8.1 1 - The challenges and difficulties in providing community service.

Although most respondents were enthusiastic and excited by their involvement with their local community network, many expressed a great deal of concern over the future of their group. In fact, rethinking and reorganizing group priorities appears to be an increasingly common activity with many community networks. Such soul-searching and re-evaluation of goals is also becoming quite common on many of the online mailing lists, both Canadian and American, that deal with community nets. This rethinking is frequently attributed to the need to reposition community networks as they move from the initial startup phases to becoming more established organizations and presences.

A large part of this re-evaluation of organizations stems from frustration in certain areas, particularly those in which community networks have encountered significant resistance. Sometimes these problems are economic or political in nature, (ie.: largely external factors) and sometimes they are more internal, related to the very structure of the organizations concerned.

8.1.1 Funding.

Funding is probably the most self-evident problem faced by community networks today. Like most non-profit organizations, community networks are constantly in a struggle to find new and sustainable forms of income. Early on it was possible to rely on seed money from charitable foundations, private corporations and government sources. All of the community networks examined, in fact, received significant startup funds from all three sources.

However all respondents indicated problems in sustaining cash flows within their organizations. Some relied on mandatory user fees (with provisos for individuals on low incomes) and found that that was satisfactory to keep above water. Others were trying to avoid this route for ideological reasons, with mixed results. The question of whether community networks in general will be sustainable in the long-term still remains unanswered. Regardless, the pressing need for ongoing funding remains an ever-present and draining reality for community networks.

8.1.2 Motivating community groups.

Many respondents reported that it was often difficult to motivate local non-profit community service organizations and groups to participate by, at the very least, putting information up on the community network.

Several reasons for this were suggested by respondents. One possibility was that, despite the mass media appeal of the Internet and growing awareness of computer networking technology by the general public, the field is still often viewed with indifference or even suspicion by many people involved with community groups. As one respondent involved with community organizing at a neighbourhood level noted, "Most of the (community group) organizers that I know are not Internet people. Community for them is face to face. It's social. Their ideal would be what happens in Central America or in local (Vancouver) churches; a close-knit community. It's not sitting around staring at a computer screen."

Of course it is this deep chasm between the virtual and the real that many community networks are trying to bridge. However, by placing such a heavy emphasis on CMC, community networks may be failing realistically to address community organizations' needs. Another respondent commented that "I don't know if FreeNets, because they concentrate so much on the Internet, understand the importance of the other means of communication (eg.: telephone, fax, face-to-face meetings) and how those affect community groups." Another respondent said "I think (community networks) can only be an ancillary to local community-building. It's not the primary tool. The primary tool in the local community will always be face to face. And frankly, I find that a positive rather than a negative!"

The marketing of computer technology may have another unexpected negative consequence. One respondent mentioned that in her community outreach efforts she was encountering the belief that one needs an expensive multimedia computer costing several thousand dollars in order to do anything useful and thus any form of CMC was well out of the reach of struggling non-profit groups. The flashy advertising of computer firms desperate to sell more high-margin hardware laden with excitingly expensive optional extras would seem to suggest that it is an absolute necessity to have such big-ticket equipment just to get online. According to this respondent many community groups were unaware that adequate basic access to electronic mail, Usenet discussion areas and text-only Web browsing was possible through a $50 second-hand home computer and a $10 modem.

Another possible reason cited for this reluctance to get connected was that many organizations, struggling with the day to day burden of keeping a non-profit group afloat, just do not consider working with community networks a high priority and thus never get around to it. It simply does not seem worth their while to put information online when only a small minority of their audience has access to the technology on a daily basis anyway. Several respondents reported that many groups that they contacted frankly did not believe that their organization would benefit at all by having their material posted on a community network and that they were doing a perfectly respectable job already in reaching out to their target audience. Another respondent, trying to convince a local women's shelter to install a public access terminal, found that the response was "if we could afford another phone line in here it'd be used for women without phones to make calls, not used by some computer."

In some ways community networks can be seen as being a little bit ahead of their time. It may be almost inevitable that some form of CMC system, whether along the Internet model or some other model, will form the backbone of most non-personal interactions in the future, the way the telephone system is today. When that occurs then even smaller community organizations will have to have some form of online connectivity as a matter of survival just as they need telephones and fax machines now. But until that time computer nets may often be seen as just the playground of computer nerds or the wealthy. Schuler notes that "It is important to realize that current on-line systems offer very little for the economically disadvantaged. It will be necessary to provide services that are genuinely useful for people who aren't being served." (Schuler, 1995.)

It seems likely that something of a chicken or egg situation may exist in this avoidance of computer networks by many ostensible beneficiaries. Some form of low-level public access to community networks is often available through public libraries to even disadvantaged individuals, but they may not spend the energy learning how to use the systems if they believe that there is no material there that might be of benefit to them. But there is such a lack of material in part because those organizations involved in its dissemination may feel that they lack a large enough percentage of their audience online. People are far more likely to use a service that they see as being directly beneficial to them in some way. The most popular IP (information provider) Web page on the Vancouver CommunityNet by far at the time of writing is the government-sponsored Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) job bank page, which lists employment opportunities.

Whatever the reasons for this difficulty in getting non-profit groups connected to community networks, the result is that many volunteers in the area of coordinating community information content reported a high level of frustration and burnout.

8.1.3 Questions of scale and geography.

The community networks operating at an urban scale faced the particularly difficult challenge of the ambitious scope of their projects. For example, the Vancouver CommunityNet (VCN) is the only community network for the entire Lower Mainland of British Columbia, a population of some 1.7 million people. Not only is there an issue with this enormous population base, but the region spans several large and historically independent municipalities, including Vancouver, Burnaby, North Vancouver, West Vancouver, Surrey, Richmond and New Westminster.

The political difficulties of dealing with such a large area and the disparate municipalities within it seem likely to pose significant problems for even well-funded and organized institutions and have certainly hampered the VCN's efforts. One respondent, formerly involved with the Vancouver CommunityNet, lamented the difficulty in getting any form of cooperation from local government. There are sometimes quite pronounced political rivalries between these municipalities, which makes building an organization like the CommunityNet, intended in part to bring communities in the entire region together, quite difficult. Another respondent suggested:

Perhaps (organizing the community network) was difficult because of the vast political structure of the Lower Mainland. In some jurisdictions organizing a community network may have been easier because there was a single local government.

More important than the political issues with municipalities is the ambitious nature of the VCN's scope itself. Most writers looking at the idea of enhancing local communities stress the necessity for work at a small-scale, localized level. Trying, therefore, to build a sense of local community at such a regional scale would seem to be a particularly Herculean, an impossibly absurd, task. At least one respondent, from a rural community network, offered the view that working at this large scale requires that a group take on some form of corporate organization, and that small-scale human contact is inevitably lost as a result. Despite the notion that CMC inherently abolishes barriers of space and time it seems that, in the field of community networking at least, questions of space and scale are still of great importance.

