Karyn makes a good point: some sort of shared sense of purpose (even if not everyone shares exactly the same sense) is in some ways what makes a community, whether it’s the local Friends Meeting, the Axolotl project team at work, or the participants in the Work Literacy ning site.

What Karen and Dave said ...

It's been my experience that group process operates essentially the same way online as offline, but there are some subtle and important differences. In facilitation of groups, it has always been a challenge to help / enable less extroverted and assertive participants speak out / up. and of course to have more extroverted and assertive participants pipe down / leave room for others.

As to civility and manners, sometimes in the real world people do not express deeply held or important issues because of the demands of manners or because it can be difficult to be clear, articulate and civil about an issue one is passionate about, whereas the degree-of-remove or detachment that the virtual distance provides emboldens some.

However, as we all get more practiced and fluent about / with interaction online, i suspect that we will see the axioms of what and how a group / community tolerates (and not) come into play more often and more regularly.

However #2 ... it is also clear that as a generality there are less effective manners, less self-censoring and restraint and more less-civil verbal behaviour present in our North american society than in the past. And laying that at the feet of 'culture" generally is not a stretch, conceptually. If you are of a certain age, it only takes a couple of hours of watching television or listening to a radio show (for examples) to realize that things are different today than was the case 20 or 30 years ago.

Of course those differences are evident in how people express themselves online today .. and that is for the better AND for the worse.