What makes fluther a collective in your experience?

It has people that care about the well being of others and standards are high here. This was the good part.
People gang bang on others when they don’t like a particular person which is really sad.

A collectivity for me is where I can get help or offer my help/advice for others. Where I can be myself… I can’t really act like myself here because I’ll be judged.

We mostly care about the problems and feelings others here are having. We all get and give good advice, and mostly people don’t get their feelings that hurt here.

Because each answer, on each question matters. It is collectively stronger that others I have observed because a serious questions have equal and greater serious answers creating incredible depth and insight. The camaraderie is created when you add all the individual questions and their answers up. The individual collective in each question becomes the entire collectivity of the site as a whole.
So the number of people acting as a group to create an assembled whole view does it for me.

Not much. Well, at some point some of us are actually on here…and some of us do know others of us…but that’s neither here nor there.

There are people here who I consider to be my friends, that is true. However, I think the overall attitude of Fluther… as much as people complain, myself included…. is aimed towards always improving. I think that the majority want to be the best members, we want to uphold higher standards, we want to be friendly and helpful, even if it doesn’t always work out that way.

Once you fall in love with Fluther, you become territorial. This makes Fluther a collective, imo.

I’ve never been a part of any other social website, so it’s impossible for me to compare Fluther to others.

I’ve hated this place when I’ve felt let down, but there’s always someone who reminds me of why I felt at home here, and I keep coming back. There is always someone who will have your back and comfort you when you need it, or laugh at your silly humor when no one else gets it.

For me, it is mostly the feeling of camaraderie and caring. Even for those who aren’t really ‘friends’ really do seem to care about each others problems. Even a complete stranger in a bad situation seems to rally us around them in support.

That’s Fluther at its best. We are not always at our best, sadly.

I don’t treat this place like I’m going to have friends. I have that in my non internet world. But I really respect the answers given, and its really fresh to have non friends opinions along with different perspectives from complete strangers who are also seeking answers and feel like they can offer help by answering questions from other randoms. So I would say Fluther is an awesome forum to meet up with randoms who come to some what of a certain consensus in problem solving, for the most part.

For me it meets with the requirements of a collective. I imagine the Borg from Star Trek probably operate in a similar way.

In Star Trek, a Borg drone will contact the collective when there is a problem (question), and all the drones will get thinking on it (answers), then the queen decides an apropriate action.

I see it quite similar here, you can ask a question on say religion and get a wide range of ansers, but if you look at all the answers, it will swing one way or another. That majority could almost be considered a collective oppinion/decision.

The “collective” is an emergent phenomenon, a synergy that’s greater than the sum of its parts. It happens, I think, because the structure and culture of the site encourage participants to interact, so the “answer” evolves over the course of the discussion.

This collective mind doesn’t emerge from every question, to be sure, but when everything goes right we end up with more than just a jumble of individual answers. We have a mutual exploration of a topic, wherein everyone benefits.

I’m not sure I feel like we are a collective, except in a pretty loose sense. We cooperate on questions and answers and I think that despite ourselves, we make up a whole. There is an ethos to fluther which is outlined by our rules of conduct and enforced by moderators.

Does that make a collective? The collectives I know seem to have more unity of purpose. They actually take action, usually for political goals. They are more than alliances of convenience. They last longer. They stick together.

Without the website, there’s no way the people here could stick together. Some might hang on facebook, but how long would that last without a unifying task? I think the unifying task here, unlike other collectives, is not strong enough. It’s too temporary and too personal for it to acquire a larger purpose required for it to really attain the status of collective. IMO.

I have no desire to be part of any “collective” sounds bloody awful to me.
I’m happy just doing my own thing, merrily plodding along, picking up a few laughs here & there.

Its all about the peeps!