Talk:Community/Archive 1

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Archive • 6 August 2002 — 11 February 2006

This is a difficult topic because it is so very broad, but the present article (seemingly not much more than a rambling set of opinions) is not acceptable as is. I am an expert in the psychological perspective (specifically in Sense of community, claimed as the conceptual center of Community psychology), but that is only one perspective among at least several that need to be represented here. -DoctorW 22:51, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

After a rewrite is done:

This article, once rewritten, should be part of a WikiProject to improve Wikipedia's articles related to Community. For guidelines see WikiProject Community and Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ.

"philosophy of community" and community Art

anonymous poster writes:

can someone explain to me how this is not just a dictionary-entry page? is someone planning to put something about "philosophy of community" or some such, to provide more substance?

And what about a definition of community Art/ i would like to see a definition of that seeing as the related definitions are covered. I think this is a good page for us beginners...

--Sophroniscus 14:57, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Inclusiveness and exclusivity

I strongly disagree with the statement... Exclusivity is a therefore denial of community, or a limitation community. Exclusivity is the essence of a community. Without exclusivity there is only mush, not community. A cat or dog can not exist without its immune system. The whole being of a cat or dog depends on the immune system. Take that away and the cat or dog will soon cease to exist. It is the same with any community. Inclusiveness and exclusivity are related as yin and yang. You can't have inclusiveness without the exclusivity which alone makes the community into what it is.

This article needs work

Yes. This article needs some work. Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Community. This will probably become the main article for the project. Quinobi 14:51, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• CLEANUP IN PROGRESS - Indeed Community is the tender article for the flagship article World Community and the project's Home base. We'll also have Community_(disambiguation) which will catch some of the slag rom this cleanup and serve as a gateway over to Global village which will get the virtual and internet community parcels.
• I think I have some logical structure now. The section headers are just evenly spaced out; they dont jive with the text that's in between them now. I'm satisfied with the stuff above the {{cleanup}} box except some minor edits. There is some good text below the box too which I'll takle when I get back.
• I'm using a hope-despair fluxuation device here:

definition - history - need - prospect - problem - sense - spirit - o - community

• The Jesus scene stays. sorry. Community is always about commitment - never about compromise.
• Give it time, brother. Quinobi 09:09, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Good luck --ReDM0oN - (msg) 07:17, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

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Comments and Suggestions

Should "In Wales and Scotland, communities are the lowest tier of local government, equivalent to civil parishes in England." be moved to Community_(disambiguation)?Sophroniscus

Yes. I moved them to Community_(disambiguation)#Other ambiguities Quinobi 01:01, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This is an anonymous editor's point of view

...and I'm handing it back. I think I covered this in the Nature of community section. I'm trying to go much deeper into this topic. Thank you for your contribution. Feel free to express your views and comments here. We want this article to be as encyclopedic as possible. I must admit my own efforts are essay-like, but I don't know of a better way to approach this very subjective topic. I am bised also toward inclusion but I cant argue with Sophroniscus's point that exclusion and inclusion must form a strong balence and I'm using that as a quantitative measure augmented by the quality of maturity.

I also pulled from the parenthetic argument you made Oh, anonymous, that institutions can indoctrinate masses into behaving certain ways. I agree. but rather than parenthasizing that I melded it into the concept of conversance with rules. Thanks again for your contribution. Quinobi 17:49, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

The following was removed from #The spirit of community section:

'A' community is a thing, as in the 'Internet Community'; or the 'Intelligence Community' whereas community, the quality, is the sum of all the parts of a sustained and sustainable living system. For example the communinty of my own being consists of many billions of cells, some of which are my body, some of which live on my body. They all work together to be me. That 'me' is sustained by the community of Earth, comprising land, sea, rivers, air, etc., which in turn is sustained by Universe.

The common feature or quality thoughout each layer of community described above, and as bio-diversity science shows us, is the inclusive quality, thus inclusivity is community.

Exclusivity is a therefore denial of community, or a limitation community.

Resource: Article on the experience of community: Sense of community

Thoughtful people in the social sciences have not only discussed their opinions about community (as this article does), but have also done a good bit of empirical research in social psychology, sociology, and anthropology on this subject. The article Sense of community (to which I just linked), provides some well-validated empirical support for a theory of the experience of community (the prevailing view on this subject within social psychology and community psychology), and some of its content may be helpful for developing this page and perhaps even for the Wikipedia:WikiProject Community more broadly, especially in regard to areas like the one that page mentions, the Wikipedia Community Reference ("a guide to articles that deal with the definitions of community and community development in general") or whatever form such ideas may take in the future. DoctorW 23:34, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

ack!

reads like a set of opinions by a person with a definite view but at the same time not concisely experssed.

