After years of thinking about online community ( not only the ones from America, but also domestic online communities here in China).

I noticed one phenomenon: the form "online community" seems to grow and develop very well in the English world like US. ( on the top of my head, stackoverflow, cgsociety, quora etc.). Posts on these websites have great quality, and people are willing to share sincerely, a great deal of discussions produced useful results, people participated all got inspired ...

While, in China for example. Online communities doesn't pan out that well. Reports theses days are filled with E-commerce, SNS and stuff, no one really succeeded in building a high quality online society that really contributes back to really world.

I do realise that online world is based on real world, and we can not separately talk about them. So this difference in online community probably implies the mindset and social structure of the society it is based on.

Probably, the US has long gone past the phase that everyone worries about basic needs and survival. Americans already started to enjoy life on spiritual level, therefore they treats online world as seriously as real world, which led to responsible online activities( for one thing, they use real name online far more than Chinese ), which is the fundamental requirement for high quality community.