Chapter 4

Virtual Community

The virtual community is one of the new ways of interaction that has been made possible
by the Internet. The traditional definition of a community is of geographically bounded entity
(neighbourhoods, villages, etc.). A virtual community is “a social network of individuals” who
interacts through specific social media, crossing geographical boundaries in order to pursue mutual
interests. Virtual communities are not based on face-to-face interaction and are formulated entirely
through ICTs
. Some examples of virtual communities
 Blogs and Vlogs
 Forums,
 Chat rooms,
 Social networking sites (e.g. Facebook),
 Virtual worlds
 Wikis

What is a Blog?

A blog (shortening of “weblog”) is an online journal or informational website displaying

information in the reverse chronological order, with the latest posts appearing first. It is a platform
where a writer or even a group of writers share their views on an individual subject. the main
purpose of a blog is to connect you to the relevant audience. Blog owners update their blog posts
on a regular basis. Blogs need frequent updates. Blogs range from the personal to the political, and
can focus on one narrow subject or a whole range of subjects. Many blogs focus on a particular
topic, such as web design, home staging, sports, or mobile technology. Some are more eclectic,
presenting links to all types of other sites. And others are more like personal journals, presenting
the author’s daily life and thoughts. Most blogs have a method to allow visitors to leave comments.
A blogger is a person who owns or runs a blog or a person who maintains the blog.

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Good examples include a food blog sharing meal recipes or a company writing about their industry
news.

Like any other form of Blogging, video blogging (vlog) is done with the help of videos. You either
self-host your video or use free services like YouTube, Vimeo to host your videos. Like a normal
blog, your video will be visible to public and they can rate, comment and share your videos. Only
big difference is videos will be used to share the information instead of text. Video blogs are more
interactive and descriptive. With the correct use of visual affects you can teach your audience in a
better way. Video blogging enhances your persuasion ability and chances of increasing conversion
rate increases. Vlog category is popular on the video-sharing platform YouTube.

Forums

An Internet forum, or is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form
of posted messages. Forums are designed to build online communities of people with similar
interests. Also known as a "discussion group", "board" or "newsgroup", a forum is an
asynchronous service where you can send non-direct messages with other members. The other
members reply on their own schedule, and do not need to be present while you are sending.

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Chat room

An online place where a group of people can get together and chat about a particular subject
or just to chat. Usually you will need to sign in at least so you have a name in the room and then
you can see who else is in the room. Some chat rooms allow you to talk to one individual without
the others seeing your conversation.
Chat rooms and forums are both methods to communicate with other people over the
Internet, but are used in different ways. Whereas chat rooms allow you to communicate with
people in real time, forums are more suited for discussions where not all participants have to be
online at the same time. Forums also tend to be more organized, with discussions separated into
topics called "threads," which are moderated.
Chat rooms are a synchronous method of online communication, meaning that
conversations occur in real time with all the participants logged in and present.
Forums tend to be asynchronous, as not all participants are always online and discussions occur at
a much slower pace.
• Visitors to a forum can log in hours or even days after a discussion has started and still
catch up by reading previous posts. This is not possible in a chat conversation, as
conversations take place at a much faster pace.

• One of the powerful software that enables users to communicate via internet chat, voice
and video chat is Paltalk

Social Networking Sites

Social networking services are the most famous type of virtual community. Are an online
platform used by people to build social networks or social relations with other people who share
similar personal or career interests, activities, backgrounds or real-life connections. They allow
users to share (various resources) ideas, digital photos and videos, posts, and inform others about
online or real world activities and events with people in their network.

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 Popular Social Media Sites

1. FACEBOOK

This is easily the largest social networking site in the world and one of the most widely used, one
can upload photos and videos, chat, make friends, reconnect with old ones, and join groups or
causes. Apart from the ability to network with friends and relatives, you can also access different
Facebook apps to sell online and you can even market or promote your business, brand and
products by using paid Facebook ads.
2. WHATSAPP

This is an instant messaging platform. It has been able to capture the imagination of millions of
people across the world by giving them the ability to communicate and share instantly with
individuals and groups.

3. INSTAGRAM

Instagram is a social networking platform completely based on sharing photos and videos. This
photo sharing social networking app enables anyone to apply multiple filters to photos and easily
post them to other popular social networking sites, such as Facebook.

4. TWITTER

This social networking site enables you to post short text messages (called tweets), containing a
limited number of characters (up to 140), to convey your message to the world. Twitter makes
possible to promote your businesses and even shop directly through tweets.

5. LinkedIn

It is one of the most popular professional social networking sites or apps and is available in over
20 languages. It is used across the globe by all types of professionals and serves as an ideal
platform to connect with different businesses, locate and hire ideal candidates, and more.