8.1.4 Involving the community.

Involving the community was cited by most respondents as being of key importance, but there were different views as to the difficulty involved in bringing people together. Respondents' opinions were generally connected to the successes or failures of the organization with which they were involved. Some, such as Ottawa's NCF, had attained a large enough size, a kind of critical mass, to attract large numbers of participants through sheer momentum in addition to regular public demonstrations and other awareness-raising sessions. Others, generally in smaller communities, reported good success in bringing people in their towns together. And others, such as Vancouver, noted great difficulty in generating community involvement.

The NCF has some 600 local special interest group (SIG) discussion areas online. Admittedly a large number of these SIGs are dormant or inactive, but they nevertheless represent a large body of people involved in the use of online newsgroups. One of the main barriers cited to the success of these SIGs was system congestion. Like most community networks the NCF's telephone lines are taxed to the limit, and constant busy signals are a regular user complaint. Many people have taken to using a commercial ISP for dialup, and then telnetting (connecting directly to the NCF from their commercial ISP) over the Internet. The fact that they are doing so rather than accessing other services on the Internet is testimony to the popularity of the SIGs and other NCF-specific services, but unfortunately it also means that the NCF's computer hardware is having to deal with a very heavy system load.

According to two respondents there have been repeated calls by users on the Ottawa system to export the most popular SIG newsgroups to academic and commercial servers in the Ottawa region, thereby distributing the load over the Internet rather than on the overstressed NCF hardware. This was rejected by the NCF board, however, on the grounds that local SIGs are a critical component of the NCF and thus an important aspect of the service's long-term survival. Exporting the SIGs would, therefore, diminish the unique character of the NCF.

Other community networks have tried to involve the community on a more active basis. Vancouver, for example, has an Equal Access committee charged with reaching out to underprivileged sections of the community underrepresented on online systems. Its mandate is to involve more women, disabled people, visible minorities including the aboriginal community, and so on. Unfortunately Vancouver has not been as successful as the NCF and other community networks in attracting the same kind of participation, according to respondents interviewed.

The reasons cited by respondents were not generally connected with the existence of the Equal Access committee. Theories offered tended to stress that the participation problems occurred despite the committee's efforts. A major area of concern was related to the fact that the Vancouver CommunityNet has only 33 incoming data phone lines at time of writing. This is hopelessly inadequate to meet user demand. At least 200 to 300 telephone lines would be needed to begin to approach a reasonable user to phone line ratio, according to estimates given by respondents.

This limited number of telephone lines was a direct result of high phone line pricing. Earlier on the VCN was able to use a phone line switching technology known as Centrex through an agreement with the Vancouver Public Library. This resulted in phone line costs of approximately $30 per line per month. In the summer of 1995, however, BCTel announced that it was no longer permitting modems to be attached to Centrex lines, for complex regulatory and technical reasons. Almost overnight the VCN's telephone line rates tripled. At nearly $100 per line per month, a figure that includes federal taxes, Vancouver's community network is paying among the highest phone line rates of any community network in the country. By comparison the NCF was paying $25 per line per month during its early days, owing to lower overall phone pricing and assistance from the provincial government.

This telephone line access problem is significant. Constant busy signals are a sure way of discouraging potential users. Even the most dedicated supporter of the system is likely to feel a little frustrated at having their modem redial the phone several dozen times to get in to the CommunityNet. As a result of this access bottleneck usage rates of the VCN's hardware are quite low compared to other community networks in urban areas. Only 40-50 people are online simultaneously during peak periods, compared with roughly 200 individuals with the NCF and its 130 telephone lines.

Access problems were thus one reason cited for poor user participation rates. Few people were able to get onto the system at any given time, and as a result no critical mass of user-oriented information has built up. Users on other systems with fewer busy signals therefore have fewer reasons to telnet to the VCN.

Another important reason for the VCN's largely unsuccessful attempts at community involvement point to organizational problems. The VCN, like most older CommunityNets in Canada, chose to use the Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) FreePort software as its menu system front end. However, writing menu pages for FreePort does involve the mastery of somewhat cryptic commands that are based on an understanding of the underlying UNIX system software. Early organizers decided that the difficulty of formatting information content for use with the FreePort system would be a significant barrier to participation by community organizations.

In response to this concern the VCN decided to implement a system of volunteer liaisons. Each liaison would work with interested community groups in getting material up on the system. There were also ambitious attempts in the early days to write easy to use software programs to facilitate this process, but these attempts were unsuccessful and some partly-finished prototypes were all that resulted.

Nevertheless the VCN continued with its liaison model. Unfortunately this placed a significant burden on these volunteers, who soon burned out, usually for the reasons cited earlier in connection with the difficulty in motivating community group participation. Without an adequate number of liaisons, and without any means for encouraging community groups to build their own menu pages, the system ground to a halt. This, coupled with intense concerns on the part of the system administrators over system security, led to a situation in which only two or three overworked volunteers had permission to put material onto the system at all. Thus the well-meaning attempt to simplify the work of community groups resulted in a system with little local information content. Similar problems prevented the formation of any SIGs on the Vancouver system. And, once again, without a large base of locally-oriented material there was little incentive for participation from the broader community.

In the past year the CommunityNet has attempted to rectify this problem of little local content by focusing on the provision of World Wide Web page hosting. The Web, unlike FreePort, is a very popular and open system. There are easy to use tools to automate the Web page creation process, and many people are skilled in using HTML, the Hypertext Markup Language that underpins the Web. By moving away from the primitive and archaic FreePort software in favour of the Web, by encouraging community groups to develop their own information content and by giving those groups access to modify their own files directly the VCN has had some modest success in catching up and improving its paucity of local material.

One respondent noted that the best way to involve community groups is to give them access to the system in a fashion that also gives them a sense of ownership. Users must have control over their own information content. If intermediaries are involved in the system unnecessarily, people seem to lose interest in the process, as they no longer feel like active participants.

At the same time, community networks can play an important supporting role by providing training or the opportunity for users to help each other. Helping to promote an informal support network of volunteers is perhaps one of the more valuable contributions a community network can make.

8.1.5 Meeting community needs.

It may seem a self-evident consideration but several respondents said that they felt that their organization had not adequately considered the needs of the community prior to launching their system. The excitement of providing a new computer-based service may have obscured the need to evaluate what is likely to succeed and what is not. One respondent commented that "We were just assuming that people would get on board because it was new and different."

