Me, Myself and Communities
Thank you for stopping by. My name is Peter Willis, a student (and webmaster, but I’ll get to that shortly!) at Leeds Metropolitan University in the final year of a degree studying Web Media Management. As part of my final year I am currently doing a module looking at online communities.
When we talk about online communities, just what is it that we mean? For me an online community can be just about anything where we are conversing with others via the Internet as opposed to face-to-face. The two most obvious examples of these would be discussion forums and social networking. But there are a whole range of other unique communities where it may not be instantly recognisable as being a community such as deviantArt (artwork sharing), World of Warcraft (computer game) and del.icio.us (social bookmarking).
On a personal level, I actively partake in around 5 different online communities – Facebook, SitePoint, PESFan, YouTube and DigitalPoint. Each of these has their own unique characteristics, which gives me a broader prospective when looking at the issues which arise in communities. I also administer several discussion forums of my own, one of which has over 100,000 members (PESGaming) which gives me some great background knowledge.
Over the next 12 weeks I will be taking a look at the various aspects of online communities.
Something which came up during my first tutorial for the module was the issue of SHOUTING. I went on to raise the issue in the online discussion forum where other students can share their thoughts. The general consensus seemed to be that using capital letters for entire words or phrases is a big no-no online. Apparently, some American geeks decided in the 90’s that it was to be deemed ‘shouting’.
For me, I think there are certain instances where it IS acceptable to make use of capitals to highlight keywords (OK, so that was a bit of a poor example there on the ‘is’, but you get the idea!). I much prefer this method to the suggested ‘bolding’ of words or phrases. This is not to say, however, that the director of a company should send out memos in bold capital letters. This approach can easily be deemed patronizing by the reader.
On that note I will leave you to get on with your travels around the web. Next week I’ll take a look at the problem of being misunderstood online.
Filed under: Communities Online | 4 Comments
Tags: community, peter willis, shouting
I agree that the use of capitals online is acceptable in some instances (usually for emphasis). This is mainly because I find the alternatives a lot less effective. Bolding can be construed as (on forums in particular) a hyperlink, and looks rather untidy to the reader. Another alternative is italics, which is the proper form that would be used in a formal letter/e-mail or when writing a book. However, it is sometimes hard to distinguish italics from normal text if the text size is quite small, therefore I find it less effective when trying to emphasize a point/word in a sentence. I tend to use italics as often as possible when online, mainly in order to be writing in a grammatically correct manner. However, the use of capitals for emphasis is in much wider use so the emphasis isn’t registered with everyone.
In my opinion, it depends on what type of discussion you are having. If you are using capitals in a general discussion (online), then I would perceive this as someone just stressing (emphasising) on a word. The person is just trying to point out what the key word of the sentence is.
On the other hand, when someone is using crude language to construct sentences, while also using capital languages, I can understand why some people may perceive this as shouting.
In my point of view, it all depends on what type of discussion you are having and what type of language is bing used.
Hi,
Good to see another Peter Willis doing well !
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Thanks
Peter Willis