Talk:Community

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Community article.
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Good article Community has been listed as one of the Social sciences and society good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
To-do list for Community: edit · history · watch · refresh
  • "Community" from various perspectives (such as psychological, sociological)
  • Etymology
  • Effects of technology
  • Make more concrete somehow
  • Photo of neighborhood
  • Social capital?
    • Section on social capital research findings in this article.
    • Community improvement initiatives related to social capital moved to Community development.
  • Sourcing - Notes and references
  • Editing/copyediting/tweaking (on-going)
  • Watch prose size of article (31 Kb+): avoid big additions, without off-setting adjustments, to keep size down. Consider creating new sub-articles.

Archive • 6 August 2002 — 11 February 2006 Archive • 23 March 2006 — 31 July 2006

Contents

[edit] Some comments - definition and general ideas

The article is in good stage, so I propose here some changes of

"A community is a collection of living things that share an environment. These can be plant or animal; any species, any size. Communities are characterized by interaction in many ways. The definitive aspect of community is that each subject in the mix have something in common. This article focuses on human communities, in which intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the degree of adhesion."

into

"A community is a collection of living things that share an environment, so forming a recognizable group. These living things can be plant or animal; any species, any size. Communities are characterized by interaction in many ways. The definitive aspect of community is that each subject in the mix have something in common that allows an identification. This article focuses on human communities, in which intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of adhesion."

Generally speaking, I have the doubt that a holistic approach to the concept of community should be used, because in the community the whole can be much more of the sum of the parts. This means, in my idea, that an approach as a whole is much more interesting than splitting the idea in the strict points of view of various disciplines.--Truman Burbank 14:13, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I think that your revised lead adds an important element to the definition of community: identification of the participants in all communities, including plants, and identification by participants in the case of human communities. In both cases, this addition is useful; for human communities, it seems to me indispensible. Thank you for bringing your suggestion here in the Wikipedian tradition of consensus; I would suggest that you go ahead with the change in the Wikipedian tradition of being bold in updating pages.
As to your suggestion about not splitting the article. I certainly agree that a holistic approach (as currently taken in this article) is better than a balkanized version with the different disciplinary perspectives. However, I had thought that the proposal to add brief summaries of the different disciplines approach to community would be a useful addition, without interfering with the overall holistic flavour of the article. Perhaps it would be best to simply add a few lines (rather than sections) on each of the disciplines' perspectives (e.g. Community psychology; Community studies in anthropology). Sunray 17:23, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
I can identify (pun intended) with Truman and Sunray's comments. I think the article is great for the general reader and is approaching, I believe an ideal length for a core topic article. It touches a broad spectrum of specialized subtopics, providing links to many supporting articles. I think the holistic flavor is appropriate.
The conclusion of the "Sense of community" section, "The sum of the creative energy (often referred to as "synergy") and the strength of the mechanisms that maintain this balance is manifest as an observable and resilient sense of community." might cover Truman's second point. CQ 14:23, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GA

Congratulations to us. Thanks all for your help. Maurreen 16:09, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Awesome! The Community article got dropped from the assessment list because we had not yet created Category:GA-Class community articles. It should re-appear after the bot makes its rounds. Should we go ahead and create Category:FA-Class community articles?
Also, what other community-related articles might be of top or high importance in relation to WP:1.0? Virtual community? Community studies? WikiProject Community could use some guidance toward where to concentrate some focus. Thanks in advance. • CQ 16:11, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
I would suggest Community development. Maurreen 16:23, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
Great work! Pats on back all round. Sunray 23:36, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article size

As with many great collaborations, the article size has mushroomed. We now need to rationalize additions in accordance with guidelines on article size. The prime concern is readability. The guideline suggests concise summaries for long sections and new sub-articles, improving organization of material, etc. Sunray 23:36, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

