I noticed in PHP Everywhere’s Enterprise PHP article that their link to the article on Giant-Scale Web Services was broken. So there’s a working location (a bunch of other neat papers in the folder too). It’s a great read.

On Web Communities

Posted on February 5, 2003February 27, 2005 by lhl

One of the writing samples for the graduate application I handed in last week was on describing an experience that inspired me to enter the field (for me, making web stuff I suppose). I did give it a bit of thought. I wanted it to be truthful, but not anything too hokey.

I ended up writing about first encountering Philip Greenspun’s first iterations of photo.net and wtr. Specifically, about the the fundamental difference between web communities, and other types of prior online community mediums: that (via the power of the URI) the web allowed mapping normally temporal and ephemeral interactions into a (theoretically) permanent, named location. Archiving conversations gives allows some really great benefits when you have true virtual communities: you build your own virtual history/personality via your participation, these can be referenced later on, interactions and utterances don’t just disappear. (obviously this isn’t always desirable, but no one’s forcing you to play).