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8329: [MUD-Dev] Re: Laws of Online World Design
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From: Adam Wiggins <adam@angel.com>
Newsgroups: nu.kanga.list.mud-dev
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 11:43:47 -0700 (PDT)
References: [1]
Organization: Kanga.Nu
On Sun, 11 Oct 1998, Ling wrote:
> On Sat, 10 Oct 1998, Koster, Raph wrote:
> > Community size
> > Ideal community size is no larger than 250. Past that, you really get
> > subcommunities.
>
> Once upon a time, I watched a documentary about this anthropologist (sp?)
> watching people. He asked the following questions (paraphrased, badly):
> Our ancestors used to roam around in tribes of, say, a hundred. Each
> individual in a tribe knew about a hundred people (well) so how do we, in
> today's society, cope with the urban jungle? Well, each of us form a
> tribe of our own spanning everyone we know well. That means if you don't
> know your nextdoor neighbour well, he's just one of the neighbouring
> tribes.
And even more interestingly, in recent years the tribes that have been
forming transcend physical location. This is largely, I assume because of
the transient nature of people's lives: it's quite common to move every
couple of years to a new job and a new neighborhood. At this point you
would loose any locationaly-based communities; but your on-line friends
"come with you".
As always, the ubiqious example is: this list.
Adam W.