This exploration follows a more thorough description of current understandings of online community and sociability.