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Article:
Being Part Of Groups by: Richard Lowe, Jr. There are many different ways to have fun and socialize on the internet. One of the most fulfilling things that you can do is join one of the many social groups that exist. What is an internet social group? These are a whole bunch of people who share their experiences, thoughts and beliefs over the internet. Usually they are united by a common theme or cause (or many causes). Sometimes these themes are as simple as "friendship" or "internet addiction", but they can also be united by a desire to recruit Christians, deliver a message or protest a wrong. Some examples of groups are Random Acts Of Kindness, Misker's Denizens, Garden of Friendship and Hearts Of Gold. Other groups include Kindred Spirits, Inner Dreams, Web Addicts, Net Dudes and so on. Generally, a group is started by one or a small group of "founders". The founders lay out the rules and create a basic website, then recruit charter members, who then recruit additional members. Ideally, what you wind up with is a focused, motivated group who performs the duties and tasks required for group membership. Being part of an internet social group means more than just putting a link or webring fragment on a web site. It means more than joining an Egroup list and reading the messages that people send. And it certainly means more than a nice looking graphics. Each group has a set of bylaws (rules and regulations) and most have a creed, which is the mission statement describing what the group is supposed to accomplish. For example, Random Acts Of Kindness exists to do exactly what the name implies: deliver acts of kindness to people. This could consist of guestbook signings, articles, giving stationary or gifts, or any number of other small, thoughtful things to do. Usually a group has committees and you have the option of joining one or more. Being in a committee has more responsibilities than just being a member. For example, if you are on the Welcoming Committee, you will be expected to sign new members guestbooks with welcome messages, or if you are on the newsletter committee you will be writing articles and contributing materials. The main point of all of this is to get people to be active in one way or another to the group. It's fine and dandy to have a thousand members, but if only ten of them are actually doing anything ... it's really not a very useful thing. Presumably you join a group for a reason. Perhaps you like the people, you want someone to communicate with or you like signing guestbooks. Perhaps you want to contribute to the causes that the group supports. Well, then please contribute. This is actually very important to the survival of a group. People need to put in effort. They will find that effort magnified many times. That's the beauty of these groups! If everyone does just a little bit every day or once a week or whatever, then it's magnified by the number of people in the group. You get each person in a hundred member group to sign one guestbook per day randomly, that's 100 guestbooks per day, or over '36
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