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Virtual Worlds

They are computer-generated environments having some similarity to the physical world, in which
humans are represented by avatar (An icon or figure representing a particular person in a video
game, Internet forum, etc.), and simultaneously and independently explore the virtual world,
participate in its activities and communicate with others.
Users create their own avatar characters and control their character's life and interactions with
other characters in the 3-D virtual world. The avatars that users create are like humans. Users can
choose to make avatars like themselves, or take on an entirely different personality than them. A
virtual world simply gives users the opportunity to build and operate a fantasy life in the virtual
land. Characters within the world can talk to one another and have almost the same interactions
people would have in reality. In general, virtual worlds allow for multiple users. Examples: Second
Life, Active, Worlds.

Wikis

They are websites that provide collaborative modification of their content and structure directly
from the web browser. A wiki is a web application run using wiki software which allows people
to add, modify, or delete content in collaboration with others.
Almost all wikis keep track of changes. Older versions of a page can be viewed and, if
necessary, restored. Most wikis include a page where recent changes are listed. This feature helps
members of the wiki community to keep up to date with changes in content, and can help
newcomers get a quick feel for the current concerns of the wiki community. Increasingly, wiki
software is integrated with e-mail notification to alert users to changes without their having to
enter the wiki itself. There are many examples of wikis such as wikianswers, wikihow, wikitravel,
wikinews. The encyclopaedia project Wikipedia is the most popular wiki on the public web in
terms of page views.
Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger want to build an online free encyclopedia that can be edited by
everyone having access to the Internet. Wikipedia is available free of charge and free of
advertising, to anyone. It is written collaboratively by volunteers. It is currently the largest, fastest-
growing, and most popular “general reference work” on the Internet. Wikipedia started in 2001
and quickly became one of the top-ten destinations on the web built by volunteers. The project is

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operated by the non-profit charitable Wikimedia Foundation. There are over 292 language versions
of Wikipedia: English is the largest one in terms of number of articles. All share the interest in
producing voluntarily “open encyclopedia knowledge”. Due to cooperation, knowledge emerges
that is more than the sum of the knowledge of the contributors. Scholars termed the new quality
of such emergent knowledge systems “Collective Intelligence”.
Article creation is the process by which new articles are started, titled, formed, categorized, and
developed. A Wikipedia article is not created all at once. Articles grow, edit by edit, often by many
different authors in collaboration. One contributor may start the article, another may add more text
and yet another may reorganize it to make it easier to read. No article is considered to be owned
by its creator or any other editor, nor is it examined by any recognized authority. Instead, editors
are supposed to agree on the content and structure of articles by consensus. By default, an edit to
an article immediately becomes available. Articles therefore may contain inaccuracies, ideological
biases, or even clear nonsense until or unless another editor corrects them.
Each article has Talk Page, Page History and A watch list

Talk page: is a discussion page associated with each user page. They help coordinate work among
multiple editors. Editors may use the "Talk" page to reach consensus, sometimes through the use
of polling.
The History page of each article records revisions made on it. Different versions can be compared,
and it just takes one click to restore an older version. Editors can use this page to undo undesirable
changes or restore lost content.
Wikipedians can add articles to their watch lists to monitor how they change, so that they can make
new modifications to the articles if needed.
Contributors (Wikipedians)

It is argued that only "a community ... a dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers" makes the
bulk of contributions to Wikipedia,
Registered contributor: users who edit through an account and whose accounts have been
confirmed (any account is automatically confirmed if it is at least 4 days old and has made at least
10 edits). They can create pages.

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Unregistered contributor: Contributors who have not registered account, they are identified by
their IP address rather than a user name. They may read all Wikipedia pages, and edit pages that
are not protected. They cannot upload files or images

Admins: “Administrator", are a group of users who have the ability to delete pages, lock articles
from being changed in case of vandalism and block users from editing. Administrators are not
supposed to enjoy any special privilege in decision-making.

Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people of similar skills to the
producers of the work. It is a way to receive ideas and feedback from other editors about articles.
In academia, peer review methods are employed to maintain standards of quality, improve
performance, and provide credibility. Scholarly peer review (uniformly peer review) is often used
to determine an academic paper's suitability for publication.
Wikipedia is not peer reviewed; while readers may correct errors or engage in casual peer
review no legal duty to do so and thus all information are without any implied warranty of fitness
for any purpose or use at all. Even articles that have been evaluated by informal peer review
processes may later have been edited inappropriately, just before you view them.
Wikipedia policies determine the quality of material acceptable in articles. these policies work in
harmony.
Verifiability means that people reading and editing the encyclopedia can check that the information
comes from a reliable source. Its content is determined by published information rather than the
beliefs or experiences of its editors. Verifiability principle expresses the idea that the readers, not
the encyclopedia, are ultimately responsible for checking the truthfulness of the articles.
Not entirely Open: Wikipedia allows editing except in: Particularly sensitive and/or And
Vandalism-prone [Link] include: Controversial subjects ( Nazi-Germany; Race relation;
Catalonia…) Religious topics. These topics are "protected" to some degree.

Vandalism: Any edit that changes content in a way that purposely compromises the integrity of
Wikipedia is considered vandalism. (Vandalism is the main enemy of Wikipedia) Types of
vandalism include rudeness, advertising language, blanking a given page. Obvious vandalism is
generally easy to remove from wiki articles. In practice, the median time to detect and fix
vandalism is a few minutes.

