Virtual Communities

Virtual communities occur when enough people carry on a public discussion long enough via the internet. These discussions must include human feeling to form webs of personal relationships. How a community forms is without definition, but some identified aspects include the need of sufficient time to form relationships, the need to develop shared culture and norms, the need for veterans to give newcomers the history of the community, and include emotional ties which are lacking in a group.
The good thing about VC is that they are not confined by physical location as are offline communities. Unfortunately, with the positive comes negative. In VC a member has the ability to disengage without consequence. There is no need for members to work through differences, thus they may not respect the norms of the community, because there is no accountability for one’s actions. Also, members may become so involved in their online communities they can ignore their real life obligations. This can have negative effects on family, work, and offline social groups.
Certain types of governances and policies can be put in place to try and avoid the violation of norms within a VC, but they are in no way legally enforced. The worse that can happen is that a person can be shunned, or kicked out, by other members of the community. For example, Mr. Bungle in LambdaMOO was kicked out of the community after performing act of online rape. It was simple however for Mr. Bungle to return to LambdaMOO under a different name, and had he not said anything, no one would have known.
Ideally VCs should be a pleasant and welcoming place for a person to go and express themselves openly and comfortably. Unfortunately, just like everything else, certain people have to ruin it for everyone else.