Part of this problem may lie with the notion that Ottawa and Victoria, the pioneers of the Canadian networking scene, set certain expectations that were simply unrealistic for other localities. For instance, neither Ottawa nor Victoria had a commercial ISP market at the time of their respective launches. Aside from individuals at universities and some research firms and some hobbyists relatively few people had any form of Internet access in those early days. Part of the initial drive that pushed the first community networks forward was from early adopters keen to gain access to the world of the Internet. This early base, according to respondents, helped give the systems a stable user base from which they could expand into the non-computer user community.

By contrast Vancouver, for example, had a well developed ISP market by the time the Vancouver CommunityNet came online in late 1994. Mind Link, a local bulletin board service that grew into an ISP, and Wimsey, a service aimed at business users and sophisticated hobbyists, had already acquired the early adopter market. Both formerly independent firms were swallowed up by East Coast giant I*Star Internet in late 1995. The CommunityNet, then known as the FreeNet, offered fewer services than either commercial ISP and had hardly any dialup modem lines, which meant that no early users of Internet considered it seriously. In those days some commercial operators fiercely opposed any form of government support for the fledgling community network on the grounds that doing so would represent unfair competition to the small homegrown businesses that sold Internet connectivity. In fact, the reverse appears to have been the case-the commercial providers seriously undermined any success the community network could have attained simply by being there first.

Additionally, the VCN in its early days did not manage to implement a successful community outreach program to involve other community organizations. One respondent from Vancouver put it quite strongly, saying "One thing we were a failure at, which is really too bad, is the community access stuff. Getting groups on the system, for instance." By not encouraging local groups to host their own material, and thus failing to build up a content base of community information, the VCN simply ended up providing email and Usenet news services to individuals who could not afford - or did not want to pay for - a commercial service. As a result there was not enough to differentiate the community network from commercial operations, except overall service quality was somewhat lower owing to telephone line restrictions.

Not all community networks encountered such problems, however. Campbell River's community network focused on local information from the outset. They recognized early on an important community need - the lack of a daily newspaper in which the community could learn about local events - and attempted to focus on this issue by making local information available online. They worked with the local volunteer centre to update their material and hosted useful directories of community groups in the region.

Unlike urban community networks, Campbell River has a strong economic development focus as well. Larger community networks generally prohibit any form of commercial content aside from advertising in the form of recognizing official sponsors. Campbell River, however, encourages local businesses to advertise on their system, so long as that advertising is directed at the immediate community. In addition to hosting actual commercial information respondents from the smaller networks also expressed a desire to promote their communities at a wider scale, much as their local chamber of commerce does. For example, Bev Collins of the Powell River Community Network (PRCN) writes that the PRCN is "a very valuable tool for economic development - Chamber of Commerce - tourism and business. We have had instances of people relocating to Powell River based on the information they have found on our Web site." (Bev Collins, personal communication, 1996.)

8.2 II - Rural and Urban Community Networks.

8.2.1 Successes of smaller community networks.

The energy and enthusiasm of many of the individuals involved in smaller organizations was almost palpable. Respondents were highly optimistic about the work of their organization, and enthused about the possibilities for their organization in the future. Most respondents interviewed had been involved with their community network since the formative stages, and were still very much involved on a daily basis.

In addition to the importance of this tight core of volunteers, respondents also emphasized the way they worked to bring people into the organization. Several smaller organizations reported that they held regular (usually monthly) meetings open to the public, rather than holding in-camera board meetings.

The Mount Arrowsmith Community Network, (MACN) for example, holds public meetings each month in the computer lab of a local school. The meeting is a time both for discussion about the work being done on the system and also a hands-on learning and training session. People have the opportunity to sit in front of one of the lab computers, connect to the community network and teach each other how to use the facility. Experienced users and long-time volunteers roam the room, trading tips and helping beginners get started. MACN respondents also noted that the meetings, which usually attract some 50 or so people each time, have a healthy mix of regular stalwart volunteers and newcomers; in other words the meetings do not involve the same faces over and over.

There is thus an important social dimension to these meetings. The Parksville / Qualicum region served by the MACN has a large population of retired people, and MACN respondents mentioned that the community network meetings served as a kind of social club for many users of the system. Other respondents identified this as important. As one person involved with community organizing said, "You have to have fun. Otherwise it's like having the boss of the corporation with a group of salesmen saying they have to go out and sell more cars; that's no fun at all. You've got to have time for socializing; occasionally getting together and not having a work-related meeting." Interviewees also felt that holding regular informal meetings was very important to help connect faces and user IDs. Without that essential human dimension, it is all too easy to reduce human contact to words glowing coldly on the surface of a computer screen.

System planning was another area in which MACN respondents said that they tried to draw in as many views as possible. Rather than having a small group of programmers design and implement their main menu structure they deliberately attempted to open up the planning process by holding public sessions at their meetings. After an initial research phase, in which key volunteers examined the menu systems used by other community networks, a general brainstorming session was called. Volunteers were asked to throw ideas out to the group, and suggestions were written down on large sheets of paper. The design process was thus user-driven rather than designer-driven. In fact, this process can be seen as being similar to the participatory design process developed in Scandinavia and championed in the US by organizations such as Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.

8.2.2 Problems in rural communities.

It should be noted that the community networks studied were those which had achieved some measure of success, and that this should be taken into account in an examination of rural/urban issues in the field of community networking. It is apparent that many small community networks and community net organizing committees, particularly those in remote and mountainous parts of British Columbia, face enormous difficulties in getting online, simply because of the technical problems concerned.

In July of 1996 John Grogan, president of a small rural organizing committee in the small town of Valemount BC, (a town in the Rockies, close to Jasper, Alberta) posted a despairing plea for help to the Telecommunities Canada mailing list. All his attempts to secure a basic network connection to his community had resulted in a string of broken promises. "Just about volunteered-out!" he concluded.

One respondent, with a great deal of experience in telecommunications issues in remote areas, commented that many smaller communities, even those which were the successful recipients of federal cap funding, would never be able to get online. How, he asked rhetorically, can a community without access to reliable electricity expect to get on the Internet?

The respondent was also critical of the federal plan to promote digital satellite dishes to rural areas, calling them "one-armed bandits." His main criticism was the expense involved in operating such a dish. The technology is unidirectional in nature - users must place long-distance phone calls to send data the other way. The cost of these long-distance calls, in conjunction with the per-kilobit transmission rates of the satellite uplink technology, soon becomes prohibitively expensive.

These difficulties, the respondent continued, represent problems in more ways than one. There can easily be unrealistic expectations in a community about the difficulty in building a community network, and that the service will arrive soon. "And when it doesn't people not only sour on the fact that you're incompetent but they also sour on the concept that you're pushing - the idea that putting community resources together and sharing bandwidth and providing affordable connectivity isn't doable in that community."

