Citizendium - Gay Community Article

TOPICS: Citizendium. Gay community. GLBT encyclopedia articles. Citizendium is a new kind of encyclopedia. Gay community article. Encyclopaedia. Citizendium article for 'Gay Community' voted 'New Article of the Week'.

Ian Johnson, Out Now
August 17, 2007

The internet has proven to be an agent of quite groundbreaking social change.

One area of late where this new technology is making itself known is in the area of social networking sites and other sites that take advantage of interaction by users with content - sites that are rather amorphously massed together by the description 'Web 2.0'.

The advent and growth of sites such as Facebook, Bebo, YouTube and Wikipedia has been rapid and massive, and many people seem to forget that merely a few years ago, none of these now seemingly ubiquitous Web 2.0 sites even existed.

One site that has been of interest to me has been Citizendium - a site that was launched just a few months ago by the co-founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger.

You will not yet find the quantity of articles on Citizendium that may exist on other wiki format encyclopedias, however, due to the important emphasis placed on authors contributing to Citizendium under their own names, and under the stewardship of expert Editors, the result has been a steady growth in reasonably good quality, credible articles on a growing range of topics.

There is a new article that is chosen to be featured each week by Citizendium, and I am quite pleased that an article I was involved in helping to write - Gay community - was selected as the latest 'New Article of The Week'.

If you want to read some more background about the development of Web 2.0 technology, try this Gay Market News article on a book review by Larry Sanger (Editor-in-Chief of Citizendium) of the Andrew Keen Web 2.0 polemic, Cult of the Amateur.

In the meantime, here is a short extract of text that I contributed over on Citizendium to the Citizendium Gay Community article.

As with other collective groupings in society, the gay 'community' is comprised of many different individuals with many different individual circumstances in life, often with unique and very different personal backgrounds.

To suggest that there is a single 'gay community' necessarily subsumes the individual's experience into the collective representation, which is of course simplistic but nonetheless may be useful in considering how the lives of GLBT people can be different from - as well as the same as - the mainstream experience.

One common bond between most members of the gay community is the fact that homosexuality in most cultures is the exception rather than the social norm. This aspect of 'otherness' from mainstream society can create a commonality of experience that is shared by many members of the gay community across geographical boundaries, legal systems and cultural backgrounds.

Some individuals who happen to be lesbian or gay prefer to not see themselves as forming part of the collective grouping known as 'the' gay community, although by interacting with it to even a limited extent in their daily lives they may nonetheless contribute to its existence, even where they might disavow being a member of it.

-------------------
For expert help with the gay consumer market, LGBT consumer market research data, and gay consumer market strategies, from the leading gay consumer marketing experts, contact Out Now.

Out Now Consulting and Gay Market News will keep you updated on all the latest gay marketing, GLBT community market research, LGBT travel and gay tourism, gay and lesbian communications, gay PR and gay advertising developments.

Gay market insight is Out Now: Gay Marketing. Solved.

OutNowConsulting.com |||| GayMarketing101.com
To contact Out Now, send us an email.

Helping brands marketing & advertising to gays and lesbians.
LGBT communications successfully reaching the lesbian and gay consumer market since 1992.

All content on all Out Now websites (C) 2007 - Out Now. Out Now Gay Market News -- Gay Marketing 101 gay market updates site. LGBT communications. Gay PR. Global gay PR marketing, gay public relations strategy, GLBT PR, LGBT issues training, gay advertising, LGBT market, lesbian and gay market research leaders, GLBT marketing. Gay Market News is Gay Marketing 101 - Out Now Gay Marketing, Advertising, Gay PR, Market Research. Travel Market. Training.

gay market gay advertising gay marketing gay tourism gay travel pink dollar pink pound gay agency advertising marketing travel tourism gay lesbian gay and lesbian market research glbt lgbt communications community pink euro

Bookmark GayMarketNews.com to get back here, and subscribe to our RSS feed. For reaching gay consumers, lesbian and gay market research, GLBT advertising, gay PR, GayComfort™ training and gay marketing strategies, choose OutNowConsulting.com.