OK. That's do-able. Are the Images a problem? if so, I would "sacrafice" the burning crosses picture, first in favor of the new one I just put in (Heart of Community - I really like it for here). I suggest also a "Further reading" section for some of the more detailed coverage. Several areas can be trimmed, in that specific articles (Community development, Community studies??? ...) can take on the "extra" text. Maybe we can start a new article something like Community theory or the like. Just my 2 centavos worth. CQ 00:05, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Oh. Conversely to a "Community theory" article, Sense of community could probably expand to take on more content and context, eh? It should be done "expertly" though, I think. Another $0.02 worth. CQ 00:32, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
No the images don't reside in this file so they don't add much content. Not remove the burning crosses! It ain't pretty but it too is community. To my mind Community studies and Community psychology are (or should be) the two theory articles. Sunray 14:17, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I'm not sure where to start

I haven't been around much in the last few months and recently I think I've avoided this important article because its problems are so unwieldy. My dissertation was on community from psychological perspective, and it's hard for me to see this article as ever being successful unless the answer to one question is clear: "says who?"

I know there are some quotations and references sprinkled throughout, but that's not enough. People have been commenting on community since the dawn of commentary, so the only thing that makes sense to me is to have this article reflect some views of professional commentators that deal with the subject. That means each group of views has to have some semblance of coherence and be in its own section. The "perspectives on community" section should expand to encompass most of the article, and should have subsections entitled "sociological perspectives," "anthropological perspectives," "psychological perspectives," etc.

Unless the article consists of summarizing the views of professional commentators, it will not really become an encyclopedia article. The first sentence is a fine illustration. The definition that was there at the end of last year was very poor, but I'm guessing it was just made up off the top of some editor's head. People here tried to improve it, but it is still sorely lacking. Some Wikipedia articles have a large section devoted entirely to various definitions of the topic (e.g., by different groups of people who deal with that topic). A separate section for definitions would certainly seem to be appropriate for "community."

This page has seen great improvement since the beginning of the year, but unless there are clear sections representing the perspectives of various academic fields that study community, this article is far less likely to attract the interest of experts, who may otherwise view it as a quagmire.

Then, later in the evolution of this article, when patterns emerge that make clear where various fields agree or disagree on (or emphasize vs deemphasize, etc.) regarding some aspect of community, attempts can be made to show how the perspectives fit together.

Until then you don't want to have social scientists read the article and after every other sentence (some which may even sound to them like uninformed, puffed-up pronouncements) say to themselves "says who?"

I expect to get very busy very soon, but I wanted to share these suggestions, especially with those who have invested a lot of valuable time and effort into this page. -DoctorW 22:58, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

When an expert comes along and is willing to put time into a difficult article like this, it would be encouraging if people would either take the advice or at least respond. What happened to the "Perspectives on community" section? Any thoughts on providing a possibility to attract experts to contribute to the perspectives of their respective fields by having a section for each one, as I outlined above? -DoctorW 02:36, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

what is it -[unsigned comment by 172.192.228.111, 00:57, 7 November 2006] (see above or below)

[edit] We need to attract contributions from experts

I have been talking for more than a year now about distinct sections for the perspectives of each of the major academic disciplines. I think this may be the only way to attract experts to make contributions, because otherwise an expert may not feel there is a good place for a contribution. An expert may be hesitant to try to rewrite the whole article, or even to try to take on such a huge topic at all in a comprehensive way. But an expert may be willing to write about the major ideas of his or her field.

The creation of the page Social psychology (psychology) (as distinct from Social psychology (sociology)) allowed (finally!) an active researcher in social psychology in a psychology department at a good university to create an entire article of unusually high quality on a very important topic that didn't exist before!

Sunray and CQ, active editors here, have expressed support for my proposal. I am going ahead with it. -DoctorW 01:27, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I've restructured the article. Interrupting the flow in some places is very minor compared to the potential benefits. Although the article has improved tremendously in the last year, it still betrayed a lack of expertise, looking more like an excellent paper written by one of my undergraduates than a good encyclopedia article written through collaboration by experts. Hopefully the new structure will provide a place for an expert to take the lead in each new section. -DoctorW 03:15, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguation link repair

This article had the link [[Valence|valent]]. I changed it to just say "valent" with no link. Valence is a disambiguation page and should not have links going directly to it from articles. (See Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links.) I'm not sure if the way I've handled this particular link is the best. Other possibilities: (1) create a page with a name such as "Valence (psychology)", and move the definition of it from the page Valence to this new page, and either expand it or mark it as a stub. (Only a good option if there's a good chance there will be a full article on that topic in future.) (2) Put the definition of "valent" in parentheses after the word in this article. (3) There may be other possibilities I haven't thought of. Feel free to implement one of these if you think it's better. --Coppertwig 16:57, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] refugee community organisations?