8.2.3 Difficulties with larger community networks.

Respondents from larger community networks did not report the same level of user participation as their small-town and rural counterparts. There was, in fact, a good deal of discontent expressed by some respondents that their organizations were becoming bureaucratic, hierarchically stratified and ossified. Some respondents expressed the view that the organizational structure of these larger community networks is itself a serious obstacle to increased community participation. Interviewees were, on the whole, much less enthusiastic than those from smaller community networks, and a great deal of volunteer burnout was cited.

The larger organizations have a fairly formalized structure, with a small elected board and a large informal group of volunteers organized into functional committees. At least three respondents stated that they felt this kind of arrangement was, consciously or unconsciously, an attempt to replicate traditional hierarchical power structures of government or business, and that this promoted a rigid, bureaucratic structure that actually discouraged the active participation of volunteers. Avis, in his study of the Chebucto Community Net in Halifax, reports similar dissatisfaction among volunteers, and a sense that the forming of small cliques discourages volunteer participation. (Avis, 1995.)

Poor communications between the fairly small and isolated board of individuals, responsible for the decision-making process, and the volunteers, responsible for implementing those decisions, was cited by several respondents as a source of great frustration. This problem manifested itself both in terms of board members feeling that their policy directions were being ignored and no work was being done and volunteers feeling that board members were simply going to meetings, passing motions, ordering volunteers around and not doing much else. This was in sharp contrast to most rural community networks. Respondents there often noted that they received a good deal of direct feedback from their users in local cafes or the post office.

In addition to problems in the vertical structure of the organization some of the same respondents commented that horizontal communications between committees was also a problem. This issue was described in terms of both uncooperative, territorial attitudes of committee chairs and a strong sense that volunteers in one committee had no idea what was being done in another. In fact, given that community networks are meant to be tools for enhancing discussions and communications, this latter was seen by some respondents as a particularly disappointing irony.

This kind of organizational difficulty was suggested by some of the individuals interviewed as being related to the high volunteer turnover rate of the larger organizations. Vancouver, for example, has just one current board member of 15 who was involved at the earliest stages. By contrast Campbell River's founders are still the key individuals behind the organization. One serious consequence of this highly transient nature of volunteer involvement is impaired development of any kind of long-term organizational memory. It becomes difficult to sustain a coherent and cohesive group vision if the volunteers of today are a different group from the volunteers of a few months ago.

For instance, unlike the popular monthly meetings held by MACN, the Vancouver CommunityNet has held just two social gatherings for all of its volunteers since it came online in September of 1994. Many volunteers with the organization express a sense of isolation and a feeling that they had no way of finding out what was happening in other parts of the organization.

This kind of problem with the slow growth of hierarchical structures does not appear to be unique to community networks. The Citizens Handbook, subtitled 'A Guide to building community in Vancouver' and published by the Vancouver Citizen's Committee, offers the view that "In an attempt to become legitimate, many small groups decide they need more structure. Unfortunately, this can lead to spending more time on the needs of the organization than on the reason for getting together." It adds that "Grassroots organizations seem to work better with a flat structure as free as possible of boards, directors, and chairs." (Dobson, 1995, p. 47.)

It should be noted that not all respondents shared this view of hierarchical organization as inherently problematic, however. Some respondents felt that hierarchies were a good working model for large organizations like many community networks if administered properly. They also felt that many volunteers were happy to work in such structures, as it implied a certain degree of guidance, leadership and direction for the volunteers' efforts.

Nevertheless, this contrast between smaller organizations in smaller communities and the larger community networks in big urban centres may simply be an inevitable and unfortunate consequence of the social dynamics of population size. Some form of organization is necessary, for example, to satisfy the requirements of provincial governments if an organization wants to be registered as an official non-profit society. Similar concessions may need to be made by a group in order to be eligible for funding from government, foundations and grant agencies. The question of who can speak publicly for an organization and who cannot is of great importance, especially in terms of media relations. There is always the need to strike a balance between those rules designed to restrain loose cannons and those which discourage other volunteers for speaking freely. And as large organizations grow there is increasing pressure to hire staff in order to meet the demands of users.

8.2.4 Staffing of organizations.

The hiring of staff is an important turning point in the life of any non-profit organization, as certain inescapable financial commitments then come into effect. In addition, the presence of paid staff can result in tensions in a volunteer organization. In an examination of the transformation of worker-owned collectives, Katherine Newman notes that "Structural differences between . . . volunteers and the full-time staff emerged very gradually, but eventually succeeded in undermining the egalitarian process of decision making that had obtained prior to the development of external financial dependencies. Serious conflicts developed between the prevailing ideological commitment to egalitarianism and the actual practice of decision making that was beginning to emerge at this stage in the 'life cycle' of the collectives." (Newman, 1980.) Similar issues can be seen in the non-profit volunteer organizations that run community networks.

In addition to ideological conflicts one respondent from a community network that had hired full-time staff reported that tensions resulted from personality issues that stemmed from the hirings themselves. According to the respondent there was some resentment from some long-time volunteers when they were not hired by the organization, even though they were not entirely suited for the positions.

Respondents in smaller communities expressed the opinion that problems resulting from organization size was an unavoidable problem faced by larger groups. A common theme reported by interviewees in rural areas or small towns was that their small size was a significant factor in their favour in terms of organizing a working group of volunteers. They were able to get things done in large part because the small size of their catchment area meant they knew with whom to talk and people were pleased to work together. Although parenthetically one respondent with a small community noted a disadvantage to this sort of 'everyone knows you' factor; technical volunteers found it frustrating to receive several phone calls an evening from local users wanting help.

Small community respondents also expressed a good deal of pride in the friendliness and cooperative spirit of their community compared to what they saw as being the indifferent or even hostile anomie of the big city, though this may have reflected personal opinions towards urban living.

This difference between the two scales of community networks can also be seen as a classic example of the distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. If the smaller community networks, with their closely-knit strong organizations can be seen as community, or Gemeinschaft, then the larger community networks with their transient populations in rule-based organizations can be seen to resemble society, or Gesellschaft.

8.3 III - Inherent qualities of online discourse.

8.3.1 Positive aspects of online discourse.

On the one hand reduced social cues can break down barriers of social status and hierarchy, resulting in the possibility for far more egalitarian and open communications processes. Many online users report that reduced social cues can lead to a greater intimacy and honesty in conversation. (We, 1995.) The increasingly common tales of people meeting romantic or life partners over the Net is a testimony to this quality of online discourse. People often find themselves engaged in surprisingly intimate conversations with virtual strangers, in a way they might never do in real life.

