The (g)reefs of community

Reading over a fellow blogger's post last night, and I was struck by a thought. Human communities are kind of like coral. Seems odd, doesn't it? But bear with me.We kind of form communities by aggregate. A couple of like minded people meet, bond, and start to develop something. They invest work, time and energy into making that something grow. Meanwhile others stumble across and decide to join in or make their own.

This holds true for muds and even for this blog. Because of the Karinthadillo, I'm here posting originally and even now on this post. Others followed his example and started up a few blogs of their own. Perhaps eventually, a community of semi-linked individuals will gather. But like coral, these communities can be fragile.

Environmental changes can have a dramatic effect. We don't have a formal link, one blog is independant of another. I can think of three others that are linked in this fragile web and no single blog relies on the others in order to post or create. I don't necessarily know all those who keep their blogs or posts, but because of the activity and survival of those blogs I am familiar with, I'm inspired to maintain my own. If something were to happen to reduce the blogs or perhaps a prolonged period of inactivity, then this early reef would die.

This applies to muds as well. The coders create that first all important base. Next come the dedicated players and developers that try to make the fledging community grow. So long as the players do their part to build up the mud, it grows. But when they allow their portion to wither away and die, it makes it harder for the next person to find a place to grow.

*shrug* A thought, one I thought might be worthwhile to post in the currents.