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Types of Protection

Full protection: prevents editing by everyone except administrators.

Semi-protection prevents editing by unregistered contributors and contributors with accounts that
are not confirmed.
Pending-changes protection means edits by unregistered and new contributors are not visible to
readers who are not logged in, until the edits are approved by a reviewer or administrator.

Virtual Currency:

Virtual currency (also known as digital currency or Cryptocurrency) is an electronic

currency that acts as an alternative currency that is neither government-funded nor backed by
national currency. Virtual currencies allow you to make transactions with real good and services,
and does not limit you to just the online world.
Crypto refers to a particular digital code to be generated, stored, and transacted securely
and, typically, anonymously. A defining feature of a virtual currency, is that it is not issued by any
central authority, so theoretically governments cannot intervene in its circulation or supply.
Virtual currency make the transfer of funds between two parties easier. Fund transfers are
done with minimal processing fees, allowing users to avoid the fees charged by most banks and
financial institutions for transfers.
Virtual currency networks can be seen as a decentralized peer-to-peer payment network
that is powered by its users with no central authority or middlemen. However, because virtual
currencies do not have a central repository, a digital cryptocurrency balance can be wiped out by
a computer crash if a backup copy of the holdings does not exist.
Since prices are based on supply and demand, the rate at which a cryptocurrency can be
exchanged for another currency can fluctuate widely.
Cryptocurrencies are not immune to the threat of hacking. In Bitcoin's short history, the
company has been subject to over 40 thefts, including a few that exceeded $1 million in value.
Still, many observers look at cryptocurrencies as hope that a currency can exist that preserves
value, facilitates exchange, is more transportable than hard metals, and is outside the influence of
central banks and governments.

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 The first cryptocurrency to capture the public attention was Bitcoin. Bitcoin was launched
in 2009 by an individual or group known under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto. To date it is unclear
if he or she is a single person, or if the name is used by a group. What is known is that Satoshi
Nakamoto published a paper in 2008 that started the development of cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is
created and regulated by a network of thousands of computers (known as peers) using encryption
techniques.
The paper, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”, described the use of a peer-to-peer
network as a solution to the problem of double-spending. As of September 2015, there were over
14.6 million Bitcoins in circulation with a total market value of $3.4 billion, by the end of
2018 Bitcoins in circulation reached 17.45 million. The problem of double spending is never faced
with physical currencies since a physical bill or coin can, by its nature, only exist in one place at a
single time. Since a digital currency does not exist in the physical space, using it in a transaction
does not remove it from someone’s possession, at least not immediately. The problem of a digital
currency that it may be used in more than one transaction (double spending). The paper, “Bitcoin:
A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”, described the use of a peer-to-peer network as a solution
to the problem of double-spending.
The statistic presents the total number of Bitcoins in circulation from first quarter of 2011 to fourth
quarter of 2018. The number of Bitcoins has been growing since the creation of this virtual
currency in 2009 and reached approximately 17.45 million in December 2018. Only less than 4
million left to 'mine' from the 21 million Bitcoins that will ever exist.
Just as gold miners produce the world’s supply of gold, so do bitcoin miners produce all
the digital currency available to the market. The miners are people using special software to solve
very difficult algorithms to Generate new Bitcoins (code) and Secure the transaction (verify bitcoin
transaction payments from one user to another). In return (creating new bitcoins, securing
transactions), they get rewarded with new bitcoins. There are a total of 21m bitcoins that can be
mined, unless Bitcoin’s protocol - the rules that secure the system - is changed to allow for a larger
supply.
Bitcoins are stored in a cryptowallet – which is a software application that stores private keys (code
that looks like a very long PIN) – is where all bitcoins are stored. To secure bitcoin transactions,
Nakamoto proposed a decentralized approach, that lead to the creation of Bitcoin blockchains.

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 Bitcoin Blockchain is a series of blocks whose entries are the bitcoin transactions. As the
number of transactions increase, the size of bitcoin blockchain increases. The Bitcoin blockchain
operates like a digital ledger of transactions. Just like regular businesses that keep a record of
money coming in and going out, users of the crypto-currency need to record all bitcoin
transactions. The difference is that the blockchain is a decentralized and distributed, open-access
ledger whose records are verifiable by the network of peers. Everybody (within bitcoin
community) can view past transactions, but nobody can alter them without having the consent of
the majority. The blockchain records are kept secure because the amount of computational power
required to reverse them discourages small scale attacks.
Recent reports points to the high energy cost associated with mining, the process used to create
Bitcoin. As of 5 December 2017, bitcoin’s estimated annual electricity consumption was 0.14% of
the world’s total electricity consumption. That’s about the same as Serbia!!!
References

 Buhrmann C. H., (2003), " Virtual communities: implications for companies" SA Journal
of Information Management; Vol 5, No 4, . doi: 10.4102/sajim.v5i4.383

 Kolbitsch, J., Maurer, H., (2006), "The Transformation of the Web: How Emerging
Communities Shape the Information We Consume" Journal of Universal Computer
Science 12(2), 187–213.

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