As Reid notes, "Freedom is given, either to be someone whom you are not, or to be more yourself than would usually be acceptable." (Reid, 1991.) Thus shy, introverted or unattractive people may be particularly drawn to online relationships. Without ordinary social cues brought about by physical presence, people are judged more by their ideas, their writing, the written projection of their personality than their looks.

An extremely popular New Yorker magazine cartoon of recent years - that has appeared in books and on office doors around the world - shows a dog happily seated before a computer and commenting to its friend that "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." Similarly, nobody knows that you're self-conscious, blonde, overweight, outgoing, black, elderly, muscular, in a wheelchair, tall, beautiful or blind. What matters is your writing. (although gender and ethnicity can come through unless a person deliberately chooses a false name.) In addition, people tend to behave differently towards others when such cues do not exist, what Reid calls "reduced self-regulation." (Reid, ibid.)

Online there is thus the potential for support mechanisms that might not be possible otherwise. Individuals dealing with mental or physical illness might talk with others anonymously about their condition, whereas in real life they could have great difficulty admitting their feelings to others. A gay, lesbian or bisexual teenager growing up in an isolated area might feel a strong sense of social isolation stemming from his or her inability to talk to anyone else about his or her ongoing sexual discovery. But online the same person might find a supportive environment of peers, willing and able to share common experiences. Such individuals may be openly out of the closet online, but very much in the closet in everyday life.

This type of partial social levelling might also contribute to the successful bringing together of people with common interests. For example, there are many popular software products available for free over the Internet that were written by collaborative teams of computer hackers, most of whom have probably never met in person. These labours of love range from simple small utilities to enormous projects like Linux, a full UNIX operating system that rivals commercial products, written by a Finnish university student and legions of his online associates in their spare time.

Similarly, the Usenet newsgroup 'rec.arts.int-fiction' acts as a forum for fans of interactive fiction, a fairly obscure and commercially extinct form of computer game. With its narrow focus on a specific field, the group maintains a friendly atmosphere, with hobbyists from around the world trading ideas and pieces of software that they have written. Common discussions draw upon eclectic knowledge of very disparate fields, from linguistic research into parser disambiguation to the moral choices of fictional characters to the best kinds of puzzles to include in a game.

Instances such as these are frequently cited by online advocates as being cases of convivial cooperation that would have been impossible without the openness and free flow of ideas that the Net makes possible. At least two respondents interviewed said that they were inspired by these kinds of successes in group-oriented volunteerism to become involved with community networks.

8.3.2 Negative aspects of online discourse.

But on the other hand, these less inhibited conversations are accompanied by a much more problematic and troubling trend, as Winner notes above. Many online fora are defined, not by open and honest conversations, but by astonishingly hostile and verbally violent exchanges. Sproull and Kiesler theorize that this tendency may be linked to the concept of deindividuation, whereby people in anonymous or large group settings may feel less inhibited by normal social mores. (Sproull and Kiesler, 1992, p. 50.) In fact, so common is this problem that an entire vocabulary has developed to describe some of the most frequently seen anti-social behaviour in Usenet discussion groups.

Flames. A flame is simply a message posted as an insult. It might be a general complaint (eg.: 'they flamed the provincial government.') or a specific attack against another Usenet post (eg. 'he posted a follow-up flame to her message about abortion.'). Flames are usually rude knee-jerk reactions, and are frequently ad hominem attacks against another Usenet poster. As Sproull and Kiesler comment, "Electronic messages are often startlingly blunt, and electronic discussion can escalate rapidly into name calling and epithets." (Sproull and Kiesler, 1992, p. 49.) A 'flame war' is a vociferous, and usually utterly pointless, argument on a newsgroup or mailing list.

Trolls. A troll is a deliberately provocative post, designed to annoy or anger the target audience. A troll can be both a message and the person who posted it. A typical troll might involve going to a feminist newsgroup and posting a remark about 'feminazis' or going to a rifle-owners newsgroup and commenting on all the 'gun nuts.' A less overt troll might be to go a newsgroup and ask an almost legitimate question, posing as a naïve user. The poster then sits back and apparently enjoys the flamefest that ensues. 'Flame bait' is a roughly synonymous concept - a message intended to provoke flames. The term derives from the mixed metaphor of 'fishing' for flames.

Spams. In Usenet parlance, a 'spam' is a message widely cross-posted; sent to many groups simultaneously. The target newsgroups have nothing to do with the subject of the posting, and the individual posting the message frankly does not care. He or she is simply interested in reaching as many people as possible, regardless of the inconvenience this may cause to others. Most spam is commercial in nature.

Spam is deeply resented by Usenet oldtimers, who view it as the work of unscrupulous individuals exploiting a system based on the trust and good judgement of its users. After all, if everyone spammed indiscriminately then the entire system would collapse under the cacophony, and nobody would be able to talk about anything. In an attempt to combat the problem some Usenet users have set up their own vigilante cancelling programs, such as the whimsically named CancelMoose, which are used to cancel spammed messages.

The term 'spam' derives from a characteristically absurd Monty Python comedy sketch of the same name. In the sketch a chorus of Vikings, boisterously singing the name of the commercial tinned meat product over and over, drown out conversation in a restaurant. The term is applied by analogy to irrelevant cross-posted messages which drown out any hope of intelligent discourse in newsgroups.

Invasions. An invasion, or raid, occurs when a group of online hooligans decides to go and 'take over' another newsgroup by provoking a flame war, in order to anger others.

A particularly well-known case occurred in March of 1993. It involved a small group of regulars of the Usenet newsgroup 'alt.tasteless' who decided to target the newsgroup 'rec.pets.cats,' knowing that the latter was frequented by earnest cat-lovers; many of whom were women. The alt.tasteless invaders came in and maliciously posted a large number of trolls and flames involving the abuse of cats, (eg.: cat recipes) disrupting the conversations and angering long-time readers of the group. (Quittner, 1994.) When confronted, the invaders, mainly male university students, argued that they had the right to free speech, and that the regulars of the newsgroup could not infringe on that right by dictating what they could or could not say.

While it may be easy to dismiss this case as simply the childish antics of some rather mean-spirited pranksters, it does point to a much more serious issue. Society has, over the years, developed various methods for inhibiting grossly antisocial conduct. These methods may range from unwritten social inhibitors reinforced through behavioural patterns to strictly codified legal procedures. However, many of these methods break down in the online world. What will evolve to serve as formal and informal agents of social control online? Who has authority in cyberspace, where physical borders are largely irrelevant? How will community networks, which ostensibly promote convivial exchanges of understanding, be involved?

