So thinking about the problems with setting aside a physical time to attend a community group, an online group gives you the flexibility to participate in a discussion at a time that suits you, without having to leave home. Information shared in this way has the capacity to expand a topic because your audience is not restricted to a particular area or number of people. Also you can decide whether you want to participate in a discussion or just read what people are posting to that topic at any time.
Sounds like a lot of benefits to sharing an interest in your own time but what could pose as a disadvantage with communication of this kind?
The participation within our internetstudies group was quite rewarding but then this group was specifically formed to aid the net11 students module 2 task.
On the other hand, my experience within the mylifeismine group was quite dull. I feel that this group is more of an advertising board rather than a place of personal communications in interest of the group topic. My message posted fine but my question has not been answered to this day. Not a personal group in my eyes.
I also joined a Google newsgroup, Smile-junkies, but I am unable to post a message within. I am informed that ‘This group is announcement only, I cannot post messages because I am not a manager’.
Reflecting my personal preference to what I have discovered so far, I feel more in touch with our Webct Discussion Board, the ease of searching topics and reply to individual people appears more user friendly.
Reference:
How Stuff Works (1998-2008) How Newsgroups Work, Retrieved 5 July from
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/newsgroup.htm
