MMO Communities (was RE: [MUD-Dev] MMORPG Cancellations: The sky isfalling?)

[Paul Schwanz]

Sean Howard wrote:

>> Sure within those large communities there are sub communities but
>> it's hard to tell me that the Teamsters union isn't really a
>> community when the entire lot of them threatens to strike on UPS.

> I believe that the union is made up of dozens, if not hundreds, of
> smaller local unions.

So the definition of a community includes a restriction that there
can be no sub-communities?  That seems rather arbitrary to me.

With that sort of restriction, I doubt that communities could grow
past 10 or so members.  My town must not be a community because
their are sub-divisions, those sub-divisions can't be communities
because they contain families, and even extended families cannot be
communities because they can be sub-divided into immediate families.

It seems to me a much more reasonable perspective would be that
there is a sort of heirarchy of social groupings.  I agree with
Derek's assessment of the Law with the exception that I believe it
is still useful to stipulate that there are certain general
thresholds where the type of social bonds in a community will
change.  Certainly as each population threshold is crossed the
social bonds and influences are weakened, but I think this occurs
more as steps than as a gradual slope.

--Paul "Phinehas" Schwanz
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