These are not abstract questions, by any means. Already the issue of online hate literature, and the ease and anonymity with which it can be rapidly disseminated, is of great concern to many people involved with community networks. Several respondents mentioned that, legal liability aside, they had grave concerns over the tensions between promoting free speech and undesirable social consequences of hate literature.

8.3.3 bc.general.

A typical example of some of these concepts can be illustrated by a brief examination of the main Usenet newsgroup for British Columbia, known as 'bc.general.' This newsgroup was formed in order to provide a general forum for discussing events in the province, and is marked by constant, bitter and highly polarized feuds over controversial social issues as immigration, welfare and government employment programs, bad drivers and the nature of homosexuality. Far from encouraging a degree of civil discourse and understanding, the newsgroup frequently appears to be little more than a cesspool of some of the worst forms of human bigotry. As Stoll remarks concerning Usenet in general,

Online debates of tough issues are often polarized by messages taking extreme positions. It's a great medium for trivia and hobbies, but not the place for reasoned, reflective judgement. Surprisingly often, discussions degenerate into acrimony, insults, and flames. (Stoll, 1995, p 32.)

The following table shows a breakdown of postings (messages) in the Usenet newsgroup bc.general, as available from the Vancouver CommunityNet {23} on June 4, 1996.

Number of Posts	%	General topic area
74	29.7	Recent provincial election.
29	11.6	Asian immigration.
27	10.8	Cross-posted commercial spam posts.
23	9.2	Gay/lesbian issues.
23	9.2	Complaints about poor drivers.
22	8.8	Criticisms of various federal government policies.
14	5.6	Ad hominem flames of other posters.
10	4	Miscellaneous.
7	2.8	Local Internet service providers.
5	2	Local 'for-sale' or 'wanted' notices.
4	1.6	Cycling issues.
4	1.6	General ideological debates.
3	1.2	Local labour dispute.
2	0.8	Miscellaneous Information Sought.
2	0.8	Announcements of local events.

Table II - Summary of posts to the newsgroup 'bc.general', June 4, 1996.

There are several points that should be made regarding this table. First, it is not statistically valid data, but in my judgement is a fairly typical spread of discussions in the newsgroup. The one exception is that the number of posts related to provincial politics is unusually high owing to the recent provincial election.

Second, this breakdown does not give a good sense of the extremely polarized and abusive nature of the discussions. For example, typical subject headings for discussions of Asian immigration read "We dont (sic) want any more immigrants!", "Canadians discrimination (sic) against Canadians" and "Bad Drivers in Vancouver (was Re: Asian immigration.)" Typical subject headings for discussions of gay and lesbian issues read "Queer rights - selective approval of perversions", "HOMOSEXUALITY IS A CHOICE" and "HOMOPHOBIA is a choice". The headings alone do not suggest balanced or reasoned debate.

Third, the discussions frequently involve personalized and ad hominem attacks. In fact, 14 posts alone represent verbal debates about online personalities that would, were they in regular print media, likely constitute libelous character assassinations. The discussions about Asian immigration and homosexuality frequently involve similar attacks on other posters.

The newsgroup also features a handful of individuals who use it as something of a personal forum or soapbox from which to expound their views. One community network user posts several inflammatory messages a day attacking Asian immigration, another writes regular essays (bordering on polemic diatribes) on conservative political topics, and so on. Naturally these individuals are then targets for personal attacks because of their views.

Fourth, a large number - ten percent - of the total posts are spam posts and their follow-ups. In other words they are messages cross-posted at random across Usenet as a whole. These frequently originate from US sites, generally promote mail-order companies or pyramid money schemes (eg.: the infamous 'Make Money Fast!' posts that proliferate on Usenet like a scourge) and thus have nothing whatsoever to do with BC at all. Spam messages inevitably generate a flood of follow-ups of people bitterly complaining about the original spam.

The climate of bc.general could be summarized in this comment by Ann Travers, in her detailed analysis of discussions on the NCF's main Usenet newsgroup:

The tone of discussion on contentious issues (and discussions of race, gender and sexuality are always contentious) is almost entirely polemical. Critical dialogue is virtually absent from these conversations. (Travers, 1996.)

8.3.4 Online Harassment.

In addition to these types of verbal attacks, other forms of harassment are commonplace. Many women, for example, report that they are frequently find themselves the target of unwanted attention or sexual harassment from men when online. (We, 1993.) As Shade writes, "as many women have found out, cyberspace is not a gender-free space." (Shade, 1993.) Given that a large number of male users are university students or teenagers, and given the absence of social cues or inhibitors mentioned earlier, this may not be entirely surprising. However the frequency and bluntness of the harassment can be quite remarkable.

Online chat systems, whereby people can send messages to one in another in real time, usually anonymously, are particularly prone to this kind of problem. As a brief experiment I once configured two IRC (Internet relay chat) connections from two different systems to look like two different people. I named the two connections conventional male and female names - one 'Richard' and the other 'Susan.' (both real name and nickname was set, along with non-existent email addresses.)

I then put my alter-egos Richard and Susan onto a variety of non-sexual channels, silently moving them around together over a period of three hours, logging any unsolicited messages sent to them. During that time Richard received no such messages, but Susan received messages from five individuals. These private messages ranged from the relatively innocuous ("Hi.") to the irritating ("r u Male or Female???") to the bluntly sexual (invitations to 'netsex,' or exchange sexual fantasies). The messagers were also often very persistent, sometimes sending more than one message despite a complete lack of response.

This is not a comprehensive survey by any means, but is consistent with anecdotal reports from female users, even those who frequent more restrained environments than IRC. And it points to an important question: to what extent does such online harassment discourage women from participating in online discourse? Herring, following a study of two online mailing lists, writes:

. . . I have argued that women and men constitute different discourse communities in cyberspace - different cultures, if you will - with differing communicative norms and practices. These cultures are not however "separate but equal"; rather, the norms and practices of masculine net culture, codified in netiquette rules, conflict with those of the female culture in ways that render cyberspace - or at least many "neighborhoods" in cyberspace - inhospitable to women. (Herring, 1994.)

Online harassment is a serious issue because of the way in which it leads to the curtailing of participation by certain groups; women in this case. Travers writes:

Participation by women is often effectively discouraged (by online harassment). It is important to interpret sexual harassment as not solely about male sexual behaviour towards women but as a gate-keeping device that limits the extent to which women are able to participate in social spaces, including cyberspace. (Travers, 1996)

Participation assumes both social climate and technical access. It is difficult to determine a reasonably accurate demographic breakdown of who has net access, and who has not, but a survey by O'Reilly & Associates in the US in October of 1995 indicated that 2/3 of their survey group were men. (O'Reilly, 1995b) A similar survey of users of the World Wide Web indicates the same general gender ratio of 2:1. (Pitkow and Kehoe, 1996.) Surveys of community networks indicate an even more prominent gender skew in favour of male users. The 1995 Industry Canada survey of the NCF found that 81.8% of their respondents were male. The same survey notes that "The study of Cleveland Free-Net users reported 83% males, while the Digital City data showed 91% males." (Patrick, et al., 1995. Schalken and Tops, 1994.)

