Christopher Alexander pointed out that all communities gather from the edges, and if the initial gathering at the edges does not succeed, the group will not succeed. And people need some places to stay (like stores and garden ), and slowly there will be a group. This makes me think of the structure of Slack. Each large community is constructed by smaller groups, while the member in each group can communicate with direct messages to form smaller groups. Also, I believe the forming of each community started by people seeking a place to communicate, which perfectly fits Alexander’s pattern about creating communities.
Another pattern I found interesting is that Alexander states individuals have no voice in a community of more than 5000 people. This reminds me of an online forum I joined before. They have super strict rules to join the management system, so they only have a team of 10 to manage a forum with nearly 2000+ users, which means most of the users cannot talk with the cor stream easily. So when some people try to give some suggestions about the forum, their voice will disappear quickly in the crowd.
By reading the patterns, I find they are shown in the towns and communities in real life and apply to online situations.
