I’m a big Volkswagen fan and love the cars they make. My family owns a lot of VW cars and I also have two older GTIs. I had run across a forum a while back when I was looking for a solution to a problem I was having with my car, and that forum was VWvortex. This site is primarily for VW enthusiasts but its forum has way more than just car talk. When I was checking out the forums I noticed how many different areas they had and especially how many threads were posted in each. For example, on this VW enthusiast site, it has forums for health and fitness, fashion and apparel, and hiking and outdoors. Besides the fact that there were so many different forums you could go to on this one site, I was impressed with the number of replies and views a lot of the posts were getting. It was common to see a post get over a 100 replies, even over a couple thousand, accompanied with hundreds of thousands of views. It’s not often that you see that kind of activity on a site primarily focused for cars. After experiencing all of this, I figured since I have to join a community anyway, I might as well choose this one and see how it is.
So after creating my account, I decided that I wanted to just post in the car section, mainly the VW area, because this was the area that I knew best and I could be the most active in. I found a thread where somebody was asking about a wiring issue, so I figured that would be a good place to start. I didn’t know much about his scenario, but I suggested a few things that I thought would work. He made a comment later in the day, responding to my post and a couple of other people’s posts, pretty much just saying thanks and that he figured it out. After that I just started browsing more of the forums. Most of the threads I viewed were pretty informal and everything for some reason just felt really relaxed. There weren’t really any people shouting, cussing, or starting flame wars. It was just people of similar interests talking about various things and helping each other out.
I guess I would say I was accepted into this community when other people began to respond to my post that I had made. They make you feel very welcome and it just seems like there are a lot of nice people in that forum. I didn’t see too many disagreements, but if somebody didn’t like something that another had said, they would just express their thoughts, but not in an overly offensive way. This way of thought is completely different from other communities I’ve been to, like Digg or 4chan, where most of the people there would just ridicule you and not care what you thought.
This community easily met all four of the qualities of a virtual community that were mentioned in Wood and Smith (128). You can see the number of posts each user has made on their account and from looking at the ones in the threads I visited, most of the people there are very active. Most have 100s of posts on their account and they had been signed up with the site for over a year. And considering there were so many posts in every forum, I’d say that there are a number of different people that visit this site everyday looking for something to talk about. Since the site has so many different forums you can go to, there’s practically a place for everybody. I didn’t go to all of the sub-forums since there are so many, but of the ones that I did visit, the people active in them seemed very open- minded and considerate. And like I already mentioned earlier, a lot of the people in these forums have been here for a year or longer, most likely creating a number of relationships with other members in the community.
February 19, 2009 at 7:41 pm
I had a similar experience with my online forum. I found it amazing that first off, there were so many sub-categories, and secondly, that so many people participated. But those surprises were nothing compared to how nice everyone was. It was as though I had stumbled across a utopia. Wouldn’t it be nice if the interactions we had face-to-face could always be as pleasant as the ones online? I too started posting by responding to a question. It seemed a good way to start. I wonder how many others did that as well.
February 19, 2009 at 10:24 pm
I find that the attitude and atmosphere of a forum really depends on the topic. Most car lovers are very passionate about their car of choice; some would say they even worship their car of choice which makes it easier to shift the direction of discussion to something which everyone is in approval of. I enjoy sports cars and mechanics as well and I find the forums are usually very laid back and informative. It’s a helpful atmosphere and everyone wishes to either preserve or promote their vehicle of choice, to preserve its legacy. The forums that I find that have some aggressive communication is on topics that can be controversial, like gun forums or any forums that have to do with competitions. These forums tend to get out of control and move into political or personal battles. However, in a online community as big as the one you explored I find it hard to find a sense of identity and voice among so many others unlike smaller groups which seem to be more tightly knit and tend to have more seasoned personalities online.