There is evidence to suggest that this gender imbalance is shifting slightly towards more balanced representations over time. There are also other factors to consider. Turkle comments that "Women who get onto the Net are often turned off by the flaming and the ad hominem rudeness they see. But they find places on the Net where this is not the case, and when they don't find them, they can create them." She also adds that "Women tend to be less visible than men because when confronted with a rowdy group-flame session, women will move their conversations to private email." (Turkle in Brody, 1996.) It is possible, therefore, that women's use of CMC technology is more significant than it first appears, because women may prefer to maintain semi-private email discussions with circles of friends rather than engage in high-profile flame wars in newsgroups and other fora.

However, given that community networks aim to encourage the participation of as broad an audience as possible, the fact that women may be subject to regular harassment is an important issue that calls for further study, as is the question of why women are so under-represented in community network demographics.

8.3.5 The net as a social insulator.

It seems that the technology, by serving as a kind of social insulator, may serve to enhance antisocial behaviour, such as insulting strangers or harassing women, that would generally not be tolerated in ordinary social situations. Early users of CMC recognized this fairly quickly. An introductory online help document, written by pioneering Usenet users and aimed at novices, begins with the reminder "Never Forget that the Person on the Other Side is Human." (Von Rospach et al. 1996.) That such an admonishment was deemed necessary at all is indicative of some of the problems experienced by online users. But the advice frequently goes unheeded, and this has important implications for any attempt to use CMC technology to foster or engender local discussions. Is a medium so prone to flames and trolls really appropriate for achieving this goal?

There seems a modest amount of evidence to support the contention that online discussion systems are successful when online discussions are relatively narrow and focused. However, discussions in real communities are not narrow and focused. They are broad, contentious and represent a multiplicity of conflicting views. It is unclear whether discussions in such a context work effectively in the online environment. One respondent commented on some of the difficulties with organizing social activism using online tools, saying:

Certainly three or four years ago I don't think there were as many people with a social activism bent who were as familiar with using the technology as people in the technical fields, who were using it all the time. So that's one aspect of (why social activism online may be less successful than purely technical work) - the people involved in social activism probably just weren't as familiar with it. As time goes on that might change.

But also the nature of technical work is that you have a specific task, you do it by yourself somewhere, present the results to the group, then if it meets the criteria it gets integrated in a whole. But there seems to be more room for discussions that wander inside of a social activism context. It's also the nature of those social discussions themselves - they don't lend themselves to concrete action.

8.4 IV - Communications technology: a Faustian bargain?

8.4.1 Networking technology as democratic - some criticisms.

Already we have seen that networking technology is proving to be considerably less inherently democratic than its early proponents have argued. This underlying issue of the technology has many aspects. One article of faith among many advocates of Internet-style communications technology, for instance, is that the network is distributed amongst autonomous nodes rather than being structured in a centralized, hierarchical form. The result, the argument goes, is a necessarily uncontrollable and thus democratic system. As John Gilmore once remarked in a much-quoted and celebrated comment, "the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." (Gilmore in Rheingold, 1993, p. 7.) Many people have also argued that this decentralized nature of the Internet stems from early military research into non-hierarchical communications networks that could survive a nuclear attack by not relying on centralized and thus easily obliterated hubs. (Sterling, 1992.)

This attractive but simplistic vision of the technology overlooks an important fact: those individuals and organizations in power do not particularly want to lose their power, and will go to great efforts to adapt any new technology to their own needs. They will also, quite naturally, attempt to undermine any technology they consider to be a threat to their own interests.

For example, the question of who controls the US domain name space is of great concern to online activists. Despite the common assumption that the Internet is highly decentralized in structure, all top-level domain names {24} in the United States are currently controlled by a single organization - the InterNIC. Formerly administered by the National Science Foundation, (NSF) an independent US government agency, the InterNIC is now run by two private corporations under contract to the NSF. One of these companies is AT&T, the telecom giant, and the other is a company called Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI). In mid 1995 NSI was acquired by Scientific Applications International Corp. (SAIC), a US $2 billion firm that specializes in military, police and government intelligence contracts. And, as Stephen Pizzo points out,

SAIC's board of directors is a veritable who's who of retired defense and intelligence officials. Current board members include:

• Admiral Bobby Inman, former National Security Agency head and deputy director of the CIA,
• Melvin Laird, defense secretary under President Nixon,
• Retired General Max Thurman, commander of the Panama invasion,
• Donald Hicks, former head of research & development for the Pentagon, and
• Donald Kerr, former head of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Recently departed from SAIC's board:

• Robert Gates, former CIA director (left in 1994 to join TRW's board),
• William Perry, the current secretary of defense,
• John Deutch, the current CIA director, and
• Anita Jones, Deutch's procurement officer when he was at the Pentagon. (Pizzo, 1995.)

There have not been any allegations of SAIC misusing this control, but as one commentator remarks, "at the very time the Internet community is struggling with the issues of encryption and privacy, I'm more than a little uneasy to find this bunch of ex-spooks sitting at the very entry point of the Net." (Warren in Pizzo, 1995.)

More significantly, some critics have argued that the shutting down of the academically-oriented NSF network backbone and the resultant handing over of control of the US Internet to commercial networking companies on April 30, 1995, has resulted in a gradual increase in centralized control over the Internet name space. This highly esoteric technical issue serves to undermine the notion that the Internet is inherently democratic and decentralized, because control over name and IP number space translates directly to control over access to the system as a whole. Anyone can pay a commercial provider for network access in order to plug a computer into the Internet, but unless that computer's address is recognized by the central name authorities for their namespace then nobody will be able to find it. As Gordon Cook notes: "It is beginning to appear that, the more the Internet increases in size, the faster that power flows upwards into the hands of a few who, since they are both operators and rule makers for the commercial Internet, would find themselves singled out for accusations of blatant conflict of interest in most other situations." (Cook, 1996.) Some companies have tried to set up alternative name registries to the InterNIC and national name registrar monopolies, but whether such ventures will succeed remains to be seen.