Complete Rewrite

Yes, I agree on the total re-write. The article to date is a rambling essay. (I know - I wrote most of it ;). I'm only an ameteur sociologist with very little college at all, so feel free to refactor the article as you see fit. I think a good solid etymology and definition, as requested earlier would be great. I'm thankful that folks have finally noticed this article. -- CQ 00:38, 18 November 2005 (UTC) CBTF

I found the following proposed approach on Talk:Emotion (although they seem not to have had enough of some combination of boldness and expertise yet to implement it). I think a similar approach would be just what we might need to tackle as broad a topic as "community" (emphasis mine):

As an affective neuroscientist I agree with you, but I think others with valuable viewpoints will disagree with that approach. It could also be argued that the most important aspect of emotion is the subjective conscious experience, and that wouldn't be wrong, as at that point it comes down to a matter of definitions. I suggest we split the article into sections, so that everyone can have their fair say. The best overall article would come out of a synthesis of these different perspectives. As an overall structure to the article I suggest:

Perspectives on emotion from philosophy

Perspectives on emotion from psychology

Perspectives on emotion from psychotherapy

Perspectives on emotion from neuroscience and psychophysiology

Each of these views is valid and more different than one might think. Our initial definition of emotion would then need to avoid offending any of these viewpoints. The definition you proposed is most likely to be untenable to the philosophical and psychotherapeutic views. Perhaps if we just used an even more general definition of emotion derived from the etymology section at the end, that would be accetable to everyone. Thoughts? sallison 21:59, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Of course, we wouldn't use exactly the same categories, but certainly we would want to include:

Perspectives on community from philosophy and literature

Perspectives on community from psychology

Perspectives on community from sociology

and others, I would imagine.

- DoctorW 09:55, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Disagree

Maybe my understanding of English is not good, but I find the article correct in the current form. It starts by defining community from a geographical and/or physical point of view and then extends the idea towards a psychologycal view, towards the notion of virtual community. For most people this is the normal way to consider the term, starting from its history. Considering the abstract idea before the practical realization in the society and history could be misleading.--Truman Burbank 17:27, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Disagree? Not competely

I'm not saying the article needs to be broken up into different articles. An article on community should start with an attempt at a definition not too far from what everyone could agree on, including the potential for both geographical and relational aspects of community. Before getting too far into what different people think about community, you have to justify why one person's POV is better than another - or - you can cite summaries of what thoughtful scholars have come up with after lots of discussion (sometimes aided by empirical studies).

Where we do disagree is that you claim the article is "correct" in its current form. Who says it's correct? The article in its current form is just some guy's POV from the first sentence to the last. I'm not saying his definition and other contents are completely wrong, but for virtually every sentence, one can easily ask "who says?" or "according to whom?" and "I would say it a little differently." This is an encyclopedia, not a blog. Scholars have also been known to come up with relatively normal ways of considering a term like "community." The advantage of this approach is that there is a background of a large body of intelligent discussion that can be cited, rather than just one guy's idea. Normally such discussion takes place within a particular field. -DoctorW 00:40, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I hadn't noticed that just before I wrote the preceding paragraph, Bergsten wisely deleted the following paragraph from the article (this is the prototype for what I was talking about):

Since the dawn of civilization, humankind has progressed through a series of struggles against what is known today as the human condition. Blood, bone, tissue and lymph wrapped in a single vulnerable layer of skin is the human frame when we leave the womb. At that instant, we begin to feel the constant fifteen pounds per square inch of Earth's atmosphere on our ears. We remain in need of a continuous supply of air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat, and (depending on latitude and social timidity) clothes to wear. We get tired and have to sleep, preferably on something soft and dry. We must from time to time clean our skin and our teeth. We are continually attacked by microscopic creatures, bothered by insects and possibly bitten by beasts. We are subject to harm by falling or getting burned, cut, or bruised. Some of us are born with defects and diseases or get them later on. This is the condition, common to us all.

We can do better. Sections being added with citations from academic discussions or famous literature can lead to revisions of the general/summary material at the beginning of the article to incorporate/integrate the ideas. -DoctorW 13:38, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I found the term "Complete Rewrite" that for me means something like "delete everything and restart from the beginning". My warning was that starting in a manner similar to the current one, with simple and common words at the beginning, and then extending the idea in a more formal way could be a way to preserve part of the article. In any case, good work, I will give next comments on the new version. (Then I would like to insert the article in the Italian version.)--Truman Burbank 13:38, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

One of the first glaring problems with this article is that is a completely western worldview. Phrases like "Progressing from the days of the hunter-gatherers..." are illustrative. THERE ARE SITLL LOTS OF HUNTER-GATHERERS! Assuming a paternalistic industrial worldview on what is or makes community is not helpful. The digression into entirely theoretical (and way overly simplistic)discussions of state formation processies, institutional evolution, and resource procurement is bizzare, incorrect, and entirely out of place in an article that should be defining the idea of community. Further, there is nothing about community that is unique to modern humans. Explaining it by quasi spiritualic psychobabel is not helpful either. Community formation and behavior is an adaptive trait of many species, humans, birds, bees and otherwise. If you wish to expound upon this issue, then mention needs to be made of why community behavior has been (usually) favored by modern humans and not by other primates such as orangutans and (apparently) Neanderthals. My background BTW is anthropology. DHBoggs

this should be dictionary entry http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=community webster's did a good job of defining a community. it's short too and not much psychobabble.