"Belonging" to an online community

I have been asked to describe my best experiences as a member of an online "community." But I find this seemingly simple question to be a challenge. I guess this class that we are in now has probably been the most positive experience I have had and I would have to say that it is because of the variety of activities we have been exposed to. But that is an ironic thought due to the fact that that is also one of the most frustrating things about it too. Sometimes I feel like we are using so many different forms of online tools that I find it difficult to keep them all straight.
When you take the online connotation out of the question and ask what my best experiences as a member of a community were two specific examples come to mind. One is the neighborhood swim team, and I would say that what made that such a positive experience was a common sense of purpose, a common goal, and at least one common interest. There were people of all ages, backgrounds, and personality types, all coming together for the same purpose, and it was this coming together that really made the difference. Sure you could get a bunch of swimmers together in a chat room or on a discussion board and they could talk about their most recent meets, but I doubt that it could create quite the same spirit that the personal contact we experienced did. The other example that comes to mind would be my junior year of college, when I shared an apartment with 7 other girls. There was such a comradrie in that apartment, (true, true, we didn't ALL get along perfectly, but the marjority of us did), each of us supporting and encouraging each other in our various adventures in life. Those are two groups I think of belonging to when I think of myself as a member of a community.
To extend on these ideas, I connected with a quote referenced in the article we just read. It reads:
'"...just because you have a large audience doesn't necessarily mean that you have a community. Netscape, for instance, is one of the most heavily trafficked sites on the Internet, because many people automatically go to Netscape's home page when they start their Netscape browser. But there is no community [because there is no connection]." Penelope Patsuris and Adam L. Penenberg. "Eyeballing community" Forbes. February 6, 1998.' I found this to be very true and easy to relate to. Just because all of us participate in an online discussion together does not make us an online community. Just because we all work on the same wiki to create a useful resource does not connect us as members of an online community. There are many other factors that enter into the building of community, human aspects, that can not always be attained simply through a common interest or a common purpose explored online.
After exploring some of the community building resources offered in the article, the one site mentioned, My Learning Place, seemed to offer individuals an interesting opportuinty to set up their own private communities based on interests. This one seemed the most applicable to my life as most of the other ones mentioned were business based online community resources.