8.4.2 Vulnerability of CMC Technology.

Of course, these notions of decentralization of the net mentioned above are manifested solely at the macro, or network level. At a micro level - the level of the individual machine or user of that machine - the technology could not be more centralized. The system administrator of a typical multi-user system (ie.: a computer used by more than one person) ultimately has total control over the activity of the users of the system. Concerns over this type of control prompted some respondents to complain that they felt their community network was, at the very least, driven by the technical directors of the system or, at the very worst, held hostage by those administrators.

8.4.3 Centralized control on UNIX systems.

From an outsider's point of view the power and trust solidified in the hands of a multi-user computer's system administrators can be astounding. For instance, most Canadian community networks are based around a computer operating system known as UNIX, which is a powerful and flexible multi-user system popular in the worlds of engineering and academic computer science. UNIX is used because popular microcomputer operating systems, such as MS-DOS or the MacOS, are designed for single-user applications and cannot handle the management of thousands of user accounts. But UNIX's power comes with at least one price. On such a computer, a person with 'root' access - a metaphor derived from the root of a tree - has absolute and unequivocal control over that system. He or she can read any file on the system, create or delete any user account, and so on. And many critical day to day functions on the system can be accessed and controlled solely by a person with root access.

There are many technical arguments why this type of system design is a requirement for such a multi-user computer. These arguments usually boil down to a conclusion with which Plato would have been very pleased: that the system necessarily requires a strong captain because, like a ship at sea, it would founder if its users were to be given too much individual power.

This centralized control structure has at least two serious consequences. First, the systems are extremely vulnerable to the depredations of even moderately skilled intruders. A computer vandal who manages to obtain root access to a community network through exploiting a weakness in the system can wreak complete havoc. In fact, in UNIX a single cryptic command {25} when issued as root will permanently delete all of the files on the system. A more skilled systems cracker could rig all manner of hard-to-find trapdoor programs that would be difficult for all but a highly experienced systems administrator to detect and eradicate. As community networks generally rely on volunteer system administrators working in their spare time, this inherent system fragility is obviously a great worry to network organizers.

This is not a purely theoretical concern. In 1994, for example, the Greater Detroit Free-Net's system was attacked and temporarily disabled by a 15 year-old boy in Minnesota. (Paul Raine, Greater Detroit Free-Net, personal communication, 1996.) Even simple equipment failure can have a devastating effect. As noted earlier, in 1994 the Victoria Free-Net's primary hard drive failed, taking it out of commission for six weeks. This problem was not caused by maliciousness on the part of any intruder, but by simple bad luck, and points again to the vulnerability of highly centralized systems with single points of failure. (ie.: a point of potential failure with no redundant backup capacity.)

Failures of this kind affect large commercial operations as well. In June of 1996 Netcom, a giant American ISP with 400,000 customers, suffered a network-wide outage for over 12 hours. Company officials blamed the outage on a single line of incorrect code in a single network router. (Bray, 1996.) AOL went down for an entire evening in September of 1995 and 19 hours in August of 1996 owing to problems with newly-installed software upgrades, cutting off several million customers each time. (Associated Press, 1995a. CNET, 1996.)

Second, it means that the system is completely at the mercy of the system administrators' good will and reliability. The departure of a volunteer system administrator could pose serious problems for an organization. As one respondent with a rural community network wryly noted, "If (our two key sys-admins) were hit by a bus tomorrow, we'd have to shut down." Volunteers with the highly specialized knowledge needed to run a modern computer-based information service are difficult to find, especially outside urban areas. One respondent noted that, in his opinion, finding technically skilled volunteers with both a social conscience and an interest in volunteering was particularly difficult.

Just as seriously, any uncooperative system administrator could jeopardize the workings of the system - through deliberate obstruction or simply through inaction. One respondent who was highly critical of certain technical volunteers with his organization angrily remarked that "There were one or two people that had control of the operating system and their priorities weren't necessarily the priorities of the rest of the board. And I never felt that there was a collegial arrangement as much as a mutual tolerance, because there were no other options."

8.4.4 Access to multi-user systems.

A slightly less extreme case than threats to the entire system involves the granting of write access privileges to the computer. (ie: the ability to write, or modify, certain types of data on the system, not just the ability to view or read it.) Several respondents felt that a highly protective attitude of system administrators on their community network, prompted by very real concerns over the fragility of the system, resulted in a bottleneck of system access. This is not just a criticism for contemporary community networks. Schuler writes that Community Memory, one of the earliest experiments in community networking, was marked by a similar downfall. He comments:

This lack of involvement or investment on the part of the community members not only created a bottleneck for Community Memory staff and volunteers but it helped prevent the type of community ownership that is key to Cleveland Free-Net founder Tom Grundner's vision and is demonstrated by volunteers at community networks all over the world. (Schuler, 1996, p. 60.)

In addition to citing a problem of work on the system being obstructed by 'the techies,' some non-technical respondents complained about condescending or intimidating behaviour from system administrators. This may be in keeping with the priesthood and acolyte mentality that seems to surround institutional computing to this day. Computer culture has long been characterized by a certain disdain for non-technical users, (Levy, 1984) and a resistance on the part of system administrators to work with people from outside that culture can be seen as part of that tendency. As The Jargon File, a definitive compendium of computer programmer jargon also known as the New Hacker's Dictionary, drily notes: "The users (of a given computer system) are looked down on by hackers (computer experts with a passion for and a mastery over the technology) to some extent because they don't understand the full ramifications of the system in all its glory." (Raymond, 1996.)

Three respondents also expressed great concern over the social skills of the technically obsessed, suggesting that basic problems with social interaction led to conflict within the group. One respondent went so far as to say that "Personally my own experience is that people who are working on the Internet and around (computer) technology are some of the more socially incompetent people I've ever met in my life - and in a scary kind of way. The Internet has appealed to those people who, in some respects, don't like social contact."

It should be noted, however, that this tension and sometimes outright antipathy is often quite mutual. Technically-oriented respondents reported their frustration with having their informed decisions overruled by boards which had no understanding whatsoever of the complex technical issues involved. They complained about being asked to implement system features that they considered to be utterly pointless and having to spend large amounts of time explaining elementary system facts to their fellow volunteers. They also found it frustrating when largely non-technical boards would tell them not to install technical features that they considered interesting or useful. Unfortunately, these kinds of tensions likely reinforce the kind of 'us versus them' mentality already well established in computer science and technology circles.

In conclusion, that online communications is necessarily or even just generally open and democratic in nature appears to be an unexamined assumption held by many involved in community networks. Yet there is evidence to suggest that the technology is not necessarily as democratic as its proponents would like to believe. Is this issue one that can be ameliorated or eliminated simply by better planning and a redesigning of problem areas of technology? Or is it an inherent limitation of CMC technology in general that must be worked around as far as possible?

8.5 Conclusion.