I'd like to see a section somewhere on the development of refugee community corganisations, and on the challenges to community development practice that they bring. Not sure if this belongs under community / community developmet or under refugees. Is this getting too esoteric for this topic? PWD 16:51, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Role of community Development officer

i would simply like to know more about community Development, —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.202.32.34 (talk) 07:42, 14 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] "Sense of Community" summary in psychology section

As far as I'm aware, the first two paragraphs in the "Sense of Community" summary in the psychology section are not at all representative of the psychological literature. In fact, they appear to be little more than the collective editorializing of Wikipedia contributors, who have not supported their opinions by citing appropriate references. If such references are not provided, I will remove these two paragraphs. -DoctorW 05:02, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I removed the unsupported editorializing mentioned above on June 11. -DoctorW 16:53, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Communitatus: is this a joke or something?

First off, I don't want to sound conceited, or annoying. I just can't get over the stupidity of this pseudoetymology.

The word community comes from the Latin communis, meaning "common, public, shared by all or many."[1] The Latin term "communitatus" from which the English word "community" comes, comprises three elements, "Com" — a Latin prefix meaning with or together, "Munis" — ultimately Proto-Indo-European in origin, it has been suggested that it means "the changes or exchanges that link" (Both municipal and monetary take their meaning here), and "tatus" a Latin suffix suggesting diminutive, small, intimate or local.

This is folk etymology at its best.

For one, there is no Latin word, communitatus. The bits about communis, munis, com, etc are mostly right, although I would mention that the actual prefix-root is con. However, the bit about tatus is complete linguistic quackery. Tatus has nothing to do with diminutive, small, intimate or local at all. In reality, it implies height and status.

Moreover, even if tatus had anything to do with "small" or "local", it would not be an origin of communitatus (if there were such a word). Why? Because words like communitatus are verbal nouns (perfect passive participle); the -atus is merely an inflexional ending, not a suffix like tatus. If it were real, communitatus would be derived from a pretend verb commun(a)re.

It is possible that this was crappy etymology derived from a confusion of the genitive singular of communitas, which is communitatis (note the "i").

So, here is my revision of the etymology:

The word community is derived from the Latin communitas (meaning the same), which is in turn derived from communis, which means "common, public, shared by all or many"[1]. Communis comes from a combination of the Latin prefix con- (which means "together") and the word munis (which has to do with performing services).

ARGHHH! People who don't know what they are talking about and post anyway DRIVE ME CRAZY!!!!!

A few corporate sites have even used this definition in their content, which should prove very embarrassing to them if someone calls the crap on them.

I hope that this was beneficial. I have taken the liberty of applying my edits, but if anyone disagrees, they may, of course, reverse them in version control.--Ioannusdeverani 23:01, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Solve this matter by getting an language experts work on the matter, and use it as referance material. Otherwise it is just ORIGINAL RESEARCH and thus NOT ALLOWED! Looking at etymology is OR, unless you find it as referance material elsewhere, like in a dictionay or encyclopidia. Unless you find a referance, REMOVE IT! Corrupt one 23:54, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Human Resources

I'm guessing this is a proposal for an addition:

  • Human Resources: people who work to produce goods and services in a business, also known as work force or labour 1Define the decision 2 identify alternatives 3 evaluate alternatives 4 make a decision and take action 5 evalute the decision Inventory:goods and materials kept on hand. [unsigned comment by 207.112.49.144 02:49, 19 September 2007 (UTC)]

-DoctorW 00:11, 3 June 2008 (UTC)